Aquah

There simply is no end to the match-'em-up puzzle genre. You think you’ve seen them all, then another concept comes along and defiantly beats the category into never-before-seen form. Aquah sprouts from the genre, in so much as a strong horticultural theme is seeded through the game’s core.

The game features an array of different elements ranging from compost and nitrogen to water and fertilizer. As these different elements cascade onto the screen in their varying forms (frozen, unfrozen, muddy, oily and so on), matching three of any type causes them to disappear and feeds a corresponding value of that element to your tree’s development.

You can check on your tree on the status page at any time and get a reading on its varying fertilizer and water levels, as well as its height and girth. This seems to suggest that you ought to monitor its growth, addressing any statistical deficiencies by concentrating on a specific element type in-game – yet, no such indication is ever given as to whether your tree needs more or less of a certain element.

It wouldn’t matter much if it did, as Aquah’s control scheme renders the challenge somewhat arbitrary. The elements cascade automatically onto the screen which you can vaguely direct by tilting your handset. This makes tactical, targeted play a non-entity and the often unresponsive option to lock certain elements in place by touching them on the screen does little to firm up the woolly gameplay.

Presentation-wise, the game is a mixed bag. The graphics and presentation are both top drawer, but the localisation is sloppy and the tutorial riddled with grammatical curiosities. Worse still, the music is an endlessly looping flute riff that grates almost as soon as it arrives.

Kudos to Thinkroove for finding something novel to add to the match-three puzzler, but the disconnect between concept and execution means Aquah fails to flaunt its relative originality.