Frenzic

Isn’t it funny how a strict time limit can paralyse your brain?

Think about assignments you’ve had to hand in for work or school. You might know the subject matter inside out, but as soon as there’s a deadline looming your brain has the tendency to turn to jelly.

That, essentially, is the driving force behind Frenzic’s fiendishly alluring challenge.

At its heart, Frenzic’s gameplay is based on ludicrously simple shape and colour matching that even a five-year-old could handle. Add in a time limit, however, and it suddenly becomes a frantically taxing experience.

Faced with a succession of Trivial Pursuit-style pie pieces, your task is to slot them into one of six surrounding receptacles. Complete a full circle and it’ll disappear, allowing you to start again.

While you can just put any old combination of colours together, the real points come when you fill a complete circle with the same colour of segments. This also grants you bonus power-ups or extra lives.

This is all made difficult by the aforementioned time-limit, which forces you to make snap decisions on where you’re going to place each piece. As each circle starts filling up, it becomes trickier and trickier to discern where the free gaps are.

Time waits for no game

Frenzic is quite an old game now – our review of the iPhone version dates back two years – and it has to be said that the competition has moved on a little in that time.

The Single Game mode, for example, now looks a little bare. Frenzic’s presentation, too, comes across as a little spartan by today's standards.

Regardless of this, the game maintains its appeal thanks to a (still) unique premise and some solid gameplay. The way it expertly turns the screw on your nerves as the time limit gets tighter and tighter remains as compelling as ever.

For a game so concerned with the pressures of time, Frenzic has remained remarkably resistant to its effects.