Hands on with the Portal-inspired Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift

Not quite yet on an Angry Birds scale, nevertheless Zeptolab and Chillingo's Cut the Rope has been one of the most significant iOS games of 2010.

The fastest selling game on the platform to-date, its three million plus downloads highlighted the value of Chillingo as a thirdparty publisher; something underlined by its purchase by EA.

So as everyone concerned with the game ends the year with happy faces, they're passing on some of their joy with a free standalone season version of their favourite game.

As well as being themed in an appropriate manner, with Christmas trees and the like, Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift does bring something new to the gameplay.

These are the teleporting stockings, which are scattered around the 25 levels.

Obviously, as you drop a sweet into one of the stockings, it will fly out of the other. That's what teleporters do.

But, on top of the puzzles that can be built with this mechanic comes momentum.

This works as the speed and direction at which the sweet enters the first sock is the speed and direction at which it exits the second.

Of course, the angle of the second sock also influences how the sweet flies through the air, but the general impact is to force you to be more careful about when you cut the rope or pop a bubble.

It's a subtle but welcome twist to Cut the Rope's gameplay, and one that's sure to delight fans when the game is released for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, sometime next week we think.