Kona's Crate

Sometimes, in the race to produce the next Angry Birds or Cut the Rope, developers seem to be chucking mad ideas at the wall and just seeing what sticks.

Take Kona's Crate and its truly baffling premise: a tribal chief needs crates delivered directly to his feet, but - rather than call UPS - he demands all packages be sent by a twin-jet hoverboard. Oh, and the drop-off point is always within a maze, in which TNT is often lying around.

It's a truly absurd enterprise, yet somehow it just about holds together thanks to that ruthless just-one-more-go appeal that is the hallmark of every hit physics-puzzler.

The real problem is the 'physics' engine itself, which pays only scant attention to Newtonian laws, making the game quickly veer from tricky to frustrating.

Loony landing

With Kona's Crate's controls lifted from rock-hard arcade classic Lunar Lander, delivery of the package lacks the smooth precision of, say, dropping off a parcel in a van.

Instead, you need to fly each box to the impatient Kona by delicately balancing control of the left and right thrusters at each end of the hoverboard.

Mercifully, the crate is glued to the board while you're in the air, but the slightest tap against the scenery sends your cargo ricocheting off as if you'd whacked it with a baseball bat.

This isn't too much of an issue during the first 20 or so of the game's 60 stages, even if the 'Restart' button will already be getting a pretty good workout. From then on, though, replaying levels dozens of times becomes par for the course.

While the start screen for each stage give you a chance to look over the level map (by swiping and pinching on-screen to zoom in and out), once delivery is underway, rote learning every twist and turn is the only way to progress.

None of the levels is especially long or complex in its design, but even navigating a simple corner or rocky outcropping requires a combination of endless patience, practised dexterity with the controls, and a fair amount of luck.

Whilst its going often gets ridiculously tough, Kona’s Crate’s breezy design does a solid job at soothing your frayed nerves. Played on a tablet or large-screened phone, the HD levels seem spacious and the overgrown temple aesthetic suits the ramshackle, trial-and-error gameplay.

There’s little variation as the game unfolds, despite the inclusion of a trio of campaigns (Sunny Skies, Dusk, and Starlight) complete with backgrounds reflecting the time of day and personalised tom-tom and pan pipe-infused soundtracks.

The designers clearly ran out of ideas pretty fast and were forced to rely on old chestnuts like steam geysers, floating blocks, and deadly dynamite to up the ante.

These obstacles make the levels more challenging, but with simply flying from one end of a straight corridor to the other being a serious test of your gaming prowess, they’re more of an extra annoyance than a challenge to overcome.

In fairness, you’re getting a fair amount of gaming for around 60p with Kona’s Crate, and the inclusion of OpenFeint achievements and online leaderboards add another layer of appeal for serious players.

It’s undoubtedly addictive, too, although how long you’ll remain hooked depends on your tolerance for the bouncy, often unpredictable physics, and the lack of imagination beyond the eccentric premise.