Jellies!

I’ve had nightmares about dangling a hand or foot off the side of a boat and having underwater creatures start noshing on my digits.

It's never been anything as cute as the little goo balls in Jellies!, though. I suppose if it was I wouldn’t mind so much.

The goal in Jellies! is to connect as many like-colored critters as you can within a strict time limit. Two or more is all you need to clear them out, but larger chains will naturally yield higher scores.

There are a couple of things that make this a more interesting matching game than most. First there's the way the Jellies bounce and drift around the screen.

Then there's the way you can get bigger combos by trapping loose Jellies inside of a closed circle of other Jellies. The former makes the latter a bit tricky, but it’s still very doable, and always satisfying to pull off.

A trio of power-ups is on-hand to make all of this a teensy bit easier. They let you stun all the Jellies on screen for a limited time, blow one of the adorable little monsters up, or weaken all the Jellies so you can slice them up a-la Pac-Man-meets-Fruit Ninja.

Jellies! looks great as well. It's got a very sharp style that’s reminiscent of other recent App Store charmers such as Threes!.

That said, I’m not a fan of having to either pay an extra 69p / 99c or bug my friends on Facebook to unlock Endless Mode.

It’s a bit off-putting in a game that already costs £1.49 / $1.99 to begin with. Thankfully the other in-app purchases (more coins to buy more power-ups) never feel all that necessary.

Ultimately the best thing I can say about Jellies! is that, in going back into the game to reference a few bits of info for this review, I ended up playing for another couple of hours. And that's high praise indeed.