Burn It All!

It's set in a volcano. There are flames everywhere. It has the kind of billing, and indeed title, you might expect to find attached to a no-holds-barred thriller, but Burn It All! is actually rather pedestrian.

Intentionally so, of course, but Microsoft's latest addition to its now extensive first-party roster on Windows Phone 7 is puzzling both in terms of the genre it slips into and the very nature of its challenge.

Though everything appears to make sense from the outside, in practice there's a piece of this puzzle missing.

The aim of the game is to guide a series of flames to the top of a volcano using your finger, negotiating an assortment of ropes and other objects that litter the way.

Once you've got your head around the premise, the routine of what's required from one level to the next is straightforward: you have to burn.

Any ropes that your flame touches catch alight and slowly disintegrate, which – considering clearing a path to the top of the map is your goal – is exactly what you're looking for.

Cut the rope Speed is of the essence, with the clock ticking down not level by level, but for the entire batch.

Your flame's run comes to an end when the timer runs out, with control then handing over to one of the two flames that follow. They, in turn, trace the same levels as before, only this time you naturally have some idea about what's required.

As the game progresses, the very make-up of those stages becomes more complex and engaging. For instance, it can be tempting simply to set everything alight, but – despite Burn It All!'s name – that's not actually what's required.

Indeed, if you can manage to make your way to the escape only burning one or two ropes (or even none at all, in some of the early levels), then that's the ideal – wasting time waiting for ropes to burn that turn out to have no bearing on your progress serves no purpose whatsoever.

As well as timing your dashes to the 'finish' line to avoid any enemies – drips of water and random spirits roaming the volcanoes are about as exciting as it gets - it's working out just which of the scores of ropes you need to burn in the first place that's makes up Burn It All!'s challenge.

That's fine and dandy – and, most importantly, not as easy as it sounds – but it isn't especially enjoyable.

What's missing throughout Burn It All! is any sense of character or fun, which is some achievement given the game's rather quirky setting.

The whole thing is functional and, on paper, represents a perfectly acceptable challenge. But when it comes to actually playing Burn It All! it's clear that merriment didn't make it into the recipe, so the embers don't burn nearly as brightly as they should.