Doodle Fit

When did doodles become a ‘thing’? What exactly prompted developers to start using them as an aesthetic? Was it the thought of how awesome it would be if everything you scribbled in your notebook during a really boring lecture came to life?

The thing is, devoid of context, all those wacky shapes in the margins aren't really that interesting - they’re just the snippets of a wandering mind bored out of its skull.

Gamelion's Doodle Fit is a perfectly solid little puzzler, but if there's anything to distinguish it from the legions of similar games on mobile formats bar its art design, I'm not seeing it.

Every level of Doodle Fit is a hollow outline, where you have to arrange the handful of irregular shapes you're given so that they fit perfectly inside it.

You can't manipulate the shapes in any way, only shuffle them around. There's no scoring system beyond beating the level or temporarily giving up to try something else.

To be fair to its developer Vinyl Pixels, Doodle Fit is a robust, intuitive game. The minimalist UI is at least easy to understand, and dragging the shapes around or tapping on menus is quick, simple, and seemingly free from bugs of any kind.

It's just that for all the polish, Doodle Fit doesn't exhibit any outstanding features or elements.

Unlike HandyGames's Panzer Panic, whose tiny drawn tanks and ink explosions inject a dash of character into the game, the doodles in Doodle Fit add nothing to the experience.

Multiple solutions to every puzzle in Doodle Fit are a welcome addition, in theory - and it does provide some replay value later in the game - but there's something about the way it includes them on even the simplest puzzles that seems a little patronising.

Audio-wise, the twee chiptune soundtrack is pleasant enough, but compared with something like Meteor Pixel's Deflecticon and its gorgeous tunes from musician FantomenK, Doodle Fit's sonics remain utterly forgettable.

Perhaps most frustrating, far too many of the opening levels are almost insultingly easy, giving the game an almost flat difficulty curve.

There's a fairly limited variety of pieces, and unlike Tetris where your goals and the difficulty level evolve from moment to moment, what you need to do in Doodle Fit is normally obvious only seconds after you've started the level.

The same tricks get used again and again, to the point that you're finishing levels on your first try in a kind of dull stupor. Beating them never feels like it's anything to shout about, unlike the sense you get from the best puzzle games.