Hazel Dazzle

Hazel Dazzle is an attempt at a swashbuckling intergalactic adventure. Playing as plucky astronomical archaeologist Hazel Joyce, you'll hop from planet to planet in pursuit of the nefarious Doctor Dietrich and his minions.

Along the way you'll explore subterranean dungeons, acquire mysterious alien artefacts, and battle baddies from across the galaxy.

Unfortunately, this space-faring saga is also riddled with typos, let down by limp jokes, and host to a plethora of technical glitches that spoil an otherwise adequate adventure.

Hazel Dazzle clearly draws its adventuring cues from the Legend of Zelda series, and while Nintendo's in-house design teams have nothing to worry about, Wake Studios has crafted a handful of clever and memorable dungeons.

But that ingenuity is undercut at every turn by Hazel Dazzle's numerous shortcomings. Combat is tedious and frustrating, and requires no more player skill than the ability to tap distractedly at on-screen enemies. In spite of the absolute simplicity of this control scheme, Hazel nevertheless responds erratically.

The art style, meanwhile, is similarly low rent, and Hazel's weirdly distorted features and lack of personality make her one of the least likeable characters you'll come across.

And then there's the writing. There's an abundance of spelling mistakes and mangled idioms, sure, but it's the weak jokes that hit Hazel Dazzle's storytelling ambitions hardest. It's just hard to like any of the characters when they're constantly pumping out unfunny or nonsensical one-liners.

The final nail in Hazel Dazzle's coffin of mediocrity is its technical faults.

On one memorable occasion, I inadvertently dropped a quest item, which promptly lodged itself into a piece of scenery. In the course of trying to retrieve it, my character also became stuck within the level architecture, and I was left with no choice but to restart the app.

The worst thing is that I'd actually been enjoying myself just moments earlier. Because when Hazel Dazzle isn't bombarding you with ropey storytelling interludes or dull combat sections, there's a certain amount of pleasure to be had in exploring its weird and occasionally well-crafted world.

It's just a shame that those moments don't come around nearly enough.