Sponsored Feature: NOM turns mobile gaming on its head

The phrase 'one-thumb gaming' has certainly become popular in the last year or two, signifying any mobile game that you can play with, yes, one thumb. I-play arguably popularised the term over here in the promotional campaign for Skipping Stone, which remains one of Pocket Gamer's classic titles.

However, one-thumb gaming was around before that. The developer of Skipping Stone was South Korean firm Gamevil, which pioneered the idea in another game called NOM. It starred a little man, NOM, who basically ran.

He ran along the bottom of the screen, jumping over obstacles with the touch of the '5' key. He ran up the sides of the screen, and he even ran along the top - forcing you to rotate your phone while playing.

NOM had 10 levels, quirky characters to meet along the way, and a full complement of chickens, snakes and toads - always a bonus.

There were cheat codes to tweak the background colours, music and movement, and you even got to meet NOM's father, who bore a spooky resemblance to a character from a famous sci-fi film. No, we won't spoil the surprise by telling you who (but it's not Jar-Jar Binks, don't worry).

NOM was enormously successful in South Korea, racking up over a million downloads - that's 3 per cent of the entire population, which for a mobile game is a stunning feat. It's also since been launched in the US too, leaving us Europeans (those of us who'd seen the game, obviously) gnashing our teeth with frustration.

No more. NOM is finally getting a European release, courtesy of Living Mobile. What's more, it's coming with all manner of fancy features, including online high-scores via official web and WAP sites, as well as a range of related wallpapers and ringtones to fully NOM up your phone.

Will the game take Europe by storm as it did the Korean market? Click 'Track It!' to get an email when our review goes live, or visit Living Mobile's official NOM website to find out more. Or you can point your phone's browser to http://wap.nomsworld.com instead where there's a free demo of the game awaiting you!

(P.S. In case you were interested Nom was born in February 2002)