Hands on with Playman Beach Volley 3D

In this weather, the last thing you want to do is jump around being athletic on a beach. Lie down while sipping a Pina Colada and working on your tan? That's more like it.

But there's no such summer slacking for Playman, the cartoon star of several sporty games from Mr Goodliving. His latest outing is Playman Beach Volley 3D, a beefed-up version of its existing Beach Volley game with, yes, 3D graphics.

The game sees you taking control of a two-man Playman team (who knew he had an identical twin?!) and playing against a series of opponents in first-to-five-points matches. The 3D is a neat addition, rather than the focus of the game.

"We don't implement 3D for the sake of it," says Gunnar Larsen, director of mobile games in Europe for RealArcade. "It's about using 3D-style environments to make it more fun, without spoiling any of the original gameplay. So in this case, it's the same gameplay, control mechanism, scoring and characters, but just with 3D to give a richer look and feel."

The game uses an innovative control system letting you move both players forward and back, passing to each other or smashing the ball into the opponent's court. And what's noticeable in the preview version is that the swizzy graphics seem to have made little impact on the smoothness of the gameplay. This is by design, says Larsen.

"We could have done more games in 3D, but we've chosen not to," he says. "The playability and the gameplay is by far the most important aspect, so you don't want to slow the game up, especially for something like Playman where ease of use is crucial."

So what next for the Playman character? After all, he's already turned his hand (and feet) to athletics, winter sports, football and now volleyball. It's only a matter of time before the little fella's appearing in his own curling, netball and Eton Fives games, right?

"We're working hard on it, but I can't say anything right now," chuckles Larsen. "Rest assured he'll be featured heavily in our roadmap going forward. He's mobile's most sporty hero after all!"

We'll bring you a review of Playman Beach Volley 3D next week.