Psychoban

Consistency is a spectacularly important part of any puzzle game.

Unless the game tells you otherwise, an action that works in one level should work in the next. If it doesn't, you feel cheated. It's as though the game has pulled the rug out from under you, and then laughed.

Psychoban likes to laugh at you. It likes to pull out the rug, turn out the lights, and then batter you with carpet beaters.

In some games, that's just part of the challenge. In Psychoban, it feels cheap.

The game casts you in the role of a mental patient in a selection of creepy asylums. Your job is to slide green crates around at the behest of a maniacal doctor and his strangely compassionate assistant.

In each level there are a number of slots in the floor, and to make it to the next room you need to push one of the green crates into each of them.

You can't drag crates, only push them, so getting them stuck in a corner means you'll have to start the level over or tap the 'undo' button to move yourself back a step.

Multi-levelled rooms, tight corners, and problematic angles all mean you'll have to think carefully before you start your sliding. Most of the levels are well designed, and the game has a slew of decent 'eureka' moments, when you finally work out which crate you have to slide where to complete a room.

Unfortunately, alongside those moments of delightful clarity, Psychoban also has too many moments of furious frustration. It's established early on in the game that once a crate is in place it can't be moved. Except when the game decides that it can.

Levels that seem impossible suddenly become simple, not because you've experienced a breakthrough but because the game has just changed the rules on a whim.

The controls, too, leave a lot to be desired.

Psychoban boasts that they're simple and intuitive. Tap on the screen and your straight-jacketed character will move there. Tap on a pushable object and you'll be presented with all the possible places you can move it to.

In practice, though, your taps don't register the first time, or the third time, leaving you jabbing at the screen in a vain attempt to be acknowledged by a game you're already getting sick of.

Psychoban is just as troubled as its lobotomised hero. It has lucid moments, when everything fits together and you can't help but have fun with its well designed puzzles and impressive visuals.

Then everything goes wrong and you feel the purple mist setting in. All the enjoyment and goodwill the game has accumulated vanishes, replaced by broken controls and secretive level design.

There's nothing more important than consistency in puzzle games. Psychoban only manages to consistently disappoint.