Snow Lines

"Snow Lines declares war on solitude, melancholy and boredom!" shouts HeroCraft about its new puzzler. Bold words from the developer, but does it really have anything to crow about?

It really is a very friendly war that it's declaring. The purpose of the game is to form horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines from five or more smiley things (think those horrendously irritating 'Download hundreds of smileys' website advertisements) of the same colour. Do so and the line disappears, granting you some of those lovely points.

Each game is set on a 9x9 grid of squares, and you start each level with a few smileys dotted around. On each turn you can move one of these gurning globes any number of horizontal or vertical spaces, so long as there are no other smileys blocking the route. After each turn, three new smileys will appear at random locations. It shouldn't take a master mathematician to work out that you need to maintain a regular stream of disappearing smileys in order to prevent the game grid filling up.

It's smoothly handled and beautifully presented, with big bright sprites and a lovely snowflake effect overlaying the field of play. This slickness carries through to the way the game plays, with a simple and elegant control system minimizing annoyance. Unfortunately the game comes a little unstuck at a pretty critical phase.

To be blunt, Snow Lines just isn't a very good idea.

Our description of the gameplay – which is pretty much copied from the developer's own explanation – sums up the experience in its entirety. There are no hidden depths here, no gradually emerging strategies for you to discover. You make lines of smileys, they disappear, you make more. And so it goes on.

Without the standard cascade effects found in your average block-arranging puzzle game – whereby a chain reaction of disappearing blocks can be set off and thus planned for in advance – another layer of potential substance has been omitted. There is also a distinct lack of meaningful modifiers to mix things up – no special bonuses that will temporarily turn the game rules on their head by offering you a fresh ability or handicap. Thus, for all its vibrant colour, Snow Lines proves to be a distinctly monochrome game in nature.

It soon becomes apparent that Snow Lines was designed from the conceptual phase up as a casual way to pass a few minutes. And there's nothing wrong with that – the mobile platform is perfect for that kind of experience. However, in failing to provide anything beyond surface thrills, HeroCraft has severely and unnecessarily limited the experience.

It's regrettable because, as we touched on earlier, it's a superbly presented and executed game in many ways. We appreciated how our progress was automatically saved so that we could quit out at any point and not lose our efforts. This is by no means an original feature, but too few developers incorporate it into their mobile games, so we're happy to shout from the rooftops when one does.

It's a shame that such care and attention wasn't put into other areas of the game. Snow Lines does indeed declare war on solitude, melancholy and boredom. Unfortunately, it's not a war that it's particularly well equipped to win.