Meet Buka, she is full of personality. In an oddly cute, disquieting way perhaps, but nevertheless bewitching. You must guide her to the 'happy place', and whilst she doesn't have any innate abilities, you can push away creeps with a swift tap of the touch screen, and holding your finger down creates a fireball which explodes upon release.

We can understand the motive to not allow multitouch in this game, as being able just to mash the screen with five fingers would get you through this type of game very quickly. What's annoying is that the tilt control is poorly calibrated, and so moving Buka with it feels like moving a plastic knife through a piece of bread. If you turn it off, you're forced to use the touch screen, which means you cannot create an explosion whilst moving. We think a good compromise would be to allow one finger on Buka and one finger to deal death to the Baddies.

Of course, each level of the journey mode brings with it tougher Baddies. Like Asteroids, some enemies divide into smaller chunks upon combustion, whilst others move quickly and must be dispatched swiftly. Each wave is not overly long, and the game will save your score at the last checkpoint (but won't freeze the game state). The survival mode, as you'd expect is a never ending stream of baddies that gets tougher and tougher, doesn't save the current score. Oddly enough that whilst these modes both make use of scoring, there doesn't appear to be any leader boards to record your score. As we haven't completed the journey mode yet we don't know if there's a board at the end - but there isn't one accessible from the menu. You do get a statistics page though.

It's full of neat little presentational touches - each animation is crisp and fluid.

Buka is full of neat little presentational touches - each animation is crisp and fluid, with the fireball being one of the coolest effects we've seen to date. Ditching a traditional pause button, the developers decided to make Buka the pause control (just double tap her), leaving the score counter as the only bit of UI during the game - this really helps to clear the clutter out of the interface. As you are hit, she also doubles as the health bar, showing progressively worse blemishes on her blue surface. She even narrates you through the game, providing encouragement for the next level - better still is the minimalist drum 'n bass music which glues the whole experience together.

In conclusion, Buka is definitely a challenging game, but not one so immense that it will put you off playing. Sure, the controls could be drastically improved, and leader boards added, but for the money it's a simple game that will hook you in very easily. We recommend downloading it today.

Media gallery

• 
• 
• 
• 

Why not try...

---

• 

  Osmos

• 

  Space Miner: Space Ore Bust

• 

  Circuit Strike One

• 

  Kometen