Little Red Sled is the latest creation from Imangi Studios - a 3D downhill sledding game which has a playful, effervescent feel to it. We managed to buy it in the Easter sale, but it's definitely worth its limited time price of £1.19 right now.

The game is almost exclusively controlled by the accelerometer, although you can use the touch screen to slow Max or Maya down (we like the subtle humour in those names). Tilting left and right directs your sled, and once you gain some air, you can shake your iPhone to perform a barrel roll. You can do more than one of these in a row, which earns you a combo bonus.

Three types of level appear on the mountain - green (easy), blue (medium) and black (hard). The easiest levels usually have a quota of gifts to collect, and a lenient time in which to do so - but the hardest levels force you to collect all of the presents, have a much lower time threshold, and sometimes even a target score (that's quite tough to beat). As well as these achievements, you'll be traversing tricky terrain littered with trees and evil bunnies, hairpin turns with gifts right on the edge, and even bowling for points with the invincibility power up.

We liked the charming encouragement given when completing the challenges, and the fantastic music used throughout the game. The solo piano really gives the game an upbeat vibe and makes Little Red Sled as a whole greater than the sum of it's parts. Graphically we weren't as impressed. To be honest, we've seen much better 3D on the iPhone - though it would be unfair to call the game ugly, we felt it was too basic visually.

The game's strengths lie in it's deceptive difficulty (we haven't yet completed all 15 levels) and otherwise good presentation. We wish there was some other incentive to revisit levels though, and depending on your skill level, you may breeze through the game and then just run out of levels to play. More levels (as promised by the developers) are coming, so keep your eyes peeled.

We found it difficult to rate Little Red Sled as a whole. Some levels are very basic, and we were done with 2/3 of the game in half an hour - long term longevity is a question of whether we will see any updates to the game. There's only one trick (and not much skill in execution either), so we would have liked to see some more added. The good news is that the soundtrack and general cute vibe the game has easily justifies a great rating. Seriously though, we need those updates.

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