Retro gaming has many virtues and pitfalls - are you the nostalgic type who wants to relive early childhood arcade dreams, or do you want to experience new paradigms in gameplay? We normally lean towards the latter, and so when we chanced upon Squareball it bowled us over backwards. Here is a game that combines retro graphics, stunning synthesized chiptunes and effects with the modern power of the iPhone and it's precision touch sensor.

The result is something that we can only describe as pong + breakout + platform game. Add in some elements of simple maze and puzzle games and you make Squareball. So how does it work? Like in Cover Flow for your music, the game reacts to swipe gestures with amazing precision - a swipe sends the ball a great distance, and a push sends it only a little way. You can only control the horizontal movement of the ball, it will rebound off walls and so comes the challenge. Lose the ball through a hole in the wall and you'll lose a life.

It starts out easy enough; break all the green blocks to clear the level, optionally clearing blue and purple blocks (gems) for points. Squareball gets tricky very fast, adding in perplexing configurations to test reaction time and your grasp on the controls. Destructible wall makes an early appearance, then 'death traps' which are red coloured and must not be touched. There's sometimes multiple passages through a level or hidden rooms that can boost your score.

Along with the horizontally scrolling levels, there's also a handful of vertical ones to mix up the gameplay - these usually are extra hard as a rebound upwards can cost you precious seconds. The timer never felt too short however, and it gives bonus points once you beat the level. It's displayed in white at the top of the screen, whilst the green bar below it indicates the remaining green shards that you must collect. A nice touch is that the timer bar will fade to red if you're running low.

The difficulty is hard and it gets harder. But never once will you blame the game - indeed, a careless flick can salvage a new record or it can lead to your demise. Gentle dragging on the screen may teach you the level layout for the first time but may not suffice later on in the game. Each small challenge can be overcome - but the game is unforgiving when it comes to lives and checkpoints. At most you'll get one checkpoint per level that is dependent on your shard count, and the game only gives you three lives to play with. Fortunately, load times are almost instantaneous.

Presentation is, as alluded to before, superb. All the levels are rendered in 2D with an interesting faux-3D effect going on in the background. This minimalist style suits perfectly the abstract plot that somehow ties it all together - we're not sure how else you'd present the game otherwise. We like the way the camera pans over the level before play and the way the game darkens blocks that are further away. It is definitely retro styled but has more going on visually to make it feel less basic. Crisp, clean sound effects and a large variety of music suits well the style of the game.

The game has a few weak points - there's a lot of excessive tapping. As rounds are played (and lost quickly) it requires many taps to get back into gameplay. A replay button could solve this problem, or a different system that didn't revolve around the tired lives concept. We feel that the game could be made better if the high scores were dropped and instead the game would have 3 achievements (or collectables) for each level - one for clearing the level, one for beating the time and one for collecting all the gems. That way the lives system could be dropped in favour of gameplay that didn't keep stalling.

Nevertheless, we highly recommend Squareball. It's effortless touch controls are like nothing else we've played on the iPhone - even though your finger may obscure the action at times. We had a blast playing this game and we're sure you will too - 20 levels for £1.19 is a great deal for a title of this calibre.

Media gallery

• 
• 
• 
• 

Why not try...

---

• 

  R TYPE

• 

  Space Invaders Infinity Gene

• 

  Lunarcy

• 

  Edge