Take one whole city, drain it of all it's colour and life. Sprinkle in some evil overlords, and add a spoonful of heroic paint blob. When you mix it all together, you get de Blob - a fast paced maze game where you smear brightly coloured, well, paint over buildings and in game residents in an effort to restore life to Chroma, and squash the malevolent INKT agents in the process.

Basically, the game plays out like this: you must collect a splodge of paint so that you can spray it onto buildings, trees, etc. Collecting multiple blobs enlarge de Blob, and any new colour you pick up changes your hue - for example if you are blue size 1, and you pick up a yellow blob, you will turn a shade of green and grow to size 2. Some of the large structures will require a specific size and colour before you can paint them. In addition, there are several 'Resistance' leaders scattered across the map, to present you various challenges (such as spray painting a given amount of buildings), and of course the INKT agents to cause trouble.

Unfortunately the game suffers from some annoying design issues - tilt control is imprecise and frustrating when the action demands precision. Touch control fares better, but the tap here to move here mechanic often obscures the action, and sometimes you'll be zipping along so fast you won't notice the INKT agent coming around the corner until it's too late. Touching one accidentally (you must squash them) will render you completely harmless (and even harmful to objects you've previously painted) so you must find a water pool to wash off the black sludge. Sound/control settings are not saved, so you must select on/off every time you play, which can also get annoying.

Missions that you are given never really vary from level to level, and are merely a set of generic tasks that you will eventually get bored of repeating. It's strange that these were not more closely integrated with the story line - and so you'll probably wind up doing the bare minimum (score a set total of points) on the level to progress. Happily, most of the time you will only need to paint around half of the map and do one mission to proceed. This is good considering that every level has a time limit in which your objectives must be met - you will also be awarded trophies for doing certain things in the game.

The game's music deserves a special mention - it's very catchy and jazzy, and fits de Blob perfectly. Chroma also looks very nice once painted, and you can bet that every time you beat a level the city will end up a different colour. We love the concept - but we can only recommend de Blob for short painting sessions due to it's subpar controls and repetitive gameplay.

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