Topple is a fun, inexpensive game by ngmoco - many reviewers have described it as Jenga meets Tetris. While we don't necessarily agree with that analogy, we do agree that it's a worthwhile purchase for fans of tower building games. We don't think it's a must have game though - here's why.

The whole objective in Topple is to balance anthropomorphic blocks in such a way to create the tallest and strongest tower possible. There are many different shapes (rectangles, squares, triangles, and odd polygons) with their own unique personality, giving clues as to how you are stacking. Since the challenge levels have a time limit, you will more often than not be trying to stack for height than anything else. But you have to be careful, as the whole stack is affected by the accelerometer - even the slightest sway can topple your tower over. Touch controls allow you to rotate with two fingers and slide down until you're happy with the position of the piece - they work well for the most part.

Once you've mastered the stack and tilt gameplay in Free Play mode (oddly, this doesn't record any statistics, like high score or greatest height) you can enter the main portion of the game, which is the Levels mode. You score points for every block added to the tower, and lose points for each one lost. There's also a golden egg which you can throw away without cost, but it will give you 500 bonus points if you manage to keep it on your tower. Once you manage to stack to the required height (the 'goal' line), you can opt to stack quickly up to the 'bonus' line to get one of the three achievements for that level (the other two are a score target and a time award).

On level one, this is fairly straightforward - having a rectangular foundation block and giving only squares and rectangles to stack. However, as you progress, the amount of blocks you have to juggle increases - because the order you get them in is random every time, it's frustrating when you have several blocks in a row that just don't gel together. What's more is that the accelerometer ends up being more of a hinderance than a help - it can ultimately ruin your tower even if you've stacked it correctly. We wish there was an option to turn it off, as it seems like a gimmick, but unfortunately not. By level 7, your advancement through the game seems entirely based on luck rather than skill of stacking blocks.

Despite having excellent presentation - indeed, grimaces from the motley crew of blocks are superlative, backgrounds are impressive and give a great feeling of scale, music is great, classical and stylish, even if on a short loop, and a full featured achievements system that has a lot of challenges to overcome - Topple just falls shy on the gameplay, which isn't enough to keep you coming back for more.

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