Finger Physics - I've fallen for you

One of the more impressive features of some of my iPhone games (including recently reviewed iPhyzzle2) is the built in is the physics engine that treats objects in the game as if they were acted upon by real world forces like gravity, inertia and buoyancy. For you kids that aren't familiar with the terms, Gravity is the force that keeps us down here on earth and makes apples fall down, not up. Inertia is the force that keeps things moving in the same direction even after force isn't being applied to it anymore - like when you stop peddling on a bike and the bike keeps going. Buoyancy is the force that makes lighter matter like air float to the top of heavier matter like water - or helium balloons and air - or your mom and - nevermind.

This game is all about that and how gravity, inertia, and buoyancy interact.

Gameplay
There are four basic puzzle types in this game: Egg Mode, Lunar Mode, Lawn Mode and Underwater Mode. Depending on the level, you are awarded a large or small gold or silver star medal based on how well you do with time, stacking height, or both. After each stage, you can go back and try to improve your medal or move on to the next challenge. There are nine screens of nine puzzles in all, but these 81 puzzles go surprisingly quickly, despite some of them being extremely challenging.

Egg Mode positions an egg atop a set of blocks and directs you to get the egg into a basket. Your medal is based on the amount of time it takes to pull it off. Some of the blocks in these stages are shatterable and you can move the egg by strategically shattering certain blocks. Some of these puzzles REALLY rely on timing to make them work at all. There's one level that's a sort of catapult that you have to time perfectly or your egg will be launched off the screen every time. Another has you shattering blocks in a specific order and time in order to make the egg roll off a tilted board into the basket. Too slow and the egg doesn't roll off. Too fast and the board rolls off and blocks the egg.

Lunar Mode places blocks at the top of the screen that you drag down and place on stationary blocks or pegs. The idea of this mode is usually a timed balancing act where you're trying to stack the blocks up quicky, but often times there are pegs or blocks in the way that add to the challenge. Your medal is determined by your time and also by how high you're able to stack the blocks. Sometimes you can re-position longer blocks vertically to get more height, but this takes time and also skill at making your blocks fall in a controlled way. The level usually ends with balancing a Star on top of your structure for 5 seconds so if it's barely balancing before, you might just topple it with the last piece.

Lawn Mode is somewhat like Lunar mode, but is usally more about balancing several structures of odd shapes together than height. If you can make them all stick together for five seconds, you're set. Lawn Mode also features blocks with special powers like magnetic polarity where magnets of the same color repel one another and of different colors attract. Another special power is the explosive blocks. These sometimes, but not always must be stacked in interesting ways in order to complete the puzzle, though on some occasions I was able to intentionally force an explosion and keep things together, which may or may not have been part of the challenge.

Underwater Mode is also similar to Lawn Mode in that medals are earned by stacking things quickly on a timer, but in this case, some items float and can offset the weight of non-floating blocks. There's that buoyancy I was talking about.

Design
I really liked the overall design of this game. It was modern and cute with well rendered background, but not so cluttered as to interfere with gameplay. Grigory Kireev at Press OK Entertainment really put some love into it.

Love? Hate?
Love!

I really enjoyed playing this game. The only complaints I have are that some of the levels from the free version are repeated in the paid version, which makes the paid version feel a lot shorter. Because it feels shorter, and I know this is going to sound ridiculous, eighty-one levels just doesn't feel like enough. I finished the game in about two days, but I keep going back to perfect the levels I didn't get the big gold star on - still I hunger for more of this game - it's incredibly fun and addictive. Great job Press OK! Now let's have some level updates! :)