6 / 10
score
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Casual gaming has long been the preserve of small independent software studios, turning a pleasant profit for some with their low development costs, and a sheer fortune for others. Whilst based firmly in the land of browser based Flash games and downloadable PC fodder for so many years, the introduction of the iPhone soon saw them become a hit in the AppStore, once everyone was bored of fart apps anyway.

Continuing its attempts to dominate the iPhone games market, EA Mobile has added one or two of its own casual titles to the fray, with Liqua Pop being their latest attempt to get in on the Bejewelled style puzzle action genre. Coming up with an idea for a casual puzzle game is never as easy as it looks, hence why many try to ape existing products, never proving as successful as the original.

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But by gum EA are certainly not copying the successful nuances that form the likes of Angry Birds, Tetris, Cover Orange, the aforementioned Bejewelled and Peggle. Liqua Pop is an original idea given some very nice polish, the question is can it hold your attention long enough to become that 59p game that conquers the AppStore like only a chosen few before it?


Gameplay


Things start very simply, and don't get much complicated from there on in. A good casual game needs easy to grasp rules, controls anyone with the fattest fingers can master, and something to keep you coming back for more. Liqua Pop involves making bubbles of liquid pop so that a frog can climb a blade of grass to reach a drop of water. Or something like that anyway, I'm not entirely clear exactly what, even after playing it a bit.

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To fulfil the level requirements, which is making the frog progress bar reach 100%, you have to amalgamate at least four bubbles of the same colour so they reach a size where they can pop. At that point a sort of detonation countdown begins which you can reset by double tapping them.

The reason to do this is combo points, with the more you pop at any one time, the more combos you get and the bigger your score. You can also manually burst them at anytime by shaking your phone, not overly harshly either, which is just as well if you suffer from RSI like what I does.

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