Everybody loves a puzzle game, right? Afterall, it’s nice to have a break from all of the mindless violence associated with the majority of mainstream games these days. The Appstore contains hundreds of puzzle games to give your brain a workout, but how does developer CandyCane’s game called Fling compare to the rest?

Fling consists of thousands of small puzzles where you must “fling”, meaning to flick or push, cute ball-shaped characters called furballs into each other and knock them off the screen. The puzzle is successfully completed when only one furball remains on the screen. To make proceedings slightly harder, the furballs can only be flinged in straight lines, and you are not allowed to bump neighbouring furballs together.

3 game modes are offered in Fling. Free Play allows the casual gamer to solve the puzzles at their own leisurely pace. The game keeps track of which puzzles you fail to solve and allows you to come back to them at any time, helping to avoid the frustration of being stuck on one particular puzzle for too long. In Arcade mode, you are rewarded with time bonuses and points everytime you complete a puzzle. The aim is to crank up your highest possible score before running out of time. As you solve more puzzles, the difficulty level increases which will more than likely have you spending more time on each level; nervously trying to work out the puzzle as you watch the circular timer swiftly running out.

Challenge mode gives you the task of solving a certain amount of puzzles before a time limit runs out. For example, you have 3 puzzles at level 3 difficulty to solve in 2 minutes. The further you progress in challenge mode, the harder tasks you are set, with an example being you have to solve 5 puzzles at level 6 difficulty within 3 minutes. The 3 game modes offer a great variety of gameplay for whatever mood you’re in. You can play Free Play for a relaxing game or choose one of the other two modes if you feel like a challenge and pushing yourself, beating your friends and your highscores and giving your brain a great workout.

If you’re struggling to find the solution on a certain puzzle, you can use a “hint” which provides you with the next correct move to make. To avoid you constantly using hints and cheating your way through the levels, you are limited to the number of hints accessible to you during Arcade and Challenge game modes. Using a hint in Free Play will make the puzzle class as failed, but allows you to see the solution so you can easily complete it at the next attempt.

The game is extremely accessible to all due to hints and a good variety of difficulty levels and therefore the game acts as a terrific pick up and play when you have a spare few minutes to kill. The gameplay reminds me of chess, due to you having to think a considerable number of steps ahead in order to solve the harder puzzles. A lot of trial and error will be needed, with an undo button being available if you take a wrong step. The undo button is a fantastic feature in my opinion as it keeps the momentum of the game flowing nicely and allows you to backtrack quickly instead of having to start a puzzle from the beginning.

Fling’s graphics are beautiful and suit the genre of the game perfectly. The textures in the game are brilliant and you can noticeably see that the furballs are made of fur and the grass which they sit on has grown in different directions. The animations are fun to watch, and you will notice furballs which aren’t in use blinking their eyes which is a nice little touch.

The audio in Fling is bearable and a decent soundtrack, but as with any puzzle game, the music can become annoying when heard over a long period of game time. CandyCane have thought about this and allow you to listen to music from your iPod whilst playing Fling so you can solve puzzles and listen to your favourite tunes simultaneously.

Fling is currently available for a mere £0.59p and I highly recommend picking the game up if have even the slightest of interest in puzzle games. The beautiful graphics and solid gameplay mechanics mould together to make EASILY one of the best puzzlers available on the iPhone. There is a free version to try before you part with your pocket change. You owe it to yourself to at least try the free version! Highly recommended.