Island Hop

If you’re a fan of puzzle and logic games then it’s time to download Island Hop as you’ll definitely be challenged.

The object of the game is to help your happy fluffy white bunny get to his hole. You have nine islands with half a bridge attached to each (these match up to the nine numbers on your keypad), and by pressing the keys you’ll rotate the island (and its bridge). The idea being, your bunny will hop along in a certain direction and you have to move the bridge on both the island your bunny’s on and the island your character’s moving towards (so that both halves of the bridge match up) and then change the direction of the island and its bridge so the bunny will go on that path.

This is quite a simple task in some respects, but should not be underestimated. To make this even more of a challenge, you have nasty monsters who try to hunt down your bunny rabbit and will cause you to try and manoeuvre your rabbit around the monster (who roams around at random) as well as try to get the rabbit safely to its hole as quick as possible.

The great thing about this game is that you can never rest on your laurels. As your skill progresses so do the challenges provided by the game, either by introducing more rabbits (which take it in turns to move), or by introducing more monsters or moving the hole around the islands.

As you can probably start to imagine, what started out as a fairly leisurely sequence of key presses, will soon turn out to be a frantic bashing of the number pad either trying to speed your bunny along (in vain) or in frustration as you end up either getting bashed up by the monster or falling into the water – both of which end the game and cause you to restart that level.

Fortunately there’s no limit as to the attempts you take on playing each level – which is just as well from my experience! What started out to be a simple bit of fun does very rapidly become an addictive classic and one which you’ll find hard to put down once you’ve got stuck in.

The graphics are simple yet clear, the controls are simple and effective – which all adds up to make this simply one of the greatest surprises to date for me to have the pleasure of playing. Definitely a double thumbs up from me!

Rating 85%

Positives

Highly addictive

Good graphics

Effective controls

Challenging but not impossible (although it won’t always feel like that at times)

Negatives

A tad repetitive

The sounds could be a bit better

Frustrating at times and could deter some