Exit DS

The game gets better as it goes on - which seems odd considering there's no story development or anything like that. No, it's getting better because there are less stairs. I've managed to get used to most of the game's ass-backwards controls, but... well, if this were an action game, the final boss would probably be a stairwell.

With that, I'm able to better appreciate the quality of the game's puzzles, which is, well, pretty alright. Some of them are real brain-benders, but unfortunately, many are made unnecessarily frustrating by the complexity of the game's movement parameters. How many grid blocks can Mr. Esc fall down before he breaks his legs? How much weight can you fit on an elevator before it stops working? How far can a dog jump - and why the hell can he jump across but not down? The exact values of these and other game variables are crucial to your success, as you'll need to stress their limits regularly, and getting it wrong frequently means killing a survivor or getting stuck in an un-winnable spot.

There is some fun here, and the format of having several dozen bite-sized stages is appealing for puzzling on the go. But the basic flaws in the game's mechanical design are a real bother.

Progress: Stage 3-8