Review: Sensitive 5800

Score:
74%

Author: Jamie Fuller

Version Reviewed: 1.00

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Sensitive might be an unusual name, but this puzzling tile game from Jamie Fuller is a great waste of time for the more cerebral game player. Spanning 50 levels, your goal is to roll your marble around a 2-d world (viewed from above), clearing away the dangerous fragile tiles by, errr, rolling on to them and then rolling off again before they collapse and pull you down into oblivion. Well that's as safe as a package delivered to a coyote from Acme.

But Sensitive itself makes it fun – which is what a game should do. Because the tiles essentially vanish once you step on them, you'll need to do some planning to make sure you can visit all the tiles on your way to the exit. Miss one tile and you'll need to restart the level. This provides a nice cerebral challenge before you head out into the game-play area.

And just like games of old, there are special tiles out there to make things a little bit more interesting. Some tiles need to be crossed twice for them to vanish, some of them will only allow you to cross them in a certain direction and others act as teleporting spots, so you jump around the playfield.

 

Moving around the game grid is well thought out for touchscreen phones such as the 5800; you tap to the left or right, above or below your ball to move it in the required direction. Neither does that tap need to be right next to your ball, it can be at the far edge of the screen, and thus the tiles are not obscured by your big lumbering hands with whatever you are using for a pointer. It might be an idea to add in support for keypads and direction controls so other handsets can enjoy the game (although in the credits Fuller points out that he simply has a habit of writing this game for whatever computer/gadget he owns at the time).

You'll be tapping for a while on this one, as he has provided 50 levels of puzzling action for us all to work through on a nice learning curve. It's great to dip in and out of, but perhaps not perfect for a longer gaming session – but that's fine - having a few short sharp games on your smartphone that work when you need to queue up somewhere, or to while time away on a bus, should be a natural choice.

With Sensitive being freeware, it is a natural choice to pop onto your smartphone, assuming you have a touchscreen. I'd like to see it branch out to be available for the rest of the S60 portfolio, but for now it typifies what I like in smartphone games. It's smooth, it does what it advertises and it's fun.

-- Ewan Spence, Sept 2009.

Reviewed by Ewan Spence at 9:25 UTC, September 14th 2009