Apple Aurora Feint

The jury is still out on whether the iPhone is an effective mobile gaming platform, but there are certainly a few compelling arguments in its favour. Aurora Feint is one of these — a fun and addictive puzzle game. It also borrows elements from role-playing games.

Aurora Feint borrows heavily from games like Bejeweled. The core concept of the game is fairly simple: line up three or more of the same type of block in a row and they will disappear. Keep doing this until the power bar is filled and you will reach the next level.

Apart from the touch screen, which is used to move the blocks around, the game also cleverly utilises the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer. Users can only move blocks sideways, so they must turn the handset on its side or upside-down. This turns the blocks to fit the altered perspective and gives players more movement options.

As players level up, they can acquire new skills and play at a harder skill level. This adds yet another dimension to the game.

Aurora Feint is fun and addictive, but it has several minor flaws. It's a memory hog, quickly consuming the iPhone’s RAM and rendering the game prone to crashes and performance issues. We encountered a low memory warning almost every time we entered the game. Although the game only crashed once, it would often slow enough to be rendered unplayable.

Like Tap Tap Revenge, Aurora Feint is simple, addictive and fun. Although it is memory-intensive, it’s still a fantastic game for the iPhone.