Four months. Four months our shiny iPad (although not as shiny as the rumoured iPad 2 about to be unveiled next week, we’d wager – Ed) has been laying about the office, begging to be picked up and loved just a little bit more. Sure, we’ve downloaded all the big hitters – Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, GTA: Chinatown Wars, Infinity Blade – but any iOS gamer worth their salt has already played those to death anyway, so you don’t need us to tell you about their merits. No, our first iOS review had to be about something obscure, something homespun that inspired us enough to put down the controller for a moment and use our greasy fingers on instead. That game is Particula, developed by Dmitriy Kuzmenko.

When I was in school, one of my ’special talents’ was the ability to recite the periodic table. I could go from element 1 to 105, naming each in turn, flawlessly. I couldn’t tell you why I’d decided to memorise this, or overstate how much grief it afforded me from snickering schoolfriends. But it tied in with a fascination for the different groups of elements – the noble gases and the alkali metals and so on – and the transfer of electrons between them. Such extensive knowledge, however, helps in absolutely no way with the playing of Particula, a physics-based puzzler that is loosely based on protons and electrons. Ah well, it really was a waste of time then.

The premise of the game is initially simple, but gathers in complexity rather quickly. Players must drag their finger from an active ’source’ – a red circle emitting a rather pretty sunburst effect – to send an atom spinning across the playfield into a corresponding inactive source. To enhance the score for a particular level, players can also collect the 3 stars in-between the two sources. There are no limit to amount of atoms which can be emitted, which lends the game a trial-and error feel, particularly as the previous trajectory is still displayed on-screen, allowing the player to fine-tune his shot incrementally. Black rings destroy emitted atoms, and must be avoided. With me so far? Good. Here comes the complicated bit. Each of these ’sources’ is emblazoned with a positive (+) or negative (-) symbol, a play mechanic that becomes important when magnets are introduced. These magnets (picked out in a sombre grey) are also positive or negative, and will repel or attract atoms near them based on their polarity. Factor in the fact that these can be player-positioned, and that there are soon multiple ’sources’, and even these are subdivided into different colours, and it soon becomes clear that this is not an easy game. I confess to being stumped as early as the 5th level (of which there are 30, split into 3 ‘episodes’).

“Help.”

But such is the immediacy of the restart, and the strangely hypnotic path of your atoms, that the difficulty curve isn’t an issue. The game’s pared-down aesthetic, the plinky-plonky chilled-out soundtrack and the relaxing trial-and-error gameplay make for an altogether blissful experience. The mechanics are potentially over-egged, particularly when you consider that some of the game spaces are so large that you have to pinch to zoom out from, which is a shame as the core idea is strong. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but at 59p, this will certainly entertain most for a few hours on a relaxed Sunday evening. Physics-based puzzlers are in vogue at the moment, with the monstrous success of breakout hits Angry Birds and Cut The Rope leading the genre, and whilst Particula doesn’t have the longevity or polish of either of those titles, it’s still a worthwhile slice of mobile gaming. You won’t even need extensive knowledge of the periodic table to enjoy it either. Lucky you.