There are lot of reasons developers might choose to put a game on mobiles, and plenty of them have nothing to do with the unique interface presented by the touch screen. Most of us have learned to deal with virtual buttons and such just fine, but it’s always nice when a developer clearly designs their game around the hardware’s natural input methods in an intuitive way. Splot ($0.99), a new platformer from the developers behind the Trine games, benefits greatly from its easy-to-understand control setup. Its controls work very well, and that should theoretically open the developer up to more challenging level designs, an element I think most platform fans can agree on. Unfortunately, Splot doesn’t quite go as far as I’d like it in that regard, but it still ends up being a fun, content-rich game that will keep you busy for at least a few hours.

You play as Splot, a blobby little blue alien guy with one eye. Your goal in each of the game’s 56 levels is to reach the goal before the Hungry Blob King does. The path to the goal is littered with baby birds, and if you don’t collect them before the Blob King gets to them, he’ll eat them. That’s also why you’re racing to the goal, actually, as there’s a whole bunch of baby birds waiting at the end, and if you don’t get there first, the King will make a 20-piece nugget box out of them. If you get there just behind him, you can actually yank his meal right out of his mouth. I’m honestly not sure where this alien Splot gets off, barging in on someone else’s planet and trying to disrupt their natural food chain. Hasn’t he ever heard of the prime directive? Well, whatever his reasons may be, we have to help this roguish fellow save the birds from a fate worse than barbecue sauce.

Splot, like many an iOS hero before him, moves around by bouncing. He doesn’t auto-bounce like Bean or Mr. Splatform, though, and will anchor himself pretty firmly to the ground if you don’t touch anything. Tapping either side of the screen will cause him to bounce once in that direction. You’re able to slightly adjust the distance of the jump by tapping in mid-air, as well. Splot likes to stick to walls, and if you tap and hold on the side of the screen corresponding with the direction of the wall, he’ll slide down a bit faster. You’ll also occasionally need to take a swim, which is done simply by holding in the direction you want Splot to move in. That’s basically everything you need to worry about. Using these few simple tricks, you can move throughout the levels pretty swiftly. You might need to hit the odd switch or jump off a trampoline-like platform, but most of the time, you simply to need to up and over obstacles as quickly as possible without getting killed by any lethal hazards on the way.

The levels are spread across seven different worlds, each with their own theme. You’ll encounter largely the same types of obstacles from world to world, but the visual and audio change-up helps keep things fresh. While there are enemies that will get in your way and hazards that can kill Splot, your biggest challenge is always going to be getting to the goal ahead of King Blob. Most of the advanced levels rely on making that route as circuitous as possible, sometimes requiring you to bounce off an enemy correctly to reach the smoothest path. Touching an enemy will kill them, so you have to get it right the first time on those stages. Each level takes a minute or so at most to clear, so to avoid having a game that runs too short, the developers have given you lots of incentives to replay each stage multiple times.

First off, there are three difficulty levels, and each level you go up, the King Blob gets faster and more clever in his pathfinding. Certain blocked off obstacles are also opened up, creating a slightly more challenging stage, but once again, the race is the main thing to focus on. Each stage on each difficulty level also has an unlockable skin for Splot that you can open up by collecting four puzzle pieces. The pieces are awarded randomly with stars when you clear a stage, and the stars are awarded based on how many baby birds you save. You’ll have to replay each stage at least two times, perhaps more, to earn all the skins. There are also a ton of Game Center achievements to unlock, covering all kinds of statistics. Best of all, earning them gives you an in-game reward of experience points. Leveling up allows you to unlock and upgrade a variety of bonus abilities that will give you passive benefits during play. If you’re dedicated to unlocking all of the game’s content, you’re looking at a few hours of play at least, and if you’re chasing down all the achievements, you should probably plan for a good bit more than that.

The graphics are vibrant and the animation is quite good, giving the game a nice, clean look. You also get a good variety of music, with a different track for each world. I found the first world’s track to be a bit obnoxious, but later tunes were pretty good, making decent use of the world theme as inspiration. The game teaches you to play as you go, which is something I approve of, but it’s perhaps not as clear as it needs to be about certain things like swimming or wall-sliding. It’s easy enough to figure out on your own, but you’ll probably lose valuable time the first time you run through stages that require those techniques. I love the wealth of unlockables and the way the game’s achievements are designed. I wish the game had a bit more teeth in the higher difficulties beyond the shortened time limit, and the lack of leaderboards to track your times on each level is a tragic omission. The game doesn’t include any IAPs either, so what you see is what you get.

There’s a certain momentum to Splot‘s gameplay that owes a great deal to its intuitive controls and the necessity to keep moving at all times. It’s one of those games where you can pick it up meaning to play just one level and end up playing a bunch, just because it makes it so easy to keep going. It ends up being a bit toothless in the long run, and its replay value relies heavily on you valuing extra skins enough to repeat stages you’ve already been to. It’s very possible you’ll tire of Splot before you exhaust the many carrots it dangles in front of you. This feels like a game primed for time attacking, but there are no systems in place to support that kind of long-term mastery. At the very minimum, though, you’ll get a couple of hours of fun out of it, and if you get into its meta-goals, you might find quite a bit more.