One thing that's been great about the success of the App Store has been all the simple yet addictive high score arcade titles that developers have been experimenting with. For a gamer in his 30s like myself, it reflects a simpler time when these games ruled the arcades, and had players vying for position on those hallowed leaderboards. Super Tiny Leap takes this idea, an old school aesthetic, and turns it towards the vertical climbing genre that Doodle Jump popularized all those years ago. It might not exactly pull off its intentions, but that might have more to do with the patience of the player learning the game itself. We shall see.

The game is played via one touch. Your little pixelated buddy is looking to hop into the air, and by tapping the screen you place a jumping block to aid him in his quest to reach new heights. If he hits the center, the block will propel him upward, but if he glances the sides, he will wall jump towards the opposite direction, giving you an opportunity to place a block in a better position. It's this block placement that dictates the pleasure or frustration you'll have with this title. The tapping is not exact, but it's close enough for you to learn to compensate, and given that you only have a finite number of blocks (collecting more in your travels, but they do get scarcer and scarcer), you can see how a block placed not exactly where you wanted it to can throw a wrench in your plans... and this only gets worse when the electric orbs appear that will fry you upon a touch.

And if getting the hang of one mode wasn't intriguing or maddening enough, there are two other modes, Binary, and Xtrem. Binary places you in the care of looking after two robots at the same time (keeping both alive), and Xtrem mode is basically just the normal mode on steroids. It's sort of reminiscent of the modes in Super Hexagon, where after having a play of a more difficult game, loading up the normal mode surprises the player as their skills have suddenly improved. Perhaps not by a large margin, but enough to keep the challenge fires lit in the player's belly.

So can Super Tiny Leap be recommended? Well if you like your games simple and full of challenge, especially if you like chasing high scores, this title will certainly keep you busy. Others may find the learning curve too frustrating, but since the game's normal mode is free, there's no risk in seeing whether or not a purchase is something worthwhile.