Hazel is a budding archaeologist who is trying to stop an evil doctor from using the ruins of an ancient race for his own nefarious purposes. The game she inhabits, Hazel Dazzle, is an action adventure that borrows from the spinning, spherical levels of Super Mario Galaxy, and combines them with more traditional dungeon-crawling sections. Unfortunately, though this marriage of gameplay styles can work, Hazel Dazzle is a shallow experience which is afflicted by some irritating technical issues.

To make Hazel run along the planet's surface, you touch and hold your finger on the screen. She can run all the way around a planetoid provided nothing is in her way. If you run towards a ledge, she will leap off automatically. Run into movable block and Hazel will push it. To attack enemies, you simply tap on their weirdly contorted heads, and Hazel will unleash a series of melee strikes. Occasionally, you'll need to manipulate 3D shapes by using the accelerometer, but these sections suffer from some serious framerate issues - as does most of your adventure.

The story unfolds via dialogue boxes, though the text itself is unenganging and occasionally misspelt. More often than not, these text dumps just interrupt your play. And, when play simply consists of pushing boxes and tapping enemies, it doesn't do much to endear the world to you. Also, while the design of the characters and the environments is colourful and abstract - if a little rough around the edges - none of the areas or enemies are particularly memorable.

The influence that Hazel Dazzle takes from popular games is obvious. Unfortunately, the ropey gameplay and technical flaws add up to a game which falls short of its peers. The framerate stutters, the controls are not as responsive as they should be, and there were a few times where the game straight-out crashed (causing us to have to run through an entire dungeon all over again). Though we appreciate the attempt to build a wacky world with its own distict personality, there's very little dazzle to be found here.