Sometimes, simple is good. Take Tetris for example, a simple yet effective game that captured the imagination of literally millions of people during the 1980s. Many games have attempted to capture the essence of this pioneering Russian masterpiece over the years, but the majority have failed. So with this in mind, can After Shock succeed where so many other pick-up-and-play games have failed?

For starters, this is definitely a pick-up-and-play type of game, which is certainly a good start. After only a few seconds of playing After Shock it’s startlingly obvious what you have to do: wait for the flying shapes to get near one another, tap the screen to make a little explosion and attempt to blow up as many as you can with your finger-detonated bomb.

In terms of looks, After Shock is sheer arcade-chic the whole way, complete with neon blue, yellow and green colouring, which creates a quintessentially eighties-like gaming experience reminiscent of Pac-Man, Asteroids, and Moon Patrol. 

As we said, the game play itself is super simple, so much so, a toddler could probably grasp it within minutes. Nevertheless, After Shock is a surprisingly fun game to play, and we found ourselves completely consumed by it during testing - granted, this only lasted about 10 minutes, but we were certainly engrossed neverthless.

The game takes place inside a single area, which we thought looked like a cheesy 80s science-documentary visual recreation of quantum space - you’ll understand what we’re getting at when you see it. Whilst inside this quantum world, your mission is to blow up as many floating shapes as you can.

Sound simple? Well, it is. But, there is also a knack to doing it well, and while getting this knack doesn’t take too long at all, it is infinitely satisfying, for some reason, to watch tens upon tens of the little shapes explode thanks to a well placed explosion on your part.

The standard - Classic - game mode of After Shock spans 12 levels and takes you about five minutes to complete - no, we're not joking, it's that easy!

As you progress through each level, the number of shapes you have to destroy increases. For example, in level one you have just a single shape to annihilate, but by level 12 this increases to 54. Consequently, While this does sound like quite a jump in numbers, it’s really not, and we found that as the number increased it actually became easier...

In the version we tested, which costs $0.99 there are two games available: Classic and Timed. In Timed, you have three minutes to get as far as you can, and unfortunately that’s about it - so not much to talk about there then.

To play the additional three games you will have to upgrade, for a “small fee” - although why anyone would pay anymore than $0.99 for the privilege of three extra games, which seemed remarkably similar to the Classic mode, is beyond us! 

All in all, this is a seriously fun and addictive game and definitely one you’ll come back to. That said, it is more of a novelty game than a keeper, which is largely due to it being far too easy.

Basically, to put it bluntly, you’d want a bit more of a challenge for your $0.99 than After Shock can offer.