BoboBua, a game which has been around for a little while for the iPhone has been ported to Android.  The game is physics-based and sees you guiding a meatball to a goal via manipulation of a noodle.  Yes, you read that right, move the meatball to it’s goal using a noodle.  Here’s the description from the Android Market entry:-

Bobobua (pronounced ‘baw-baw-bwah’) is a casual game in the purest definition of the term; a relaxing, rewarding game experience that you play your way! Sit back and unwind with quick play or get swallowed whole by the action-packed story mode.

There are two game modes .  In the first, story mode, you follow a plot which involves our hero the meatball chatting with the love of his life only for her to be cruelly snatched away by someone eating her.  The meatball then goes after her, hurling himself in to the mouth of the person that just consumed his beloved.  The second game mode is action mode which allows you just to get stuck in to some levels and not deal with any of the mushy love story stuff.

The game itself is an Arkanoid/Breakout clone with a slight twist in that the blocks are coming slowly towards you.  The aim is to slingshot the meatball (using the noodle) past, or through the blocks to the exit.   you can angle and swing the noodle using the phone’s accelerometer.  You pull back on the noodle to fire the meatball up at bricks, some of which are destroyed, others are consumed by the meatball, making him stronger.  It’s difficult to describe yet the controls are deceptively simple to grasp.  This game is geared for the casual market and is played at a relaxed pace.

The game looks good, it’s got a pleasant and bright cartoony feel to it, but then I guess you’d need it to be fairly cartoon-like when it’s a game about lovelorn meatballs firing themselves from noodle catapults into the gaping maws of a diner wouldn’t you?  Realism is not the order of the day here.  I found the music a little grating, but that’s easily solved by turning it off from the menu.

Gameplay itself is enjoyable enough.  Casual gamers will find plenty to like in this game.  I did find that the controls were occasionally not as responsive as I’d like, with occasional lag between input and response, but this was a minor issue, the gameplay is relaxed enough that this didn’t cause any frustrations during play.  What did cause a little more frustration though, was the fact that, on my copy at least, I kept getting force closes.  Thankfully, these closes only seemed to occur at the menu screens – It seemed that every second time I started the game up, I’d get as far as the menu and be kicked back to my homescreen.  I never had this happen during actual gameplay.  This is very possibly a unique problem to my install, and, if not, then it’s a glitch from the port that will likely be solved in later updates.

Overall, I’d say this is a pretty solid addition to the Android market.  There’s not a lot to fault in the game other than the aforementioned occasional laggy response.  If you’re looking for a casual game that you can dip in to for short spells on a bus journey or to fill in time here and there, there are certainly a lot worse titles out there you could spend your money on.  However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the developers have stated that the current price, $0.99, will only be valid until February 6th, when it will revert to $2.99.

BoboBua is available on the Andriod market now through to Feb 6th for $0.99.  After Feb 6th the price will revert to $2.99.  There is not trial version of the game at this time.