Ed: Yo Nandrew, where's that ShellBlast review you promised me? You're already a day late.

Me: Ah, er, bad news. I haven't written it yet. I've been banging my head against this level 30 nuke defusal for most of the afternoon, and as far as I know I've still got oxidation and time-bombs to unlock.

Ed: What? Put the damn game down and get on with your writeup already!

Me: I'll start it as soon as possible, I promise. I just wanna clear these next few levels first ...

Ed: Grrrr ...

Ed: (starts ticking)

Me: OHSHI-

Me: (throws a chaff grenade at Ed, defuses him, saves the day and progresses to the next level)

The short version: ShellBlast is a bomb defusal game which actually makes you feel like you're defusing bombs. This is awesome.

The long version is pretty much the same — just with more words, details and dev analysis. I'm going to say this up front: get your hands on ShellBlast right now. It's only US$4.95 and will rock your socks off. If you want to hear some good reasons for getting it instead of trusting me on blind faith, read on below.

ShellBlast is a puzzle game that's best described as grabbing the raw appeal of classics such as Sudoku and Minesweeper, slapping on a timer, giving you a lot of angry colours and badass rock music to go with it and explaining to you in no uncertain terms that if you don't solve the puzzle properly, everything will blow up. It's one of those rare games which offers the player a perfect balance of intriguing gameplay, quick thinking and a stunning atmosphere.

The aim of any bomb defusal situation is to hunt down and correctly mark a bunch of "pistons" in the bomb before the timer runs out. Your primary tool in deducing their location is a crosshair that detects the number of pistons in a given row or column, allowing the player to logically deduce where each piston is by using several readouts from various positions on the playing field and marking each grid block with either a (!) for pistons or (x) for known duds.

This in itself is a pretty cool concept, but the true charm of the game is the variety of situations it throws you into. Tools such as chaff grenades (used to reveal individual piston tiles) and different bomb types (including one which forbids you from making marks on the board at all) constantly put you to the test: just when you think you've mastered the game, it throws a new and delightful challenge your way, punctuated by the occasional "boss stage" nuclear bomb which often takes up half the screen and requires every precious second to solve properly.

Because I like to waffle about dev stuff, I'm going to leave behind the basic game description now and use the next section to rattle off what I think causes this game to really hit the nail on the head.