Yet It Moves

Every so often a game comes along that seems obvious and unique, all at the same time.

These would appear to be contrary matters, as an obvious game idea, like the one that Yet It Moves revolves around (pun intended, kinda), surely ought to be out there already, right?

Well, it's out there now, in the shape of a game that kicks off as a decent platformer and suddenly becomes a cerebral, dexterous enigma.

Yet It Moves is clearly designed to have a very recognisable personality. That's obvious from the first moment, when you see the Paddington Bear-esque paper cutout visuals (the original animation, not the current CGI blockbuster).

The rocks around you have been made collage-fashion from pieces of carefully torn paper, and your main character could have been lifted straight from a flipbook doodle in a school textbook.

This is very much to the game's credit, as it looks as good as it performs. Running and stumbling over these makeshift environments is a lot of fun, and the aesthetic gives Yet It Moves the iconic visage it was clearly chasing.

Then things change. Not the graphics, but the gameplay. Drastically. You've just learned to run and jump when you suddenly discover that you can rotate the world around you.

Holding a finger on the screen and sliding it freezes your cutout character in position, even if he's in mid-air, and everything else can be spun around as you see fit.

This is used to help you navigate the beautiful 2D levels and make for the exit. So a sheer wall blocking your way can simply be turned so it's now the floor you're stood on, and narrow passages become passable chimneys if you simply line them up correctly.

You might have complete control over the direction of the world, but gravity and inertia aren't you're playthings. So should you spin things around and leave your paper pal plummeting, you can't just wait until he's an inch off the ground and then rotate the floor for a soft landing.

Whatever momentum he's built up while falling through the air, in any direction, is conserved, and while it can be safely reduced if you can slide him down a gradually levelling out slope, he's going to splat if you suddenly put rock beneath his fragile feet.

Quite frankly, it's a brilliant mechanic. Switching to walk along the ceiling is easy, but getting there without falling to your death, or dropping some of the loose rocks on your own head is where the brilliantly cerebral element of Yet It Moves is found, and is the camouflaged purpose of the entire game.

There's much more to the game, thanks to its many levels and different worlds, but any experienced smartphone gamer will be immediately sold on this superb twist on physics gameplay. Yet It Moves could be the first sleeper hit of 2015.