Forget-Me-Not

Pac-Man would be so much cooler if he shot lasers from his face. That's the premise behind Forget-Me-Not, a crazy retro style game with randomly generated mazes (called the Neon Dunjun), a wealth of enemies and lots of fruit.

Each level challenges you to pick what could be hundreds of flowers, grab a gold key and reach the exit in one piece while avoiding different creatures, some of which steal the key and run away from the hero.

The entire game's gesture based, as you swipe up, down, left and right to instruct the character to move in those directions. In addition, traveling through doorways let you enter one part of a maze and reappear on the opposite side, a feature you can use to your advantage by unloading several rounds of laser fire to destroy bad guys; that said, this is also a bad way to kill yourself. Thankfully, the key also functions as a shield, deflecting enemy fire as well as your own.

The game's out of control, to put it mildly. There's the obvious Pac-Man influence, but developer Nyarlu Labs took that basic formula and jacked it up considerably. Randomly generated mazes keep you on your toes, while the frantic action of tracking down the key and destroying/evading critters gets the adrenaline flowing. It's such a good game that we'll probably wind up playing after posting this review.

On that note, Forget-Me-Not falls into the same trap as Pac-Man on the iPad in that using the screen to move takes a lot of practice and cannot replace an actual joystick. We also wish it had online leaderboards. That said, it's still a superb effort well worth $1.99, and if Namco Bandai needs ideas on how to reinvent its power-pellet gobbling mascot, the publisher knows where to look.

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later.

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