Cut the Rope Review

Cut the Rope is a charming, challenging, and fun puzzle game that nearly anyone can enjoy.

Cut the Rope is a downright adorable action puzzle-physics game. It's also fresh, challenging, gorgeous, and highly entertaining. It has simple rules, intuitive controls, and can be played in short bursts or blitzed through in a marathon gaming session. In short, it's exactly the type of game you want to play on your iPhone.

Cut the Rope can be enjoyed for a few minutes at a time, or for much longer.
Cut the Rope can be enjoyed for a few minutes at a time, or for much longer.

The goal in each level is to drop a piece of candy--suspended by a series of ropes--into the mouth of a cuddly little monster named Om Nom that is located somewhere on the screen. To do that, you have to cut the ropes in a way that makes the candy swing, jump, or fall into the little guy's mouth. Along the way, you also have to try to pick up all the star items in each level.

But this is a puzzle game, so you have to put on your thinking cap to figure out which ropes to cut and in what order. To make things more complicated, you also encounter movable pegs; spikes; electricity; bubbles that make the candy float; and whoopee cushions, which send puffs of air that can blow the candy in different directions. Since Cut the Rope launched, new level packs have added gravity puzzles and broken-candy pieces to the game.

Each level is cleverly designed to make delivering the candy to the monster difficult but not impossible. Solving the levels requires precise timing and delicate precision. As you progress through the game's 150 levels (with more on the way), the difficulty mounts steadily, which results in some real head-scratchers toward the end. Both Crystal and Game Center provide leaderboards and achievements, giving the game a healthy amount of replay value.

Unfortunately, Cut the Rope does have some control issues. For instance, once sliding pegs are introduced, the game occasionally thinks you're trying to move a peg when you mean to cut a rope, or vice versa. This can get you into trouble in some levels.

Grabbing candy is what it's all about in Cut the Rope.
Grabbing candy is what it's all about in Cut the Rope.

Cut the Rope is a game that nearly everyone will enjoy. It offers all the charm, variety, and smart level design you could hope for from a puzzle game while being simple enough to be accessible to anybody. It's right up there among the best casual games in the App Store.

This review was provided by GameSpot mobile content partner SlideToPlay.com.

The Good

  • Unique gameplay
  • Serious charm
  • Stays fresh throughout
  • Offers a good amount of challenge

The Bad

  • Some control issues

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