Mini Meteors (£1.99, iPad) is equally frenetic, albeit in a different way. It's more or less a straight copy of the Nintendo DS title Meteos, with coloured blocks rapidly falling into the well. You arrange three or more in a row or column, at which point they abruptly ignite and take off, carrying the blocks above them. If the make-shift rocket is too heavy, it'll stall and fall, although you can give it extra power by rearranging the blocks in mid-flight.
If you're into more sedate fare, grab Slydris (£1.49, Universal) and Drop7 (£1.99, Universal). The former has you re-arranging lengths of horizontal blocks in a well. With each move, more fall from the top, and so you must think ahead and create chains that give you breathing space.
Drop7 demands maths skills along with spatial awareness and planning. Instead of shapes or blocks, you drop numbered discs into the well, and should the number on any disc match how many are in its row or column, it'll explode. That might not sound that straightforward, but Drop7 has the same pickup- and-play brilliance and tough-to-master sneakiness as Tetris, although it certainly gives a work out to a slightly different part of the brain.
Our final two games also take block-stacking away from the purely abstract, although they rely on letters, not numbers. SpellTower (£1.49, Universal) has rows of letters cleared by making words, Boggle-style. Tower Mode is laid back (a static grid and no pressure), but Puzzle Mode adds a new row for every word you create. By the time you get to Rush Mode and its relentless timer, you'll be yelling at the screen, demanding to know why there are so many unusable letters huddled together.
Still, it's good training for Puzzlejuice (£1.49, Universal), which doesn't stray too far from the truth when it states it will "punch your brain in the face". It merges Tetris and SpellTower with Unify's colour-matching - complete rows of squares and match coloured blocks to transform them into letters, which are removed by dragging out words.
Add power ups and you've got a creation that pays homage to Tetris, match games and word games, while merrily ensuring steam will shoot out of your ears at regular intervals. We're a little bit surprised the developer didn't bung some shooting and sports in there for good measure!
