Flowers aren't just pretty to look at. As well as contributing an important role in our ecosystem, they perform a hundred and one different other functions. Or at least three. You can put them in your hair and pretend you're from San Francisco. And you can use them to tell if a person likes butter by holding them up to their throat (though perhaps looking at what they spread on their toast is a more accurate method). They can also be used as the centrepiece of an Xbox Indie game, which is the case here.

If we told you Breeze was a game that blows which has just one fan, you might think we didn't enjoy it much. In fact, the opposite is true. It has just the one fan not because it's unpopular, but simply due to the fact that this is what the player uses to blow a small flower through sixty levels, collecting orbs of sunlight and avoiding a multitude of hazards. It's one of those games where the controls are very simple, yet mastering this test of on-screen dexterity is definitely not a straightforward matter.

The fan is moved with the left analogue stick, and you turn it on to blow air by holding the right trigger. That's all there is to it, although contact with anything - spikes, platforms, trees, flowers or background objects - means instant death. Contact with the fan leads to a mess of shredded petals and a level restart, too (unless you're playing on easy mode, which makes the fan ethereal).

Directing the flower is a satisfyingly intuitive process. We quickly developed the knack of feathering the right trigger, using pulsed and slight gusts to keep the flower up in the air and floating along. Blow too hard, and you'll find the flower gets out of control rather quickly, and you're bound to bump into something.

It's testament to just how instinctive the controls are that after a while, we almost felt like we were telepathically guiding our petalled pal. Which was just as well, because Breeze demands pin-point precision at times, challenging the player with some very narrow gaps to negotiate. It pays to take some time, move slowly, and be patient in tight corners.

But not too much time. The other twist to Breeze is that the levels are played against a set time limit. On some maps the timer can be quite demanding, and treading the fine line between moving quickly enough and not being overly careless is quite the tight-rope act. Fortunately, the level design and difficulty curve is pretty well pitched, and even when matters start to get tougher half way through, you never feel that the game is impossibly stacked against you.

What's also impressive about Breeze's sixty levels is that they're pretty diverse in nature. Some are lengthy affairs snaking through multiple wind tunnels, while others are tiny such as the ski jump. In the latter, the player must blast the flower as fast as they can down a channel, and then guide it around the sharp curve that represents the end of the ski ramp with a very deft and quick manoeuvre. One of our favourites was the level set on a big wooden clock face, with both the hour hand and the much faster moving minute hand to dodge around while grabbing those precious pieces of sunlight.

New elements are constantly introduced, which ensures a further healthy dose of variety as you progress through the campaign. Objects such as switches are added, or dripping dew to dodge, then there are maze levels, a fire which belches smoke making visibility difficult, as well as the expected stuff like changing gravity (or indeed reversing it, which is horribly disorientating).

Only occasionally does Breeze flirt with frustration - there were two levels which we got stuck on for more than half an hour - but even then, we felt compelled to keep trying again and again to beat them. One slight bugbear is that when a sun orb is collected, the flower glows brightly, which is a nice effect but can obscure your vision for a moment, and in a claustrophobic corner that can be fatal (and rather annoying).

Ideally, we'd also have liked to see an online leaderboard for the fastest level completion times. However, Null City has provided its own best times, so the challenge is to beat the developer. That's fair enough, as they're impressive records which will probably take a long time to outdo: we certainly didn't manage to conquer any of them during the review period, though we came within two tenths of a second on one map.

Verdict
Breeze is a well balanced game with a highly intuitive control system and a smooth learning curve. Granted, it's aimed more at the patient gamer, though it still retains a rush factor in that you're always up against the clock. With sixty levels that start to get quite challenging in the second half of the game, Breeze will float your flower for many an hour, and at two quid it's a steal in anyone's book.

Company: Null City

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