This month we see another entry  into the ‘endless runner’ category, or as The Animal Farm [the developers] describe it, “an addictive run ‘n jump game”. Well first impressions are very pleasing, once loaded you get a taste of the unique artwork which marries hand-drawn style with vector art making it stand out from the crowd of other titles . The controls are simple (as you would expect for this genre) with a simple tap of the screen to get your character to jump to avoid the cute bears, who just want to cuddle you.  If the bears do get hold of you and give you a big squeeze it slows you down and allows the ‘big bad wolf’ (who’s chasing you) to catch-up with you and because he’s hungry he will eat anything in his path including you, so you do to need to keep moving and jumping.

There are a few bonus items, such as the car and jet pack dotted sporadically along your path, which enable you to put some real distance between you and the snarling jaw of the big bad wolf.

Overall Cuddle Bears is a decent enough game and it’s the [developers'] warped humour really that makes this stand out – think Care Bears meets Tim Burton. Otherwise it would be another title striving to survive in a over saturated genre. There are a couple of minor usability issues; an obvious ‘back to menu/home’ button once you’ve been eaten would be nice, ’score to beat’ displayed on screen and the option to disable audio/sfx, but these can be ironed out in the next update. It would also be nice to see some extra developments in game play to give Cuddle Bears longevity, but as most ‘endless runner’ games are your typical casual game what you see is what you get.

Cuddle Bears, v1.0
Developer: Brian Sowers. (12+)
Price: 0.59