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Satellina (iOS/Android) app review

We review Satellina, a fast-paced iPhone/iPad/Android mobile game that blends arcade-style gameplay with puzzle smarts and serious replayability.

Although Satellina appears at first glance to be a fast-paced arcade game, it’s actually more of a puzzle game at heart. The concept is simple: drag the on-screen cursor around, popping the green bubbles while avoiding the yellow and red. Succesfully pop all of them and the yellows turn green, while the reds turn yellow, and the process repeats until no more bubbles.

Of course, the bubbles are spinning around madly in overlapping patterns, just to make things a wee bit tricky. And this is where the puzzle aspect comes in. While it’s perfectly possible to complete each level piecemeal, hitting one or two bubbles at a time whenever the opportunity arises, the true joy of Satellina is finding the fastest, most efficient way to get the job done. There’s almost always a trick, a pattern of your own to clear the level as quickly as possible. Finding that pattern might take a little bit of trial and error, but a generous helping of smarts will stand you in good stead too – as well as nippy reactions.

As an added incentive to replay old levels, Satellina tracks your times and prompts you to beat them, which lends the game a seriously addictive quality as you battle to better your previous efforts. As a result, you can either play for five minutes while waiting for your bus, or until you glance at the clock and realise that it’s 2am and you’ve been at it for well over an hour.

Playing on one of the older, dinkier iPhones is a bit of a challenge thanks to the precise actions involved, so we’d recommend Satellina only if you have an iPhone 6/6 Plus or an iPad. Thankfully you can drag your finger around any part of the screen to move the cursor – you don’t have to actually be touching the cursor itself, and therefore blocking your view of the action.

If you’re after a smart, arcade-style mobile game that will test your brains as well as your reactions, Satellina is a good bet.

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