At first glance Oddblob, by Astraware, might look like just another puzzle game – but not taking a closer look would be a disservice to what I have found to be a truly unique game experience.

Yes, at its core OddBlob is a puzzle game.  The object of the game, which has 4 difficulty levels and 2 different modes of play, involves moving from one end of the screen to another by jumping from one tile to another. As you do so, you land on squares that move you, bounce you, or block you from moving onward.  If that weren’t enough, ,many of the blocks that you jump on will disappear behind you or, if you are playing in Panic mode, right out from under you if you delay too long. By jumping/bouncing from one end of the screen to the other (which is constantly being generated in front of you) you gain extra points by landing on squares that contain different fruit or, better yet, a slice of cake.  When landing on one of these you have the chance to gain even more points by playing a mini-game.  Failure to land on solid blocks will drop you into the mud and use up one of three available lives.

While all this is going on you are accompanied by either a catchy sound track or a song of your choice from your iPod library – but what is absolutely amazing to me is the graphics. Fans of “Claymation” (clay animation) will absolutely love this game as even the title screens are made using this technique.  While I can easily imagine the hard work and maybe even some frustrations that must accompany the efforts involved, it must have also been a lot of fun to, with the use of wire frames, use clay to shape every position of OddBlob as well as the game blocks.  This evolves great deal of work however, because it also requires the designers to photograph each of the clay figures from every angle before then running everything through a computer to generate the final product.

If all that weren’t enough, the game utilizes Open Feint so that, if you choose to, you can keep track of leader boards for each of the two game modes.  While the casual puzzle player might think that leader boards might be overkill based on my fun description of the game, let me set that straight.  The difficulty levels that I mentioned before are simply a starting point for you.  As the game progresses it rapidly becomes more and more difficult until all your three lives are used up.

OddBlog is currently on sale for an introductory offer of $0.99 in the iTunes store.  I am not sure how long it will be on sale but I would advise fans of puzzle games and clay animation as well to take advantage of the sale while it exists.