As anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows, I'm a sucker for something cute. As such, you can probably imagine how turning down the opportunity to play a colorful game with childlike shapes teddy-bearish characters wasn't even in my vocabulary. But don't let the preschooler vibe fool you -- beneath it's rainbow exterior and sacchrine sweet storyline hides an addictively challenging puzzler that breathes new life into the traditionally routine falling block game.

The premise behind the game is simple. So simple, in fact, that it takes it's queue from an infants toy. You're tasked with fitting certain shaped blocks into certain holes. The challenge? These squares, triangles, stars and circles all have to pass through a number of platforms, and they each rotate before the next block falls. It's your job to rotate these platforms back into place before the block lands on the wrong hole.

The difficulty ramps up pretty quickly as bad guys begin blocking the wholes, butterflies start carrying blocks away, and the speed at which they fall climbs ever so steadily. With a little practice each of these obstacles can be mastered for future levels, but that doesn't mean they get easier. Regardless, frustration never really gets a chance to set in as each level only lasts a few minutes and can usually be beaten in the first few tries. If anything, the folks at SouthPeak Games have found that sweet spot of difficulty that so few games can hit -- challenging enough to keep you interested, but no so hard you'll walk away.

If you want to see how you're doing against other Roogoo players the world over, a fairly basic form of multiplayer is included. It's little more than a race to see who can complete a level fast enough, but giving the losing player a chance to throw bad guys into the mix certainly spices things up a bit. It's a shame that it suffers from the same multiplayer issues a lot of smaller Live Arcade titles suffer from -- that there's nobody online to play with. I waited no less than 40 minutes to get an online game going for the purposes of this review, albeit I wasn't playing at peek hours. Regardless, if you can find a friend who like Roogoo as much as you do, you can enjoy a solid multiplayer session either online or in local play anytime you like.

As a reviewer, it feels somewhat sketchy to write a review without weighing the good and bad -- but honestly, there's no real negative side to this one. Even if you're not a fan of puzzle games, this is enough of a break from the standard to be worth at least checking out. Sure the story's a little thin -- but asides from that? Smooth sailing. Roogoo is available for Xbox Live Arcade and PC.

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