Do you remember the famous Mad Hatter tea party scene from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland? If yes, then are you up for some odd tea party?

But oh, before we begin, make sure you’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed into a teacup!

Enter the magical adventure of  with this iOS app review.

by Chillingo Ltd. and Cobra Mobile is an app with 40 physics-based puzzles of magical adventures. It revolves around a little boy called Storm who was sent into a dreamy world that has been created by the vivid imagination of his older brother, Cloud. He is set out to explore it while riding a teacup, and pretty much like Alice, he lands in a heap of hallucinogenic trouble.

Utopian Features

• Explore and discover 40 magical levels
• Wonderful, rich, rewarding gameplay with physics based puzzles
• Amazingly detailed high-definition graphics
• Game Center and Crystal enabled with 15 in-game achievements
• Full retina display and multi-tasking support
• One download supports all devices natively and all iOS’s

Guide The Little Chap Through His Journey 

Storm traverses the app’s 40 levels where each stage is stocked with sugar cubes and a well-hidden sticker. Once you delve into the game, you pick up the mantle of Storm by navigating him left and right via arrow controls on the left-hand side of the screen. Meanwhile, you control the teacup’s altitude by using short upward thrusts triggered by the lightning bolt button on the right-hand side of the screen. In other words, tap on the lightning bolt to jump or glide and double tap it if you want to soar higher.

This game offers a pretty standard stuff really. You just have to collect as many sugar cubes as you could and stickers that are sort of a collectible or let’s say your medal. Well, they are arbitrary collectible that’s really not valuable in the real world anyway. Stickers are mostly hidden in a relatively obscure location and you must find it in order to unlock customization. The latter allows you to personalize your avatar and your teacup. Also, you must get some keys to unlock certain areas.

Sugar cubes and stickers aside, the ultimate goal is to help Storm get to the swinging lollipop that acts as your goal at the end of each level. In each stage you’ll encounter dangerous obstacles and enemies that you must avoid such as the crazy looking dark cloud. If you got hit by them, you’ll die. However, the app provides several checkpoints at each level. If you die, you don’t have to literally start from scratch as you’ll be spawned right at your last checkpoint. Not to mention, there are no set number of lives to worry about.

There are a couple of puzzle elements weaved into the game and as you work your way through it, you’ll need to solve some simple physics puzzles. Although you are tiny and all, it comes very handy when you’re trying to dodge giant boxing gloves or avoiding spikes while at the same time, collecting all the sugar cubes. Some of the puzzles range from guiding Storm through a few tricky terrain to utilizing environmental objects to trigger buttons or pull levers. These Physics-based puzzles break the game up and offers a variety that is usually missing in many platformers.

Moving on, if you were able to locate every sugar cube, find the sticker, and successfully make it through a particular level without dying, then you’ll earn 3 different medals. If you’ve had enough of the gameplay, there is also a set of 5 survival levels that can be unlocked throughout the course of the game. In this mode, you basically collect as much sugar as possible to earn a high score. Same goes with the bonus level, the only difference is that you must go through some obstacles.

Spoiler alert! There’s a huge boss fight in the end. Your main goal for this is to destroy his heart. It’s not that easy since he’ll blow you with fire shots, hence you must avoid it.

There’s actually no multiplayer option in the game, but you can brag about your high score through the Game Center, Facebook or Twitter.

Brewing Your Type Of Tea

This app is extraordinarily an easy casual game. It is challenging at some point and makes your brain work with its variety of puzzles infused with the law of Physics along with the right balance of action platform. It has engrossing graphics that are colorful and brilliant, and excellent dreamlike level designs. Overall, elements of the different worlds have a sort of pop-up quality to them. Controls also are fantastic and relatively easy although on some occasion you may find yourself unintentionally whizzing off in the wrong direction. But otherwise the controls always worked well. Gameplay wise, it’s fairly inviting as it offers a lot to replay. The difficulty curve also works well. At the preceding levels, you’re faced with simple trials while you learn the controls, but by the midway point and succeeding stages, things get a bit more challenging. Apparently, the action never ceases,  however it would be great to get a little leeway with some form of a health system.

On another note, given the background story of this game, I think all that’s missing is a compelling plot. I couldn’t help but be intrusive of why Cloud had created this dreamy wonderland for his brother, and why it got suddenly more perverse and vicious as the game went on. Sibling rivalry perhaps? I have no idea but a story as cute and absurd as the game world would have made this app come to life.

I must also commend the beautiful soundtrack although it was the same piece of music repeated in the entire game over and over again. It’s quite frustrating and actually blows your brains out. It would be far better if they have a varied music.

With excellent physics amalgamated with wonderfully dreamy graphics and charming soundtrack; this app makes for an easy recommendation for anyone who gets entertained with unique physics and platform games. My hypothesis though is that it’s really meant for kids and likewise for those people who are kids at heart.

(May Not Be) Everyone’s Cup Of Tea

It’s such a pleasure to guide Storm through his journey in the game. It offers up everything you could possibly want in a great physics-based platformer. It may contain some elements similar to other apps of the same genre, but this one provided its own benchmark. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea but the whole quirky game seems well executed- inventive puzzles, fun environments, remarkable enemies. Surely, it is a terrific game of the imagination that will keep you entertained all the while. All in all, this cutesy app’s definitely worth checking out.

PS: Don’t worry you won’t get any motion sickness in this game with all the spinning component of sorts to the ride in a teacup.

Now go, serve yourself a for $2.99 on the iTunes App Store!

Watch the trailer of the app below:

You may also want to fly high with MiniGlider.