I vaguely remember playing with these things when I was young. I find it hard to believe anyone else does. They were plastic cased you filled with water and they have pegs and plastic rings. You pressed one or two buttons to get the rings on to the pegs.

Well now you can do it all on your iPhone with iWaterFlow from Dancing Dots and BulkyPix. This time around you don’t need to monkey with filling the game with tap water though.

There are four different versions of the game with one or two pegs on which to catch the rings. Each can be played in three different modes:

• Rush - Catch all the rings as fast as you can
• Classic - Play with no time limits, goals or points
• Time Attack - Catch as many as you can in three minutes

For an iPhone game the actual game graphics are shoddy with the pegs and rings looking jagged but the background images are nice. It’s certainly not pushing the iPhone’s graphics processing power that’s for sure. On the sound side of things you’ve got water noises and that’s about it. There’s some basic music on the menu that reminds me of the old 8-bit days (when these things were first popular) but really, it’s rather quiet. NOt even any background music while playing.

Now the whole point of the game is to put those annoying little rings on those annoying little pegs. However, there are serious collision physics problems in the game where you can shake a ring through a peg or get one lodged between the ’front window’ and the peg and never dislodge it. Ergo if you are playing in time attack or rush mode you might as well call it a day and restart the game. It’s bloody frustrating when you shake a ring through a peg to say the least as you then need to capture it again. And by through a peg I mean THROUGH as if the peg were suddenly touched by Kitty Pryde of the X-Men and became intangible (pop culture reference #1 today).

Additionally, getting the rings lined up so they fall onto the pegs is a lesson in humility and patience. If you have neither of these I would suggest you stay away from this game or you might launch your iPhone across the room in anger. Really it they did put some effort into making the game realistic but the physics fail on so many things and the rings often clump together like they are magnetic or covered in glue that it’s nearly impossible to right them from time to time.

Overall this game is lacking in several aspects. Not only are the physics shoddy but the graphics are as well. The sound is also not up to snuff. At first I was intrigued by the game and the water physics seemed cool. But over time the flaws came out of hiding and I realized that it’s just a way to waste time, not a way to be entertained.