Enjoy puzzle games and dangerous, creepy music? You may enjoy Adam’s Trouble.

Adam’s Trouble by Mlabemantras is a puzzle adventure game with three levels  in the Lite version to solve. You play as – or rather play with – Adam: a strange, amorphous, reddish beige creature with bulging eyes, crude red fish lips, a thin tail extending from his bottom, and green pustules on his face (or is it his body?). His character artwork, and the dessicated, dank sewer with rusting industrial workings wouldn’t look out of place in a Tim Burton film, or in a children’s novel illustrated by Lane Smith (read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales). The atmosphere of the game is one of creepy foulness, with strangely blue, relatively healthy looking water undulating on the sewer bottom meant to be your toxic nemesis and source of imminent death, and dangerous, tremulous music speaking of impending doom serving as the backdrop to your thoughts.

To save Adam – and he does look frightened out of his wits, as much as an amorphous orange blob can have wits – you must tug on his tail, stretching it to seemingly painful proportions, causing him to look down, his eyes bugging out, and then release it, causing such momentum as to fling him in a trajectory across screen to hopefully land on a plank above the toxic waters. Actually, you may find yourself out of wits, too, because you’ll soon find that tugging on Adam’s tail and sending him on a trajectory of faith is no small feat. In fact, it’s outrageously frustrating.

In each level, you must plop Adam down on planks protruding from the sewer walls, in the hopes of reaching the valve that, once turned, will open the hatch to escape. Of course, caveats being what they are, once you turn that valve, you must take Adam on flying leaps of carefully calculated pulls and tugs, so he may reach the hatch and escape before the rising toxic waters engulf him. And watch out, those murky waters rise fast. If Adam falls into his watery demise – which he undoubtedly will – his facial expression and countenance does not change, but he does utter what I can only describe as a demon frog groaning in subdued fury and frustration – like a croaking “NOOOOOOO.” At least there’s no Game Over, because Adam’s Trouble is so, so difficult, you’ll be seeing the “Oops, Try Again” screen with loud, death music blaring at you so often, your blood will be boiling over more than the toxic water. Seriously, I probably wouldn’t have an iPhone right now, it’d be shattered in a million pieces after throwing it against the wall, screaming at its smashed pieces, and then jumping on it after hitting it repeatedly with a hammer and then my fists. I’ll give some props to Adam’s Game though, because the learning curve is steep, and each level becomes progressively more difficult, with crawling creatures adding more obstacles in your quest to the escape hatch.

The Lite version only has three levels, but it’s enough to keep me curious about the full version. Sure, the game is a little creepy – in more way than one – and the amorphous main character Adam leaves a bit to be desired in the pretty arena, but it’s definitely no Sheeps Gone Crazy. The puzzles are interesting, and the atmosphere is strange and bleak enough to differentiate it from the usual happy-go-lucky, bright pastel and neon plastered puzzle games so rampant on the iTunes store. There’s something strangely addicting about wanting to get Adam’s trajectory just right, so he can land squarely on each platform – call me a perfectionist.

I can’t say I’d pay much money for this game, and it’s not strictly up my alley, but download the Lite version for free and check it out for yourself. A Full version will be released at a later date with more obstacles and feature, hopefully adding more dimension to the game.