Flip Blox, a Windows Phone game that might surprise you

Flip Blox is a matching game for our Windows Phone that surprised us a little. The game's concept isn't new and calls for you to create combos of the same colored boxes for points.

You have a handful of gaming modes to keep things from getting stale and the animated faces on the boxes keeps things interesting.  Flip Blox comes across as an entertaining, casual game for our Windows Phones. Well suited for passing the time with.

The main menu has your customary options to play the game, view the online leaderboard, access options, and access your player profile. You can register with the game's server to create a player profile that can be used with the leaderboard. Settings cover music and sound effects levels and face sizing (more on this in a bit).

As far as game play is concerned, there are three game modes and three game board sizes to choose from. The board sizes include 6x6, 7x7, and 8x8 grids. The game modes include:

• Classic: As you create combos, a progress bar is filled at the bottom of the screen. You have to fill the bar before the timer hits zero.
• Time Mode: You have five minutes to score as many points as possible.
• 99: You have 99 moves to score as many points as possible.

In addition to the game modes you can also choose how the boxes replenish. Simple mode has the boxes fall top to bottom. Twist mode has the boxes fall in the direction the Windows Phone is held.

Regardless of the game mode, the goal of Flip Blox is the same; create combos of three or more adjacent boxes of the same color. Each box can be rotated up, down, left or right. Each side of the box is colored and the border of the box represents the color of that particular side. If you need a little help in picking up the colors, in the settings you can make the face on the box smaller increasing the colored border.

If you get stuck and can't find a box to spin to create a combo, after a few seconds of inactivity one of the faces will give you a hint (usually by sticking out its tongue).

Overall, Flip Blox is a fun game to pass the time with. Graphics are bright and colorful, the facial animations add to the experience, and game play is challenging enough to keep things interesting. I'm not sure how well the game would hold up to marathon gaming sessions but for short bits of time, it's a fun game.

Flip Blox is available for both Windows Phone 8 and 7.x devices and there is a trial version available that lets you play the Classic game mode. The full version runs you $1.29 and you can pick Flip Box up here in the Windows Phone Store.