One of my favorite toys as a boy was my bouncy ball (I was easy to please), and when I featuring one, I was obviously very excited at the prospect of playing it.

JumpyBall sees you take assume the role of a large, black ball that must bounce its way through a series of different levels, jumping at the critical moments to avoid water, fire, grass or other obstacles.

The 3D graphics are very well produced and the action scrolls very smoothly vertically. Once you really get into your stride you can achieve some blistering speeds, though it will take you a lot of practice to be able to jump everything at such a pace. There's a lovely funky electrobeat soundtrack pumping away in the background and it's very much in keeping with the on-screen action.

There are a few options you can tinker with, namely setting the music volume, adjusting game controls and enabling or disabling the auto-jump feature. Unfortunately though, ther's no option to adjust the difficulty setting which is a shame, because ultimately I felt the game was too tricky. Some of the platforms are so fiddly to jump across, even at slow speeds, that I quickly tired of the game and almost threw my Pocket PC out the window in frustration.

However, if you've got the patience to master it, JumpyBall does provide an innovative challenge.