There are days when we gamers need to shift gears a little with their gaming habits. As much as we’d love to spend every possible minute playing Oblivion, trying to coax it to run well on one’s Ati XPress 200M-equipped Laptop during the lunch breaks at work is a task for only the most crazed and dedicated of gamers. Which is why I’m thankful for the release of D.N.A., a nifty and highly addictive) little time-killer put out by Merscom.

D.N.A. is an “action-puzzle” game, developed on the basis of the popular hits Bejeweled or Zuma, but adds in a nifty storyline-oriented approach and replaces the “match-three” color and grid-based gameplay of those titles with a new approach. Basically, the focus of the game is to combine assorted types of protein and cells to cause chain reactions. Sadly these “chain reactions” go towards the creation of flowers (rather than something more productive, like a spontaneous quantum singularity), but still culminate into a gameplay experience that is both fun and satisfying to play. The game offers three modes, the first of which is “Action” - a storyline-oriented mode which gradually introduces new elements into the game with each level cleared, and also follows the exploits of biologist Dr. Rose Thompson and her creation of new species of flowers – but in this mode, the player is challenged by both time limits, and a limited number of continues to retry a given level with (or else you need to start over). “Eternal” is similar to Action mode, except that there is no storyline or time limits involved, letting players progress at their own pace and just enjoy the novelties of the gameplay. Finally, “Puzzle” is the most interesting gameplay type, which lays down a pre-set sequence of cells and challenges the player to find a way to “burst” all of the cells on-screen at a single stroke.

What impressed me particularly is how friendly of a game D.N.A. is, and how easily one can just jump in and start playing. A basic animated tutorial is available from the main menu to help players get started, and the Action mode also offers tips and guidance any time new gameplay elements are added. The entire focus of the game is on picking between cells of three different colors, and combining them together. Combine at least ten cells of a given type together, and they’ll “burst”. The overall goal is to burst enough green, purple, and orange cells to complete the growth of a new flower. Sounds simple, right? This is made complicated however because the combined cells have to be gathered into the same place by chaining them together – and only cells that are relatively close to one another can be chained. Because the cells spawn randomly across the playing field, the challenge lies in trying to get enough chains together before the time limit expires. Adding further to the challenge (later on in the Action mode, at least) are viruses and “bombs” which can disrupt your carefully-prepared chains, forcing you to move even faster in reaching your goal before the time limit expires.

And that’s really all there is to it. D.N.A. offers an intuitive point-and-click interface to make matching up the different colors a snap, and even offers a “Chain Assist” option that will automatically highlight the cells you are preparing to combine and show what kind of lasting effect will be had. This all leads up to a fun and addictive experience that is also blessed with a pleasing graphical approach. The entire game looks and feels well put together and has a very “clean” presentation that I have no qualms with, save the lack of higher-resolution options for the windowed mode (for the multi-tasking freaks among us who like to still get the very best out of their 1680x1050-naitive widescreen monitor) - but even at the default window size, the game was still very playable. There’s also a soothing audio track that matches the tone and theme of the game – although I had mixed impressions on the male voice that kept proclaiming “Excellent!” or “Fantastic!” any time I triggered a sizable chain. Your mileage may vary.

The only other major concerns I had was that there was no prompt prior to returning to the main menu in the middle of a session (not a big deal, but it caused me to accidentally lose out of a few good runs because I accidentally missed the “Back to Game” button), and that there also isn’t any multiplayer! One thing that could benefit this game quite nicely would be some kind of competitive networked multiplayer mode challenging players with ever-increasing stakes, but as it stands, the game still offers enough content to stand on it’s own as a fun little addictive title. A slight loophole I found too was that I could avoid losing any of my Continues in the Action mode just by dropping out to the main menu whenever my timer was just about to run out, and then choosing to “Continue” my saved progress again – though I don’t count this as a serious gameplay fault, and more of just a casual oversight – and this may even be intentional and down to the player’s discretion on where to take advantage of it or not. Ultimately, for the $20 price D.N.A. isn’t a bad experience at all, and the official website offers several demo options to learn more about the game before splurging, so it’s definitely worth a look for casual gamers on the go.