Inks.

If there's a more elegant game on iOS at the moment, we've not seen it. State of Play's new pinball title, Inks., is one of the most visually pleasing games that we've ever tapped away at on mobile. For fans of the pinball genre there's a lot to enjoy, but the same could be said for those who appreciate their games imbued with a dash of artistic flair.

The base game comes with three collections of tables, and two more can be unlocked via reasonably priced microtransactions (though perhaps that could have been made clearer). To play through the three collections will take you two or three hours, but to master each table will take you significantly longer. The first three collections are solid fun, but things get much more interesting - and challenging - with the two add-ons, as new mechanics are introduced to spice up proceedings. But we'll get to Inks.'s unique mechanics in a minute.

At its heart this is pinball. Once or twice we had to work out how the tables worked, but for the most part it's straight up pinball flicking skills that'll get you through. This is actually the area where Inks. is at its weakest, because while you can apply a little nuance and delicacy to a shot, it's not as mechanically strong as, say, Zen Pinball. We're splitting hairs though, because it works fine and we rarely had issues with the controls. There was a couple of glitches, but nothing recurring and nothing that ruined our enjoyment of the game. The worst issue we encountered was the occasional crash to the home screen (although we were playing in TestFlight, not the final version of the game), and the fact that it caused the phone to get very warm.

The first collection, Dawn, is naturally the easiest of the bunch. It's often as simple as hit and hope while you get your bearings, although to complete a table with your first shot will still take a bit of practice. To do so you must tap either left or right to launch the ball in a particular direction, at which point it's in play and you'll need to hit it against certain panels located at various points around the table. Some of these panels are linked together on the curve at the top of the table and can be tagged at the same time with a perfect solitary shot, whereas others are placed in different areas and require multiple successful shots. Contact between ball and panel results in a satisfying splatter of paint across the level, and once you've splashed all the paint a hole opens up mid-table, the pinball disappears into it, and the level is done.

The splash of colour makes for an eye-catching trick, one that's further enhanced by the trail that then follows your pinball around the table once its gone through some paint. If you keep losing the ball it will eventually turn black and leave suitably dark marks across the surface, a reminder of your failure writ large on the table. Still, it leads to elegant designs, however inadvertent some of them may be, and these trails also act as helpful markers when trying to target a certain area of the table.

Moving through the collections, from Melody to Campfire, is straight forward enough, but then you're onto paid add-ons Vespa and Plush, and here the challenge solidifies with ramps and obstacles thrown in your way, increasing the need for skilful shots and patient practice. In Vespa we're given panels that upon contact with the ball disappear, but only temporarily, thus requiring consistent accuracy to remove these barriers one by one before the ball can hit your true target. It's in these two additional collections that Inks. shows its true colours (pardon the pun) and the skill requirement is really drawn to the fore (again, pardon the pun). You can spend credits on power-ups to help you out on a tricky table, either slowing down the action while you play a shot, or dropping a barrier to stop the ball disappearing if you miss. You get a small number of credits to start, but you can buy more if you're stuck and want a little help.

You can pick up the full game as it stands for just over £3, but we'd recommend getting the starter pack before going all in. The first batch of tables are fun, but the training wheels are still very much on. However, there are some difficulty spikes, and if you want to complete everything to perfection you're either going to need incredible patience or you might have to spend a little on credits to help you through. Buying an add-on will get you significantly more challenging tables, but the difficulty spikes get sharper as a result.

Still, it looks beautiful thanks to the brilliantly implemented design of what is ultimately a very straightforward concept, and at the same time as boasting artistic flair, it's also a fun pinball game in its own right. At times the difficulty can be downright devilish, and some of the tables can get frustrating after a time, but these are skippable/cheatable and you can progress past if you don't have the patience for them. Mechanically it might not be the best example of the genre, but the vibrant visual style does enough to compensate for any shortcomings it may have.