Jungle Bloxx is the third entry in Digital Chocolate long-running -- and very popular Bloxx -- franchise. However, this chapter reverses course from previous games. Instead of building, the goal in Jungle Bloxx is to destroy. Granted, you're not destroying for the sake of general mayhem -- you are just trying to lower a gem to the ground.

Jill the jungle explorer is after a series of sparkling jewels, but each of them is perched atop stacks of ruins and stones. The only way to take the gem -- and solve the puzzle -- is to lower it onto a special pedestal at the bottom of the stack via demolition duty. Tapping blocks causes them to vanish. The game's own physics model -- it is not based on reality, and more on that in a moment -- causes the rest of the stack to react to each pulled piece. Destroy the wrong piece and the diamond could tumble off the side and be lost. It's a lot like a cross between Jenga and Boom Blox.

Playful monkeys dance as the ruins come down.

As Jill moves deeper into the mysterious jungle kingdoms, she discovers new blocks with special properties. Lava blocks burn any blocks touching them, for example. Ice blocks are fragile and cannot fall too far or they splinter into itty-bitty pieces. These new blocks complicate the game, as expected. But do they make it too complicated? After all, the previous Bloxx games (Tower and Pyramid) were purposefully without a lot of complexity. This complexity is "enhanced" by Jungle Bloxx's physics system, which is slow to react to changes in the physical structure of the stacks. I assume this is by design as the slower pace gives players a chance to look at how gravity took hold of the stack as it fell. That's fine, but it takes some getting used to. Jungle Bloxx has the greatest learning curve of any of the Bloxx games by far.

Digital Chocolate is usually very strong on production, so the rushed look of Jungle Bloxx seems very odd. There is a single background for every puzzle, despite you moving into different elemental-themed kingdoms. The game also has only one theme, too, and it is among the weakest of DChoc's musical efforts -- typically another strength for the developer/publisher. Levi Buchanan