When we were babies, our parents kept our nerve-grating shrieking at bay with a virtually endless reserve of toys and trinkets designed specifically for people in our developing mental state. Shake the rattle, chew on the rubber ring, stack the blocks — it didn’t require much to figure out these gadgets.

Since we couldn’t walk at the time, that was probably a good thing.

Revisit those preschool games and gizmos a few decades later, however, and you find they don’t elicit the same intrigue they did when babbling and squalling were our primary means of communication. Developing cognitive skills changes everything, I suppose, and unfortunately, shoving wooden shapes through matching holes isn’t quite as much fun as it used to be.

Try as it might with its charming style, vibrant colors, wealth of content and gradually increasing challenge, Roogoo Attack! is unable to change that.

Developed by SpiderMonk Entertainment, Roogoo Attack! follows in the critically acclaimed footsteps of the original Roogoo, an Xbox Live Arcade favorite that took the gaming community by surprise last summer. Its hook was simple, and that hasn’t changed with the DS version — colored shapes fall from the sky, descending toward hole-filled platforms hovering in midair. Players are tasked with guiding the falling shapes into their corresponding holes by rotating the discs, lining them up with the shapes’ trajectories.

To borrow a line from the Official Xbox Magazine, Roogoo is perhaps best described as part Jenga, part Tetris and part Fisher-Price, an allusion to the game’s obvious stacking, falling and preschool shape-sorting components.

The concept is extremely straightforward, but like many puzzle games with similarly simple gameplay, it’s expanded upon as the game progresses. For example, shapes are occasionally swapped for falling nests, eggs and hens, and players must stack them in order to ensure proper incubation. Enemies sometimes block holes, as well, requiring players to accelerate the shapes’ falling speeds to knock the enemy from the platform and reopen the hole.

That’s right, there are enemies. As in the antagonists of a story. Roogoo Attack! tells the saga of the evil Meemoos, once-peaceful inhabitants of the “happy little planet” of Roo. Obsessed with the power held within the shapes that fall to the planet like meteors, they’ve become prideful and greedy. This forces the still-pure Roogoo to abandon the cities, hoping to collect enough meteor shapes in exile to restore order to their once-peaceful little planet.

The narrative is silly, but it serves its purpose as a motivator for the people who demand a reason to collect shapes in a puzzle game. All ten of you.

Unfortunately, the gameplay twists, sporadic minigames and nonsensical story elements are unable to change the game’s most basic drawback and, ultimately, biggest hindrance — Roogoo Attack! is built upon shoving shapes into holes, and regardless of execution, it’s just not a compelling mechanic.

At least, not for long. Less than an hour into playing it for the first time, I’d already found myself bored with Roogoo’s quick-to-tire puzzle gameplay.

Yet Roogoo Attack! is anything but a bad game. Quite the contrary, it’s an entertaining, if in spurts, and well-developed puzzler, and it offers a steadily increasing level of difficulty that may surprise those turned off by the game’s cute appearance. The game offers nearly 100 levels — 120 once connected wirelessly to Wii’s Roogoo Twisted Towers — and eventually requires some skill to conquer, proof you should never judge a game by its appearance.

That said, Roogoo Attack! has a very slick appearance.

There are plenty of DS games that do more with the modest power of the system, but Roogoo Attack! has a beautiful visual style accented by vibrant colors and charming art. The backgrounds are delightfully designed, and as you progress through the game’s eleven distinct environments, leaves drift across the screen, clouds move through the sky and fiery particles float in Roo’s molten core. It’s no stunner, but it’s an exceptionally pretty game. 

Roogoo Attack! also boasts much-appreciated modes for both single- and multi-card multiplayer, and like anything, Roogoo is more fun with friends. 

Yet even the smile-inducing, polished-to-a-shine graphics and enjoyable multiplayer modes do little to alleviate the ennui Roogoo Attack! inevitably conjures. Despite all the game does well, sorting shapes is only fun during brief spurts — for me, that was no longer than 15 to 20 minutes at most.

Still, Roogoo Attack! is a solid game puzzle aficionados with a thick skin for repetition will enjoy. There may even be a great game in there somewhere. If I could stand to play it longer, I might be able to find it.

Gameplay: 6.5
It’s a simple concept that can be quite entertaining in limited doses, but it wears thin quickly and doesn’t do much to maintain interest. Still, Roogoo is as much fun as shoving shapes through matching holes can possibly be.

Graphics: 7.5
Don’t expect to pick your jaw off the floor once you see it, but this is a very pretty game, a testament to the power of vibrant colors and charming art.

Sound: 6.0
Generic music makes you thankful the Nintendo DS has a volume slider.

Difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard
The game offers are three difficulties, but even the calmer modes present a challenge. The later levels, in particular, just might put your skills to the test.

Multiplayer: 7.5
Roogoo Attack! boasts much-appreciated modes for both single- and multi-card multiplayer, and like anything, Roogoo is much more fun with friends.

Concept: 6.0
Remember the shape-sorting blocks that occupied your time before you developed cognitive skills? Roogoo Attack! is like a Tetris-infused version of those old Fisher-Price toys, asking you to fit falling shapes into their holes.

Overall: 6.5
Even those smile-inducing, polished-to-a-shine graphics and enjoyable multiplayer modes do little to alleviate the ennui Roogoo Attack! inevitably conjures. Despite all the game does well, sorting shapes is only fun during brief spurts —for me, that was no longer than 15 to 20 minutes at most.