Apparently as far back as 350 years ago, Japanese samurai were testing their accuracy skills against helpless flies that happened to be in the room, looking for food. Kazuya Hashimoto attempts to recreate this ancient game in his new iPhone app, EDO SAMURAI Catch the fly, in which you are the practicing samurai defending his bowl of rice against a sneaky horde of flies.

Basically, two of your fingers are used as chopsticks (your choice as to which two you want to use; fingers of an equal length are probably best). Aim for the stray flies that fly in from the top of the screen. Scissoring your two fingers together with the fingertips on the touchscreen will cause the chopsticks to snap closed, hopefully around the body of a fly. There is a time limited imposed, in which you must capture a set number of flies in order to pass the level. Gold and grey flies are extra wiley, and are not easy to capture. The more flies you capture per chopstick snap, the more points you’ll receive.

The premise of Catch the fly iPhone app may be really simple (once you get past the blatant Engrish), but actually playing is another matter altogether. It is darn tricky to get the hang of, and it doesn’t help that sometimes the chopsticks don’t snap together when you move your fingers accordingly. It was often the case that missing the fly by mere millimeters would cost you; even worse, you fail to capture a fly if one of your fingers lands outside the screen in your haste (usually when the fly is still near the top of the screen). That said, it is very difficult to capture a set number of flies with a time constraint. It can get repetitive, as you’re only performing one sort of motion, and it is a bit slow; sometimes it takes a while for a fly to show up after one has been captured or left the screen. The graphics and background music are fun: spare and very thematic. There are, however, buzzing fly sound effects that might gross some people out (if the concept hasn’t already). The free version of this game app might be fine, but the paid version needs a lot more cleaning up before it can hold a place in an iPhone.

This 3rd Party App is available at the Apple iTunes AppStore. Browse the full list of all AppStore apps filed under the AppStore category.