UFO Dad is a fairly simple tile-matching puzzle game that mixes in some added mechanics in order to shake things up a bit, and while you can definitely see what the goal is, there isn't a whole lot of variety of the game to keep a player interested for any real length of time.

UFO Dad is visually appealing in that it is filled with bright colors and an amusing backdrop. The characters themselves are large on the screen and unique so that each of the four members of the family being abducted is easily distinguishable. This means that, if you happen to be jumping into a game that you've paused some time ago, you should be able to tell immediately which character and traits you are in the middle of controlling. Given that the characters have slight differences in their range of movement and abilities, this can be handy. Then again, the strategies for the different characters only vary a little, so you shouldn't get yourself in too deep of a pickle if you forget which character can do which ability.

UFO Dad's music has a classic arcade feel to it and has a steady enough beat to keep you going and pushing forward, but it isn't long before you've heard all it has to offer, and much like the rest of the game, it gets a bit repetitive. While nice, there isn't much of a gameplay experience difference if you simply turn off the music and continue playing, which is good for a mobile game.

UFO Dad follows a family of four as they are being sucked up into the sky and into a spaceship while they were enjoying a barbeque. Of course, it isn't just the family members being lifted, the UFO is picking up your hamburgers and even bits of the ground. As everything slowly levitates to the sky, you use your high tech spatula to not only dig the ground up around you, but also throw and slide colored tiles of hamburgers around the screen.

You earn points by combining blocks of three or more like-colored hamburgers while trying to make sure you don't end up under one of the falling pieces that drop when you've either cleared out the falling object's supporting tile, or because the levitation ray has pulled everything up and there is no longer something under the now falling piece.

While the game does seem to go on and on, there are only subtle changes that let you know you are making anything resembling progress. There are levels, but there is no indication that you've moved on to the next one, or really any noticeable difference between one and the next. At some point, you will gain things like the barbeque pit that burns up any tiles that finds themselves on top of it, but it wasn't until that suddenly showed up that I realized that the level indicator on the left side of the screen had changed.

While UFO Dad starts slow, its gradual and unnoticed level progression means that the slow increase in difficulty is almost unnoticed. The increase in difficulty isn't even anything really obvious. The game doesn't really seem to speed up or anything, but you might find the number of rocks that you can't move or dig through slowly grows, or the odd combinations of dirt that you can dig through gets bigger and you have to do more work to slide and toss the hamburger tiles around in order to group them.

Actually, the increase is so gradually done that it wasn't until I started kicking off games on the last level I had gotten to (a feature available on the character select screen) that I realized just how drastically different those later levels are compared with how the game starts you off.

UFO Dad ends up being about getting to know not only how to efficiently move the pieces around, but also how to use the characters you have unlocked. The characters consist of the dad, mom, and their son and daughter. Each one has slightly different stats when it comes to speed, strength and jump, and each has a different power, but the core mechanics are all the same.

You use the spatula to destroy dirt tiles and move hamburger tiles. If you use the spatula next to a hamburger, it will slide horizontally as far as it can (even if it is hovering in the air). If you stand on top of it, hold (Down) and use the spatula, you will fling it in the air and you can jump up and slap it to one side or the other. The only other tricky detail is getting a piece out of a corner. If the hamburger can't move in the direction you are hitting it, you and the tile actually switch places. With these three forms of movements, you can fling burgers all around the screen and build some crazy shapes out of your collection of colored hamburger tiles. It doesn't matter how the new tile touches the group you are building, if the sides touch, it stops and locks into place. The more pieces in the mass, the more points you earn - but you've got to be quick. Once you have three tiles together, the clock starts ticking and the collection could vanish. Thankfully, this counter resets every time you add another tile to the pile, so a skilled and fast gamer can really build up a large pile of points, provided the game gives you the right tiles.

While an amusing game, it pretty much shows you everything it has to offer in the first 10 minutes of gameplay and never gets that addictive quality that makes a match-three puzzle game hard to put down. For its price, the game may be worth checking out if you are seriously looking for something new on your PS Vita.