Kurabi for iPhone is a new puzzler for iPhone that pits you up against your friends to see who can make more matches and accumulate the most points in under a minute. Match pieces to clear the board and create exploding combos. Best two out of three rounds will win. The more you play, the more power ups you can unlock to use against your opponents.

If you aren't into heavy games but appreciate light puzzlers that you can quickly pick up and play whenever you have a few spare minutes, Kurabi is a perfect option. Each round is only a minute long before it switches to your opponent's turn. The object of Kurabi is to clear as many gold pieces from the board as you can. These are the pieces you get points for. You'll need to match at least 3 pieces to clear any but matching more than 3 will give you combos that you can tap in order to use.

Kurabi also allows you to use ninja abilities in order to help you clear levels. You'll start off each round of matches with 200 zen and each time you use an ability, your zen will drain, which means you'll have to be careful how you choose to use it. When starting Kurabi, you'll have three abilities to choose from but the more you play and the more gold pieces you accumulate, the more abilities you'll unlock.

As far as multiplayer support, Kurabi uses Game Center which means you can either play a friend you already have in Game Center that's also playing Kurabi, or you can let it find you a random opponent. With the free version of Kurabi, you'll be able to play 3 games at once. You can opt to pay $1.99 as an in-app purchase which will remove the three game limit as well as remove all ads permanently.

The good

Super easy to play and will appeal to anyone who likes Candy Crush or Bejeweled
Intriguing spin on matching games that makes things a little more interesting
Great interface that flows smoothly and doesn't seem to ever hang up

The bad

Game Center is the only multiplayer option available, which may limit who you can play
Three games at a time max, unless you opt for the premium version

The bottom line

There are lots of matching games in the App Store but Kurabi is probably one of the best ones I've played. Not only is the interface clean and light, it provides an interesting twist on a classic style game. It's great when you only have a few minutes to kill and don't want to get pulled into playing a game for hours on end.