Going Nuts is one of those games. You know? Easy to learn, easy to play, darned difficult to master. You’re a flying squirrel. Easy, right? You launch yourself off a platform, and moving left or right by tapping the screen of your iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch, you maneuver your squirrel, picking up the good nuts, leaving the bad nuts, avoiding trees and swooping into rays of sunshine. Not that easy. First there’s the control. Someone suggested dragging your fingers on the screen, I think rapid tapping is better as I get excited, and then both thumbs are dragging both directions and the poor squirrel doesn’t know what to do and smashes slap bang into a tree.

The game has simple, yet upbeat music that adds to the excitement, and I found myself tipping my iPad, trying to avoid that tree. Note: the game does NOT use the gyroscope/motion detector thing in the iPad. Tell that to my nephew, too.

Why is Going Nuts so engaging? It’s a just a squirrel flying through a forest of trees. You seem to be flying along at a leisurely pace, and you adjust your flight path, moving left and right then suddenly, a tree jumps out and you, and you desperately try to move away, contorting your entire body, not just fiddling away with your thumbs and ... Wham! You’ve smacked up against another tree because you over compensated. It just jumped out at me! Really! Do over!

It’s a simple game. Avoid obstacles such as trees, enemies such as owls, touch sunbeams, gather all the nuts you can, especially the golden ones. You also have goals that ramp up as you hit the first. Touch three sunbeams. Fly 1,000 yards. Grab three golden acorns. Avoid that owl. Then once you’ve made those goals, they increase. Touch five sunbeams now. Fly 2,000 yards. Don’t grab a flaming acorn. Oops! Too late.

Going Nuts costs the princely sum of 99 cents for hours of fun. There are power-ups that you can purchase in game with the golden acorns you gather as well as outfits to equip your squirrel with. If you prefer, of course you can buy some sacks of nuts for real cash to trick out your squirrel. Yes, the micro-transaction items are called nut sacks — 99 cents for 2,000!

Each time you wipe out, you simply start again with new goals to reach. No lives to lose or lives to buy; it’s all about skill. How long can you stay aloft? How many yards can you fly without smacking into a tree, and how good are you at grabbing the good nuts and avoiding the bad ones? What about your owl-dodging skills? Of course the more you play, the better you get so yes, the game is fun and addictive.