Just another hard day’s work in the magical mine.

Aurora Feint is a fantasy-themed puzzle game that boasts gorgeous artwork, elaborate visual effects, and a rich, dramatic soundtrack. It’s easily one of the most polished games we’ve seen from the App Store yet - give or take some hiccups.

Your primary task is “mining” - arranging an ever-increasing number of fire, wind, plant, and water blocks in matching combos that help clear the screen and earn you crystals. A horizontal swipe of your finger moves blocks, and you can tip your device vertically or horizontally to build the best possible combos before the screen fills up. Aurora Feint incorporates simple role-playing game elements, too. You can pick a gender and name for your character, improve abilities, and build tools that help you get the most crystals possible.

Mining is just one part of Aurora Feint’s world. Crystals from the Mine are spent in the Store where you buy blueprints for tools - built in the Smith - as well as magic books to study in the Tower. Each area’s challenges amount to matching blocks or crystals, but how the game’s locations fit together isn’t as clear as it could be when you begin play. Onscreen prompts that whisk you to a new location when you have the skills or crystals to complete a goal help keep you from getting stuck. Despite the handholding, gamers looking for a quick fix might be turned off by the game’s pace. Like an RPG, Aurora Feint requires a lot of leveling up to get to the good stuff. Games can always be suspended and resumed later, however.

Aurora Feint’s developers promise future installments will offer massively multiplayer online features, but until then there's only a community option that lets you share character information with Aurora Feint-playing friends in your iPhone or iPod touch’s contacts list. The community feature is voluntary, secure, and not required for play. Unfortunately, other aspects of the game feel like works in progress as well. The music occasionally disappears, and the game sometimes freezes, forcing a restart of our device. Annoying as these problems are, deleting Aurora Feint from our device and reinstalling it with a connection to iTunes clears them up.