No mobile gaming device would be complete without a helping of Tetris’ unique brand of addictive gameplay, so we’ve been trying it out on our Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. But how well does it work using a touchscreen and is it worth its steep price? We’re here to let you know.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 27 years, Tetris will need no introduction. If you’re one of the few that have never played this great puzzle game, though, the aim is to manoeuvre an endless series of falling building blocks to complete lines across the screen and win points.

The beauty of Tetris has always been its great simplicity, perfectly balanced difficulty level, easy controls and addictive gameplay. And all of these are pretty much flawlessly carried over to the Windows Phone version, making it a great game to enjoy on the commute with your new Nokia Lumia 800.

While many of us are used to playing Tetris with a games console control pad or PC keyboard, the Lumia’s 3.7-inch touchscreen introduces a new means of control. While we found the touchscreen operation a little confusing for the first minute or so, we were quickly spinning and dropping the blocks with ease.

To rotate a block, you just tap the screen - rather than perform a twist movement, as we tried - to spin it 90-degrees clockwise as it falls. A menu on the right-hand side of the screen shows you the next five blocks that will drop from the top of the screen, letting you easily plan your next move and place your current block in just the right place to fit with the next one.

While the block is moving down the screen, a vertical line shows you exactly where it will land. While this is a great help, we felt that it makes the game a little too easy, as some of the most fraught and fun moments of Tetris are when you drop a brick in the wrong place and have to quickly rethink and plan around your mistake on-the-fly.

Once you’ve got your block in exactly the position that you want it, you can then swipe down the Lumia 800’s screen with your finger, to fling the block to the bottom of the well and drop it in place. The whole process works well and in just a few minutes we were twisting and dropping bricks like a true pro.

If for any reason you can’t get to grips with the touchscreen controls, you can instead opt to use traditional D-pad controls. This places icons at the right, left and bottom of the screen, which you can use to rotate, move and drop your bricks, although once we'd got used to the touch controls we found the D-pad a far more complicated method.

As well as the standard game mode, there is also a Marathon mode, a Pro Trainer option and even a range of achievements that you can rack up with your Tetris skills. Since most people will just stick to the standard mode, there are plenty of levels to choose from, as well as a range of difficulty settings.

Whichever format you play it on, Tetris is always a classic and it’s just as much fun now that it’s come to Windows Phone. With its unbeatable brand of unique puzzling, easy-to-pick-up controls and addictive gameplay, there’s almost no reason not to download, install and play Tetris on your Nokia Lumia 800.

We say ‘almost’, because the price is a bit of a sticking point. At £3.99 it is one of the more expensive Windows Phone games we’ve played and when you consider that the mighty Angry Birds – a far newer game – costs just £2.29, the decades old Tetris seems a little bit overpriced.

Regardless, this is still a great game and as long as you’re happy to shell out nearly a fiver for it, you can enjoy hours of great gaming on your smartphone.

Tetris for the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone is available now from the Windows Phone Marketplace for £3.99.

Check out our Nokia Lumia 800 game Tetris review photo gallery: