Wanna play a game four out of five dentists recommend? Well, actually, judging from the five-star rating from 900-odd reviews and more than 415,000 downloads, a lot more folks than dentists recommend this sweet treat for both iPhone and iPad users. Created to promote the new Trident flavor “Awaken,” a peppy blend of peppermint and ginseng, the app is essentially a digital music box for the app-enabled age. Branding takes a back seat to beautiful design, inventive user interface and the intriguing challenge of music creation. The Trident Vitality brand appears on the home screen and lower corner of all other screens, but really this is essentially just a fun musical app to play with.

Bring up the main screen and you’re presented with what looks like a tropical landscape midnight view. Above everything shine several stars. Tap on them to release falling stars that create a percussive rhythm when they hit the ground. Tap on the bottom of the screen and a menu of various plant species slides up. Select one and drag your finger on the screen to create a foliage obstruction the falling stars will strike and bounce off of, creating a variety of tones and sounds. Stars behave a bit like pinball balls, often ricocheting off musical plants repeatedly in fascinating and often unexpected ways. You can control the speed and number of stars falling by tapping directly on the source stars again.

The share features seemed a bit spartan. What looked like a cool idea – share a melody I’d created with my friends through Facebook, Twitter or email – turned out to share a soundless JPEG of my creation and a link to download the app. While the images are pretty, absent the unique melody users create I found the share feature wanting. This would no doubt limit the number of shares. On the plus side, the share feature was easy to use, and unlocked a few additional sounds to play with – a feature that pretty much guarantees at least one share per user.

Overall, this is a wonderfully amusing time-waster, and well worth the free download.