A team of Ottawa video-game designers has pumped new life into a cultural icon by bringing a Rubik's Cube game to portable devices around the world.

The title, created by Magmic Games, which is headquartered in downtown Ottawa, simulates a real Rubik's Cube on the screen of an iPhone, iPad or touch screen BlackBerry device.

Even though it has only been on the market for a week, the game is already one of the top five best-selling puzzle games on iTunes, where it costs $2.99. It's also in the Top 100 most downloaded apps. "This is really the next notch up for us," said John Criswick, founder of Magmic. "This is the biggest brand we have done."

The Rubik's Cube became a cultural icon in the 1980s, selling more than 350 million units. The goal of Rubik's Cube is to manoeuvre all of the individually coloured squares around the puzzle in order to make each of the six sides display a single colour. Each of the sides is made up of nine coloured squares.

Magmic was founded in 2002, and the company has produced hundreds of mobile games for Research in Motion's BlackBerry device over the years. Last year, the company decided to use its mobile gaming expertise to take on development of games for the iPhone.

The 50-employee firm has made mobile versions of popular movie franchises, including The A-Team and The Dark Knight. It also has released games based on popular video-game franchises, such as Call of Duty and Street Fighter.

Their new Rubik's Cube game was released on June 24.