I once had a Spirograph as a kid. It’s a strange-looking contraption, of the plastic and rotor kind that with its bright colors is meant to attract children, but really, is just a toy conceived and appreciated by adults. Any inherent mathematical properties to the Spirograph is appreciated only by the most astute adult, and even then that’s a rare appreciation – most people enjoy the Spirograph for its seeming whimsical wizardy, the ability to churn out impeccably arranged lines in one spiral after another, an overlapping pattern continuum ad infinitum. I enjoyed using the Spirograph, seeing the same patterns emerge, unidentifiable from each other in their perfection save for a different use of color, and I remember keeping an ever-growing pile of my spiro drawings. But relying on a mechanism to produce drawings proved limiting for me – as I’m sure it did for many kids – and my interest quickly waned in favor of coloring books, whose blank pages and free reign of crayons seemed liberating by comparison. Just like the hypotrochoids and epitrochoids a Spirograph produces, the Spirograph is a rigid, unwavering setting for a game.

I suppose this is why when I discovered Finger Spiro+ by Chlova, I had some reservations. Do not misinterpret – I think the Spirograph is a fantastic tool, that produces beautiful curves and lines in an increasingly circular shape, but its novelty lasts for a few hours, and then it’s over. There is a slight hypnotic quality to Finger Spiro, and other spirographs, in just tracing a line over and over and over, while watching this wheel move around within a larger wheel, your pencil wedged in one of the holes drilled into the rotor’s plastic side. As with physical Spirographs, in Finger Spiro+ you have a choice between different sized rotors, each of which, based on its size, produces lines of a different curve and degree (you may download more rotors (or gears) for a price if you desire). Each rotor also has a few holes that you may select with a tap, to change the degree of the line produced. There are 7 colors to choose from, 4 background canvases – of which each may be moved around a bit to allow for more drawings -, and you may choose to roll your spirograph in a clockwise or counterclockwise motion. Should you particularly proud of any one creation, you may take a picture of it using the app, and save it to an album, perhaps email to a friend.

The whole app is laid out very well, with pleasant graphics, but there are a few shortcomings. The 7 colors are what you’d find in a basic crayon deck, with the odd gray included, as well. Every kid loves gray… right? The background canvases are nothing spectacular, but given the surface is hardly as important at the drawing, this is a minor quibble. The background surfaces range from different woods to what look to be handpressed, custom papers, with dark blotches of the kind you’d find at Papyrus or some other high-end letterpress store.There are only 4, and there’s no option to upgrade the amount of canvasses you can have, so this feature remains pretty limited.

Finger Spiro+, itself, is very smooth, and the results fantastic, but once again there’s that debacle of longevity – seeing the designs emerge is fun for a few minutes, but after that it’s not terribly tempting to download more rotors to keep the idea fresh. Maybe if Finger Spiro+ strayed from the usual circular design and included rotors within stencils of different shapes, something more elliptical or bean-shaped (it can be done), just any other shape, then perhaps the game could hold a user’s interest more.

I’m talking about Pop Cap Game’s Bejeweled 2, of course. Or, even just Bejeweled. But, for the purposes of this review, I will be talking about the sequel in this acclaimed game – a game that many online players have idled away hours of their time in unproductivity, swapping and destroying gems, in some haze of OCD. Come to think of it, what is it about block-breaking games that hold our fascination so much? Does it just feed into the mindless, anal retentive qualities in all of us, making us pair like objects, and seeing them destroyed, then having a new stack fall into place, in some nonstop continuum of the same thing? It’s like peeling a giant stack of potatoes, or, as my boyfriend’s mom likes to say, it’s similar to knitting. Maybe there’s something inherently soothing to anything mechanical and orderly, giving the otherwise untapped mind a job, something menial and contrived to focus our energy. When playing Bejeweled 2, I feel like the intelligent, but otherwise neurotic Border Collie, who when given ample hours on end with nothing to do, finds himself staring at a dripping faucet, watching each drop fall in slow motion with the most rapt, inert attention. Actually, that’s a fairly accurate analogy for what playing Bejeweled 2 is like – a dripping faucet.

Perhaps, that’s where the sheer brilliance of Bejeweled 2 lies (and, I don’t just mean the jewels). I, for one, cannot put this game down. I probably wasted played a good one to two hours each day this week before I realized I had already done this before on the computer, in 2004. Oh, Bejeweled, how your witchery tricks me again and again. There’s no question Bejeweled 2 is an addictive game, and the legions of fans out there contributing to its success, both online and off, is a testament to the game’s lasting greatness. And, it’s just so darn simple to play.

The game of Bejeweled 2 is played on an 8×8 board, with some stratospheric background of the most spectacular origins, set somewhere on a distant planet, or in some fantasy dimension. The music, too, plays off this eccentric, futuristic, day-glo feel by featuring synthesized glam rock beats that would feel right at home in Blade Runner, or in a David Bowie music video. I really like the music – I pretend I’m in an anime, and with the bright colors, space atmosphere and beats, it’s hard not to feel that way. To boot, anytime you beat a level, a wormhole appears, resplendent in pastels and neons, to take you to the next level. Beating the levels is easy, at first, since the jewels on the playing field are easily matched up into pairs of 3 and siphoned away, for more jewels to take their place. The rules are short: swap one jewel with another adjacaent, and only when swapping lets you form a row of three (the game won’t let you move, otherwise). That’s it! If your swap forms a row of four jewels, then that jewel type will form a power gem, worth more points; if your row contains 5 jewels, then you’ll create a hypercube, which is the badass of all the jewels, earning you mondo points and explosions all around. You’ll make plenty more power gems than hypercubes, so take advantage of the former. The power gem not only earns you more points, it destroys the surrounding gems in a 2-block radius, leaving more room for new jewels to take place. It’s hard to beat the hypercube, though; when it’s formed, whichever jewel you choose to swap it with – let’s say a blue gem – then all the jewels of that kind on the board will be destroyed, in some cool, chain lightning effect. If you play in Action mode, this happens fairly often, given the set-up Bejeweled gives you. In Classic and Endless, it’s much more infrequent (Endless is the same as Classic Mode, only there’s no maximum amount of moves per level).

At the end of the day, all I can really say about Bejeweled 2 is… well, I can’t really think of anything to say. I’m completely dumbfounded and blinded and speechless. In fact, I think I need another look at the game, right now. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to you.

*dashes for iPhone*

Omer Vinik, the developer of Kid’z Maze, wanted to design a game that could “help kids develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills and counting abilities”; from this hub of brainstorming, he concocted the idea for a labyrinth game designed specially for kids, because apparently, labyrinth games are for adults only. Now, this is my own personal anecdote, and I don’t tout to be especially brilliant, or spatially advanced, but I played with my wooden labyrinth board from as young as 4 years of age. It’s true, I may not have been able at first, with my fumbling fingers and newfound sense of orientation, to play a ball through to the very end with finesse, but that doesn’t mean the game didn’t grab my attention or adequately challenge my motor skills. Actually, a more challenging game, with consequences and the chance at failure, may have made success more sweet in the end, than a game that offers no risks other than following a straight path to the end.

The game has a nice enough look to it, and is set up as labyrinth games usually are: poised from an aerial perspective, with the user moving the ball by tilting the iPhone in different directions. Only, in this game, in some attempt to add educational value for children, there are numbers along the maze path that are read aloud as the ball collides with them. Nothing truly of interest happens when the collision happens, other than the number increases in size, growing more pixelated the larger it becomes, until it just fades away, along with the voice narrating. Curiously, rather than add more interesting elements to the game, itself, like secondary objectives, or misleading paths (you know, like in a maze?), the developer instead offers the option to customize the gameboard, by switching tile or path colors, or even the ball color. I highly doubt most kids would find this interesting or fun, being able to use a red or blue ball, against the equally boring background palettes of fine grain light wood, versus large-grain dark wood. Zzzzzzz, put me to sleep.

But, this isn’t to say that Kid’z Maze is completely without merit. I truly think the developer had his heart in the right place with this concept, and if he just tweaked a few things, I’m sure the game could be a success. There are already two, incredibly successful Labyrinth games for the iPhone, so in order for his game to appeal to a large audience, particularly a very young one, he should think about adding some colorful and quirky elements, something more lighthearted and original than the stock audio clip of kids cheering, which I’ve heard in a wide range of kids apps. The idea isn’t nearly unique enough to make it in the App Store, and the idea that kids cannot handle – emotionally, mentally, or physically – the challenge of a regular Labyrinth game, is laughable.

Promotion Codes:

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

Yikes! YIKES!

Back in October, David reviewed Jamzu, a strategy board game. The review is located here. Well, Jamzu has recently been revamped with 2 player mode on the same device (previously 2 player was only allowed through Wi-Fi) and a new rolling system that created, as the developer claims, “a huge boost in game play quality.” I spent a few days playing this new version of Jamzu and found that it’s a solid game, but it’s also an incredibly frustrating game and sometimes is seemingly unfair.

There are four levels of difficulty – Easy, Medium, Advanced and Expert. The instructions explain that the difficulty is based on the computer choosing a “weak” or “strong” evaluation (of the game board). The Easy setting uses the weak evaluation the entire time, the Medium uses the weak evaluation 2/3 of the time and the strong 1/3, and so on… To be perfectly honest, the game as it is should only have two difficulty settings, Normal and Hard, because Easy isn’t easy and anything above Easy is Hard.

After playing a half dozen or so games I started getting the hang of Jamzu. As it turned out I was playing on Expert, no wonder I was so frustrated! I switched the difficulty to Easy and was still frustrated. After another half dozen or so games I started to win. I switched the difficulty to Medium and was again confronted with frustration. I played 3 or 4 games and was in position to win, but every single time I was going to win my rolls started showing up as ones and twos, with the computer getting fours, fives and sixes. In one game I had two Runners two moves from the edge and one Runner three moves from the edge – that’s 3 Runners needing 7 moves. The computer had two Runners left and nine total moves between the two, with Jammers in blocking one of the Jammer’s way. Needless to say I lost. I rolled two ones and a two while the computer rolled a five six and something else. Utter, utter frustration. This happens a lot to me when playing on the Medium setting. It’s very discouraging. I went back to Easy, which was a little too easy for my liking, so I’ve been playing on Medium, despite the high level of frustration.

Enough about my frustrations, Jamzu is a good game. Try it, play it, master it, it’s not a hard game to figure out, but I suspect it is hard to master. The only thing I really dislike about the app is the opening screen backdrop… yikes! It’s straight out of the 80′s/90′s and does not compliment the graphics of the rest of the game which are overall nicely rendered and arranged. The game is quick and making moves is easy and accurate, now if they could only get that AI down!

I remember being horrible at Scrabble when I began playing regularly some time in college, jumping for joy when I first hit those double digit scores, and performing obnoxious victory jigs whenever I landed a bingo, to the other players’ collective annoyance. Becoming a better player has definitely humbled my exuberance. Scrabble, I think, is especially hard for erudite folk with an appreciation for the vagaries and intricacies of language. It’s easy to think too critically of a game where the targeted placement of small and common ox can earn you 30 or more points, while the more impressive, and articulate eremite (a recluse, especially for religious reasons) may only tally at a paltry 12. I remember thinking that Scrabble took the joy out of creative vocabulary, the pleasure of laying down an obscure word, in favor of memorizing two-letter word lists and Q-word lists, in the silly, regimented hope of achieving some impenetrable word arsenal. These word lists that every serious player commits to memory just seemed so confining and didactic to me, to warrant any permanent spot in my weekly rotation of board games. But, like a phonetic hooker in those dank, forlorn corridors of unused word games, Scrabble tempts you and weaves words and anagrams in a way no other game does.

Scrabble was released for the iPhone a little while ago, but like most board games cum iPhone games, it has a longevity that renders it ageless. For this adaptation, EA Games took the game by the reigns and added a certain panache that I have come to equate with Electronic Arts: a slick, bouncy soundtrack, excellent interfaces, breezy multiplayer, and easy in-game navigation. The design of both the main screen and the board are digital clones of the actual Scrabble packaging, the red lines, and the Scrabble font near exact replicas of the originals – a definite plus for we, Scrabble aficionados in need of a perfect homage. To play, you may opt for a Quick Play, or connect with Facebook to enjoy a game with your close friends, or just opt for wi-fi multiplayer, to perhaps play with a stranger in your current location. I’m a solo kind of gal, so I usually tap the Quick Play and challenge the CPU, taking great enjoyment in my linguistic overtaking of its, apparently, computationally-challenged battlefront (it has yet to beat me). My one disappointment with Quick Play – and where other games like Words with Friends win me over – is you can only play one game at a time. This is pretty absurd considering you may want a backup game should you hit a roadblock with the first. But, true to Scrabble, or any physical board game, once you start a game, you should see it to the end.

I tend to turn off the music to allay any outside disturbances (how serious do I sound?), but considering it’s light, and possibly the least obtrusive music I’ve heard thus far for a game, I often just keep it on. I also don’t bother with uploading my own soundtrack to Scrabble, but it’s nice to know the option is there, and I’m sure many people play considerably better with Lady Gaga serenading them about their Poker Faces – maybe I’ll try that. By default, Scrabble peppers you with Game Tips – how to move your tile with one finger, while using another finger to move the screen; double tapping to zoom in and ditto to zoom out; pinching to accomplish the same – but you can turn these off, as any regular iPhone user will intuitively figure out how to control the game. The game board is naturally set at a distance so you may view the entire playing field, but whenever you move a tile to play, the game will automatically zoom in to your approached location – otherwise, you may double-tap anywhere on screen to zoom in on a particular location. When setting down tiles to form words, the game will automatically calculate the score, making decisions easier when oscillating between two or more possible plays. Should a word not be valid, the game will tell you, highlighting the words in red – you may then easily take back this play by tapping the Recall button, placing the tiles back on your rack. Shuffling is also made easier with a Shuffle button, to shuffle at random, or you can manually move the letters yourself, definitely more convenient when you’re working out those pesky anagrams.

It’s too bad the relative ease of this Scrabble won’t make winning the game any easier – but wait! For this Scrabble, Electronic Arts threw us a freebie with the Best Word option. Hardcore Scrabble fans will surely scoff at this option, seeing it to be a cop-out for n00bs who don’t have the patience to think critically about what possibilities lay ahead, and that may be a valid concern. It’s definitely easy to drift your glance down at the reassuring heart button, oozing warmth with its Best Word, beckoning all that is safe and assured. I say ignore the button if you’re already an adept player, confident in your abilities, but I definitely won’t tell beginning players to overlook its help.

Sometimes it’s good to get a freebie. For a game like Scrabble, it can point you in the right direction.

As it turns out, I’m talking about a game. A what? Yes, you heard right: a game. And not just any game, with cool graphics and availability across all consoles. A board game. You know, those clumsy, cumbersome, folding pieces of compressed paper you must tote around in an equally cumbersome box, with odd sorts of pieces and die and cards that will indubitably get lost, mysteriously, in the dark confines of your closet. I’m an expert when it comes to losing pieces, and I’ve done my fair share of plotting out surveys on the carpet, on hands and knees with a magnifying glasses, in some wry attempt to find those tiny military men from Risk as I separate woolly strands to inspect every divot, nook and cranny. I’ve also lost Scrabble tiles, much to the chagrin of my Scrabble club members in college, and I have become artistic in my efforts to stencil in monetary reproductions of the $500 bills from Monolopy that manage to flutter away from my grasp, into some unknown rip in time and space. Thankfully, I have yet to lose anything from Catan, my latest addiction, the addiction I spread like wildfire to my friends, and this is because Catan could very possibly, be the greatest game ever made.

If ever there was a game that would end in pieces lost after the first time, Catan is it. It’s also a game of tears and frustration and whoops of joy, but more on that later. The board, upon initial viewing, is so complicated, so intricately and tiresomely pieced together, it borders on the insane. Just putting together the board is a challenge in itself, a puzzle even, so much that I recommend a good pane of glass to weigh it down, make it playable. One of my friends even jokingly remarked the game’s box should read “Pane of glass not included.” But, this is only the beginning of the game’s complexity. When my dear friend Kevin introduced me to the game, explaining – in his slow, calm droll of a voice -  the ins and outs of the various hexagons, axes, wooden pieces in various colors, flip charts, barbarians, objectives and more, I felt a surging anxiety, thinking, “How the hell am I ever going to remember any of this?” Add to this the knowledge there are several game expansions, such as Cities & Knights and Traders & Barbarians, both of which tack on even more complexity to the original premise. But, don’t worry. After the initiation rite of your first game, rife with clumsy trades and bad strategic expansions, you’ll have the game down pat. Catan is actually quite similar to the games Age of Empires, Empire Earth, and Civilization, all games of economy-building and kingdom expansion, but unlike the others, Catan has surprisingly little emphasis on war given all the resource nabbing and upgrading of technologies. It’s actually a very diplomatic game, compared to the others, with polite trading of resources and commodities, and a slow expansion through the building of settlements and cities, harbor ports and armies, and eventually Metropolises that all combined, cumulatively, rack you up enough points to be the first to reach 10 or 15 or whatever set point you and your opponents decided as the winning number prior to the game. And strangely enough, this calm game of trading, of rolling dice, of exchanging cards, is absolutely wild.

The iPhone app for Catan is a very different playing experience from the board game. I realize I’m biased toward the more tactile, palpable feel of a board game (I haven’t played the online version just yet, so I cannot draw a comparison there), but the iPhone version of Catan does have a few notable and distinct differences that change the feel of the game. The board, upon cursory first look, is the same, and you have all the pieces necessary to Catan, but I noted that this app is more an adaptation of the original game, Settlers of Catan, and is called The First Island. In this iPhone incarnation, the objective is to get the most victory points by building settlements and upgrading to cities, all while stalling robbers and having a pair of dice roll your fate. Here’s a brief rundown of the game. The board is a giant hexagon, with many different hexagon tiles inside representing different resource masses. You collect resources with your settlements, and later, cities, which you place at the connecting corners, or axes, of these hexagons, by rolling the dice to hopefully correspond with a number on one of your tiles. The different resources are lumber (or wood), grain (or wheat), wool (or sheep), brick and ore. Each of these resources must be collected in order to build structures and expand; for whatever resource you do not collect – whether because you do not have a settlement next to a resource and cannot collect, or because the dice haven’t been rolling in that resource’s favor – you have the option to trade with your fellow players, or, if completely desperate and sufficiently stocked, you may trade in with the bank (overseas transactions, for suspension of disbelief) at a 4:1 ratio, for example, trading in 4 grain for 1 lumber. For your first expansion, you’ll want to build a road connecting to your initial road (each player places down one road per the one settlement and one city each player must place down strategically before the start of the game), since each settlement must have a blank axis point in between (must be situated two spaces away). To do this, you must first gather one lumber and one brick, as these are the resources necessary to construct a road. Later on, to build a settlement, you must have one each of wool, lumber, brick and grain. To upgrade to a city, you must possess three grain and two ore. What I’ve noticed is there never fails to be one scant resource per game – in my experience it’s usually brick or ore – which is a testament to the complexity of the game’s setup: no matter what, there will be a resource monopoly, and no matter what, trading is a quarrelsome but necessary task. Better shape up on your domestic relations to keep up your GDP.

Much like in Risk, the dice roll in this game predicts your economic outpouring, since the numbers rolled reflect what resources you’ll gather for that turn. In the board game, it’s all too easy to lose track of what’s rolled, and every now and then – especially when you’re a noob – you’ll miss out on some resources. In iPhone Catan, the game automatically sorts your cards, eliminating this risk, and thereby downplaying player faults that normally play a crucial role in your success. Another interesting difference involves the dice rolling further. Whenever my friends and I play Catan, it becomes apparent very quickly that based on our individual rolling styles, we tend to roll very predictable batches of numbers. Human predictability is overcome in the iPhone version, because computerized algorithms prevent any formulaic movement inherent to your hand shake. Normally, this adds an interesting, albeit frustrating element to the board game, as we tend to choose numbers on the board that reflect our most empirically evidenced rolls, oftentimes choosing two of the same number just so we can reap double the benefits from, say, a 6, we know our friend Mike will roll continuously. In the iPhone version, however, this strategy would be folly, since rolls are utterly, utterly random and you’ll want the greatest variety in numbers possible, to cover as many rolling outcomes as possible. Are you enjoying the game yet? If you’re completely befuddled – I don’t blame you – don’t sweat it. There are plenty of friendly tutorials in the app.

Normally, my friends and I play the Cities & Knights expansion, which tacks on a whole other level of technology upgrades for cities, commodity usage, barbarian attacks, and bonus points for attaining the status of Harbor Master or Defender of Catan or Longest Road. It’s a more multi-tiered game, if you can surmise this, with the ability to expand up to 6 players, and so in our general acceptance of this standard of gameplay, we tend to let the original Settlers of Catan drift to the wayside, delegating it the more simple version with much less masterful strategizing. To make up for this deficit, both Settlers of Catan and The First Land iPhone version contain Development Cards, purchased with a set combination of resources (one ore, one wool, one grain), and a Robber who you must move on the roll of a 7, both of which add some dimension to an otherwise fairly flat game. The Robber is pretty basic: a 7 is rolled, you move him, steal from an adjacent opponent’s property, and any opponent who holds more than 7 cards in his hand must discard half. It’s a sticky situation for sure, and other expansions of Catan allow you to build city walls to protect your card stock – not so in this game. Make sure to collect and spend wisely, since snap expenditures often leave you with a winning stride ahead of the competition. As for the Development Cards, you may buy as many development cards as you can afford (they’re assigned randomly), but you can only play a recently purchased development card on your next turn, and a maximum of one development card can be played per turn. And, of course, the card is removed from the board once it is played. So, really, it doesn’t add much further complexity to the game, especially with there only being five different types of card: Knight (move the robber and steal a resource from the owner of an adjacent settlement or city), Year of Plenty (select 2 resources of your choice from the bank), Road Building (build 2 roads free of charge), Monopoly (other players must give you all their cards of any resource you want), and Victory Point (self-explanatory).

In essence, the gameplay is very similar to Settlers of Catan, with any differences being negligible. I did mention the dice rolling changes the feel of the game, in its predictive qualities, but what truly changes the game for me is the presence of these colorful A.I. characters, each with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Some people quibble over the easy nature of the A.I., or how they get lucky rolls in their favor, but when has strategy game A.I. ever been any good? They’re usually too easy on the easy setting, or too hard on the hard settings. There’s usually no middle ground. At least in this game each character has a star rating in terms of expansion, aggression and skill, and there are 8 opponents to choose from. If I have any quarrels with this game it’d be two things: no multiplayer wifi or online and slow gameplay. I mean, seriously? No online multiplayer? What kind of modern game is this? A computer opponent will never be as dynamic as a live one, so this just tacks on further limitations to any already watered-down version of Catan. But, what really got to me was how you’re forced to sit through the A.I.’s turn, watching him trade and sort through his cards, as if he were a live opponent. I’m willing to wait with a live game, I understand people need to think, deliberate over their actions, but a computer opponent? It takes them, what, a nanosecond to process? Sure, in the latest update you can change this animation speed to “turbo” but why not just offer the option to turn it off? To skip the opponent A.I. animation. It’s completely purposeless, and only makes the game drag. Honestly, this feature leaves me less desirous of playing the game.

But, what can I say? I love Catan. I love playing the board game and getting together with friends, directing insults and curses at one another, and then rubbing victory in one another’s faces. The real beauty in board games is the communal aspect, the willingness to devote a whole four hours to playing with your friends, possibly with beer and food in tow, and a smidgen of real, honest to god strategy. Until Catan adds some multiplayer options, it can’t hold a candle to the board game. It probably never will. But, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a single player rendition of Catan on my own time, to improve my skills. And what Catan player wouldn’t enjoy that?

Wooden Labyrinth 3D by Elias Pietila is one such game, taking the premise of the original wooden labyrinth game and placing it on the iPhone with cool, new visuals. The first game I ever played on the iPhone was Labyrinth by Codify AB, and I remember being completely mesmerized by the fluid movements the ball would take with every tilt and turn of the iPhone, sending it careening into holes of no return, or bouncing it placidly off wooden walls with a delicate and soft, whisper of a tilt from my wrist. In its original version, Labyrinth showed a tiny black ball, with thin wooden walls and thin pathways that effectively reminded me of the aerial standpoint one takes with a big, physical box of the game (I had one of those old ones, with knobs to tilt it this way and that). With newer updates, however, the game made the ball larger, more silver and accented, and the wood took on a lighter and more artificial feel. Sometimes, I even think the gameplay zone may have been reduced.

With Labyrinth 3D, I grew a renewed interest in the game, because it improved upon other iPhone labyrinth games with its three dimensional movements that mime the wooden gameboard – if you had you been using it. As you tilt to move the ball, rather than having the walls be static, immobile, the walls shift angles in correlation with the way you tilt the iPhone, giving you the illusion of playing the physical board. I guess you could say it adds “dimension” to the game (oh haha, I know). Aside from the new, pseudo 3D visuals, and some romantic, mind hazing Spanish guitar music, gameplay is much the same – I mean, how much can you really delineate from the original game? You view the wooden board from above, and move your ball around, avoiding the holes that drop you below, so you may safely plop your marble ball into the checkered end hole to the next level. What’s neat is whenever a ball falls through a hole, you glimpse a sight of it as it rolls to the other side, its ghostly image just barely visible through other holes.

Whenever a level is completed, your stats are shown in a simple text message – your time, your streak of endless levels beaten, and your endless average time, with a prompt to either play the level again (you competitive speed freak, you), or to play the next level. I was particularly happy with a speed of 12 seconds for one level, but that kind of quickness is hard to achieve in the later levels, where more holes abound, in stickier situations. Generally, if you’re a speed demon, have a lead foot, get monthly speeding tickets in your flashy red car, it’s best to think in terms of angles: much like a pool table, the angle at which you hit the ball has a grand effect on your ability to predict its future movement. It’s all geometry, folks. However, slowness and a steady hand does benefit you later in the game when holes are placed in areas where a speedy ricochet off the wall will land you in a hole and back to the beginning. So long as you don’t have delirium tremens, Parkinson’s, or just a bad case of the shakes, your steady hand will deftly stop your ball mid-flight and turn it left and right in swooping lines to strategically avoid black holes. Any game that requires this kind of physical and mental concentration is engaging enough to be consuming.

The free version whetted my appetite just fine, but if you’re in need of more and more levels, then the paid version is not too bad at $2.99. Besides, buying the full version might rid you of the annoying paid advertisements that interrupt your endless playing time every so often with men flexing their ripped muscles. Don’t worry, you can have them too. Other than that, the Spanish guitar does get a bit cheesy after awhile – I started picturing hairy-chested men with roses in their mouths – but it’s nothing a simple tinkering with the volume controls or silent button can’t cure. Next time the Bay Bridge closes down and remains closed down for an entire Halloween weekend, and you’re stuck in two hour traffic for a normally less than one hour route, just whip out labyrinth and have the satisfaction of navigating tricky situations to an actual end goal.

If you have an iPhone, you can play against others over your network, if you have an iPod Touch, you have to be connected to Wi-fi. Or, you have the option for Pass and Play, which allows you to play with one friend on your one device.

I’ve found this app to be great for those who haven’t yet been initiated into the iPhone universe. It’s a classic game that many people have played and are familiar with so dragging the letters to the board is intuitive.

Officially Words with Friends is my lazy Sunday app. My girlfriend and I play it throughout the day as we are sitting at a coffee shop or hanging at the house. Words With Friends hits the mark multiple times.

Successful Features:

• The game
• The ads
• Random opponent

The game is an obvious winner as it’s proven to hold popularity with similar style games. This one is even better because there are more special boxes where you can get triple letter scores, double word scores, etc (I’ll save you and won’t list all of them).

Why would I possibly list the ads as a successful feature? The system is quite smart. After each move you see an ad and can either be linked to the ad’s website, or disregard it and keep playing. They don’t really get annoying and during a game you may see 20 or more ads, but this isn’t disruptive as you just pass the game after your turn while the ad is displayed.

I also really appreciate the Random Opponent feature for when I’m really craving a game and their isn’t anyone within arms reach to help me out with my craving. Now we can enable players everywhere. There’s also a chat feature fi you want to talk to someone.

What I look forward to in an Update:

• Better push notifications when it is your turn.
• Previous games no longer listed on main screen

Sometimes I need to check back again and again to force the app to reload. This can be annoying when I’m playing a random game with someone. If I wait too long, they loose interest and no longer play their turns as often as I’d like.

I’m not sure if the previous games need to be listed in the menu, but it doesn’t really bother me yet. Of course, if I had 100 games, that would bother me. Maybe just use a link to a separate page where previous games are listed. Just a thought.

Bottom Line:

This is a great game! Go for it and you won’t regret it. I play once every few days and if you’re anything like me you’ll find it to be a great way to have a five minute vacation from the world.

I tried out Jamzu against the computer as I was friendless at the time and didn’t want to tweet “Does anyone wanted to Jamzu online?”. I jumped into the game and initially was hit by an onslaught of moves that I could not make, so I backtracked and found the “HELP” section which I read as “HEY IDIOT! HERE ARE THE INSTRUCTIONS” (I’m glad the developer went with the former title – plus it allows for a larger font since it’s much shorter).

Brief Game Instructions:

Race your runners (red or blue pieces depending on your side) across the board and block your opponent with the jammers (black pieces). The jammers are both your allies and your enemies as both you and your enemy can move them. They move diagonally and can riccochette off other jammers and the sides. Runners can only move forward.

It’s much simpler to briefly read through the instructions and begin to play.

Commendable Options

• Hints
• Game play
• Mono vs. Computer, Mono vs. Mono (via internet)
• 8 games can be paused at the same time
• Different difficulty levels

Many of the options that Jamzu offers ought to be exemplary in all iPhone and iPod Touch board game apps. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, which makes me want to scream from the rooftops, “Bravo Jamzu!” This did not happen of course as I had neither ladder, nor the realization that these were all to be praised. As with many successfully designed apps, the features are so seamless and logical that it takes a moment to stand back and notice that this is exactly as it ought to be.

The game play of Jamzu is quick to learn as the true value of this game (and most good board games) lies in the strategy you must learn. I commend Jamzu on the hints as these delve not only into immediate moves, but also will suggest strategies. In Jamzu, the help section is your friend.

Soon you may invite your friends to download Jamzu as well. You don’t have detain your Jamzu battles to robots, as you can play up to eight games at a time (four single player games, and four in Local WiFi mode). If I had four friends who would play this, I might consider becoming the Jamzu master. As for now, I’ll probably stick with one game versus a computer (for ninja-Jamzu training), and a second to beat the socks off my unsuspecting girlfriend.

Future Changes

I pulled some material from the developer’s website and found this to be more promising than my usual Changes section filled with what I’ve noticed. This game has been done so well that the only changes I would like to see in addition to what the developer has listed below is a different look to the game. Maybe offering different “skins” for the board, pieces, overall game look. This is a minor change though, as aesthetic differs per individual and Jamzu is done very well.

Some features that will be showing up, sooner or later:

:::: Move Clocks. Choice of 30, 20, 15, 10 and maybe even 5 second (ouch!) move clock. Move clock will be optional.

:::: Doubling Cube. When playing for points, the doubling cube in Jamzu would work very much the same as in backgammon.

:::: Color Themes. Some choices in addition to the classic red/blue/black.

:::: Character Themes. Fun little animated character icons for your runners and jammers. Carrying the themes over to the lane control x marks, board, animation, and other areas.

:::: Stronger AI. The current AI is pretty tough, but we’ll always be trying to make it stronger. This may involve things like genetic algorithms to train the computer player, and/or neural nets, as well as various improvements to the current algorithm.

:::: Localized Versions. The ones we would like to start with first are likely German, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and French. More would follow later.

Promotion Codes:

L6A6K97XLL3N

6LHYJ9J9HL7T

4Y7PL4MERJ76

*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

Trivial Pursuit by Hasbro has long been a favorite of mine. Nothing like the pursuit of random factoids, general knowledge, popular culture and current events, I say! It’s nice to know that even those who possess little to no skills for those otherwise mentally challenging games of strategy, those who read and retain information on all sorts of seemingly frivolous but still impressive knowledge, can reap winning streaks in Trivial Pursuit.

Released for the iPhone by EA Games this past April, Trivial Pursuit is now portable and more brightly fun than ever, with different gameplay modes to keep you enthralled. Classic mode is self-explanatory, involving the original gameplay of collecting colored wedges more quickly than your opponent, to answer a final question on the center tile to win. Pursuit mode is more like a race, where you quickly make your way to the finish line as you answer questions at lightning speed. Each game board contains a Start and Finish line separated by question tiles of the six different categories. But, beware: the shortest path to the finish line may not be the easiest one, as based on in-game statistics, Trivial Pursuit may arrange the shortest path with questions from the category where you perform the worst. There are also two multiplayer options, one called Pass N Play where two or more players share the same iPhone device, passing it back and forth, or multiplayer through wifi where you join the “bonjour” network..

Generally, Trivial Pursuit is played in Classic mode, where you collect wedges by answering questions correctly, and to win the game, once all the required wedges have been collected, you head back to the center tile to answer one random, final question. Each turn consists of rolling a die and moving to a tile of your choice. Shake the iPhone to roll the die or simply tap the die, then tap it again to land on a number. A cool spinning graphic is shown for the die, and the board itself is resplendent in bright, nearly neon colors.  Choose your destination by tapping on a highlighted tile – all the possible landing spots will be slightly elevated, highlighting your options of travel once your die lands on a number. Answer the question correctly – bright, happy noises will be heard, along with little black Trivial Pursuit icons floating like cherubs -  and you get to roll again, indefinitely, until you choose a wrong answer – where a crunching, crashing sound is heard with smoke and steam angrily coming from the obviously incorrect answer.

The game board contains question tiles of the six, classic trivial pursuit categories (Entertainment, Sports & Leisure, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature, Geography, History), along with headquarter tiles, re-roll tiles and a center tile. Landing on a headquarter tile and answering a question correctly rewards you with a wedge of the given category – should you desire a shorter game or simply an easier one, you may adjust this option under the Game settings to have you receive a wedge any time you answer a question correctly, regardless of whether you’re on a headquarter tile or not.

To customize the difficulty of the game even further, you can decide the competence of your AI opponent – ranging from ignorant to lucky genius – and before starting the game you may customize your own player’s look, there being many funny profile pictures to choose from, all of which have a slight LEGO feel to them (I chose the pirate with the moustache, since he slightly resembled my boyfriend had he more defined facial hair and a penchant for wearing pirate hats). You may also customize the length of time to answer a question (6 seconds being the shortest, followed by 9 and 12, with 15 being the longest), and how many wedges it takes to win, just in case you want to play a game that doesn’t make you tear your hair out as much.

There really are no complaints to be had about Trivial Pursuit for the iPhone, unless you had issues with the game to begin with (“SERIOUSLY? WHO WOULD KNOW THAT?”) Frankly, I’ve always loved Trivial Pursuit, it’s great for game nights with friends, and should you not have the board game itself, using your iPhone is easier and just as transportable – perhaps more so – than those unsightly, plastic, digital versions of Trivial Pursuit and other games you find in Target, Toys R Us, and other places.  I can’t think of how the game could be more simple and aesthetically pleasing, and the different play options improve upon the original gameplay. For $4.99, I think it’s a good bargain, since most board games are up in the $40 range, but take this recommendation seriously if you’re an avid fan of trivia and knowledge, and love the original game, because otherwise you may eventually tire of the game and regret the money spent.