Archive for the 'Strategy' Category

Direct Link : Seven Seas
Publisher : Astraware

Price : $14.95

Rating : 6 out of 10

Seven Seas is one of those games that has an extremely simple premise, yet somehow manages to drag you into that one more go feeling. You start the game by selecting one of two levels, either Easy or Hard. You are then presented by a 9 by 9 grid. The grid largely represents an area of the sea. Some squares are used to represent islands and in each corner is a whirl pool, more of these later.

You play the game by selecting an adjacent square to move to. Once you make your move, the other ships on the grid make theirs. If one of the other ships manages to land on your square, one of your three lives is taken away. Lose all three lives and the game is over. If you find yourself with limited movement options and can manage to make it to one of the 4 whirl pools, you will be transported to a random location on the grid.

Of course you do have some aces up your sleeve. The early enemies are a little dense, so it is possible to draw enemy ships onto islands and sometimes onto one of the other enemy ships, thus sinking them and taking them out of the game. You can also decide not to make a move and instead fire your cannons on either side of your ship. The two downsides to that, are that your cannons will only sink ships within 3 squares of your ship and you can only fire upon ships that are to the sides of your ship. Also any of the enemy ships that you do not manage to kill, will move one square closer. If you manage to sink a ship, it is replaced with a skull and cross bones and from that point on, performs in the same way as an island.

Now if this is all beginning to sound familiar, that’s probably because this game is almost identical to a game called Daleks, which was very popular between 10 and 15 years ago. That’s not to say that this game has little going for it. To the contrary, it does play very well. The graphics are a little sparse, but very well done. The music is also very piratesque, but admittedly it does begin to drive you bonkers after a while.

Conclusion : Seven Seas is one of those great games, where you want to kill 5 to 10 minutes. It’s game play is simple to get into, but soon progresses in difficulty. I think the only major downside is the cost. At $14.95, there are many other games that give you lots more gameplay. I managed to buy my copy at a discount last Christmas and for that it makes a great addition to my collection.

Direct Link : Sudoku
Publisher : Master Mobile Solutions

Price : $14.95

Rating : 9 out of 10

Do you Sudoku? If you haven’t heard of the new puzzle craze that’s sweeping the nation, then you sure are missing out on a great way to whittle away the hours.

Wikipedia describes Sudoku thus:

“Sudoku is a logic-based placement puzzle. The aim of the puzzle is to enter a number, usually from 1 through 9, in each cell of a grid, most frequently a 9x—9 grid made up of 3x—3 subgrids (called “regions”), starting with various numerals given in some cells (the “givens”)”

You can read the full Wikipedia entry here.

Although the rules seem deceptively simple, the game takes a while to get into, if you haven’t played this kind of puzzle before, your perseverance is greatly rewarded.

I first came across Sudoku puzzles in the newspaper, but didn’t pay them much attention. It was only when my boss mentioned them, that my interest was piqued again. I did a search on the net to find something I could play on my Dell Axim X50v and didn’t find much choice, however the program I found is in a word outstanding.

Sudoku from Master Mobile Solutions is truly a excellent implementation. With 6 levels of difficulty, there is something for everyone. My stats so far are as follows:

Simple - Completed 7 - Best Time 00:08:06
Easy - Completed 2 - Best Time 00:08:08
Medium - Completed 3 - Best Time 00:13:55
Hard - Completed 1 - Best Time 00:23:10
Very Hard - Completed 0
Sudoku Master - Completed 0 (no surprise there)

That’s not to say I’ve only played 13 games, cos I’ve played many more than that, but so far I’ve only completed the 13 as described above. In my own defense though, I am trying to stick to the harder levels, only dipping back into the easier levels to boost my confidence.

As well as the traditional Sudoku variants, there are also picture variants, but I’m quite happy to stick to the traditional kind at the moment.

The play area is just what you’d expect from a Sudoku puzzle, but you have many options to change the look, by selecting different number styles. Me personally, I’m using the “Plain Shadowed” number style, but there are another 9 more colorful options to choose from.

The play itself is very intuitive. Click on the square in which you wish to select a number and a small grid will appear with the 9 numbers to choose from as well as a color selector, where you can select the color of the number you are placing. This is particularly useful when you are playing the more advanced games and you want to make a string of guess moves, to test the waters, knowing that you can undo what you did by removing all the numbers of the color you specified.

You can also switch the mode of the grid by clicking on the little grid icon that appears in the selection screen. This allows you to select up to 9 number for placement, they appear as if in a small grid in the number space you selected, you can see what I mean by looking at the picture on the left. This can aid in the playing of the game, but personally I find it a bit confusing.

No review can really give this game the justice it deserves. Since purchasing this game, I have found several other versions and have indeed tried them, but I much prefer the MasterSoft version. Be careful when choosing a Sudoku game to purchase. A few of them I’ve seen only give you a limited number of puzzles to solve. This version however generates games on the fly, which gives you millions of combination to play at a skill level you specify. You can also enter your own puzzle, which means you can play the puzzle printed in newspapers and magazines.

Conclusion : This is one game I don’t want to be without on my Pocket PC. So much so that I actually have the cab file on the compact flash memory, so should I have a major crash, I can at least reinstall, without having to return to my main PC. A definite buy.