iPhone solitaire apps experience? Other iPhone games other than monkeyballs?

[jeff3f]

Hey, I'm sorry for soiling the QoT forum with this sort of game post--but as Dennis Miller said, let he with a free hand cast the first stone.

I'm going to buy one of the solitaire games; I played the heck out of an unknown (don't remember) one for Palm that's been around since 1998 or 1999 and was free. No free solitaire on itunes though.

I was wondering if anyone else had taken the plunge and tried out any of the available solitaire offerings.

For me, I spend most of my time in freecell (windows) or spider/spiderette. Critical is the ability to listen to music (best if one can control ipod music w/o leaving the software--probably can via a double tap on the home button but I haven't tried it).

I'm going to email the SilverSpaceship guy to tell him I'd probably sell one of my children (the one who cries most today) for a port of Chromatron for iPhone.

[slantz]

Sorry to play the part of the shill, but I know we released Bejeweled for iPhone yesterday. Not sure if that's to your taste or not, but since you asked....

[jeff3f]

Sorry to play the part of the shill, but I know we released Bejeweled for iPhone yesterday. Not sure if that's to your taste or not, but since you asked....

Bejeweled is always fun, though the arstechnica mini review says it's a bit stripped down--will probably get it anyway.

I'm looking at Solitaire city--I need to track down the game I played on Palm because if that gets ported this its a no brainer...

[Gendal]

Did you check the Hardware forum here? Somebody was bitching about the solitaire game I think, or maybe that was another forum. Anyways at least one of them is bad. Sorry, not much help, just be careful and do some research before pulling the trigger.

[Wholly Schmidt]

I can't really recommend Bomberman at all. It's very very no frills, no multiplayer, boring single player. It's still Bomberman, it's no Bomberman Zero debacle, but there's no compelling reason to have it on your iPhone. Controls are equal parts cool when working, frustrating when misreading slight moves/

[jeff3f]

Hey Gendal--I looked but didn't see the post about solitaire bitching. Which one was it?

Or could the bitcher please repost a few bitches here? last time I checked, the shit that happens inside the screen ain't hardware--that's the dented (caused by the case--protruding bump of injection molded plastic--damn those 'contour' folks to hell) aluminum thing with cheek grease and crApple symbology on the back. :)

I'm just bitter because Apple deleted my sole post to their forums--it was an unsolicited feature request for 1) icon managment in itunes; 2) add new apps to the last (rightmost) 'home' page so as not to disturb the other most useful icons that live on "page 1"; 3) fix the bug where all icons are compressed/mashed to take up as little space as possible (used to be OK to keep only a few icons per screen, in 1.1.4); and permit other patterns for icons (currently it behaves like the windows desktop with "autosort" turned on). I also used inflammatory language about what a glaring fault it was and that Apple must have been totally asleep at the switch (or too busy counting their money) to not notice such a big issue.

Back to the thread. I still didnt' buy solitaire, but that's because I started playing the game with the duke nukem esque icon (looks like a radioactive sign, it's 6 triangles (black and yellow) arranged to look like radioactive sign). I forgot its name already. It hard crashed my phone when I got up to get the landline phone (ironic).

One of the solitaire games has a demo in that you can play an iphone-like version on the web site--if faithful would be nice for figuring out if it has the basic functionality--probably less useful for knowing whether it's johnny on the spot or laggy.

To the maestro (the fidgit guy)--hurry up with the round up--and do a special feature on solitaire games.

Of course, we're talkin ten bucks--I've dropped more than that on a crappy martini before--so I don't know why I'm having such a hard time picking one of the better-looking games. Can always delete it and warn others away.

So I'll go buy the solitaire cities one after I play some more of the radioactive triangles game. after. just 15 more minutes. you get the idea.

[Skipper]

So far I'm enjoying:
Soduko (I've tried the 2.99 verison and the 7.99 version. The cheaper on is nice, the more expensive just has more flash.)
Solitaire City (multiple solitaire card games, online score posting, etc)
AuroraFeint - A strange mix of puzzle with RPG elements. Like PuzzleQuest Lite
Enigmo - Puzzle game, get the liquids to another location using tools
Advent - Yessir, I'll take classic text games for free.

[Gendal]

So far I'm enjoying:
AuroraFeint - A strange mix of puzzle with RPG elements. Like PuzzleQuest Lite

It's surprisingly polished and could be lots of fun but it feels sluggish in weird spots like inventory, skill selection, etc. I can only imagine they are dynamically drawing the page every time, instead of rendering what is a static screen to a buffer.

[Skipper]

It's surprisingly polished and could be lots of fun but it feels sluggish in weird spots like inventory, skill selection, etc. I can only imagine they are dynamically drawing the page every time, instead of rendering what is a static screen to a buffer.

What threw me was the first time I slid the iphone sideways. What a cool use of the accelerometer.

[Vesper]

Things I've bought so far:
Solitaire City - Very well done, and a ton of options. I picked this over Platinum & Mondo.
Sudoku - Been debating between Platinum & EA's.. leaning toward EA's since a bit more simple but still nicely done.
Enigmo - Enjoying this a lot
Motion-X Poker - Best app I've bought so far. Very simple time killer and extremely well polished.

[The Other Guy]

Isn't there a Tetris app? Anyone tried it?

[Gordon_Bleu]

I bought Texas Hold 'Em (the Apple one), I have no idea what I'm doing but it's very well made.

[Alan Dunkin]

Bought Bejeweled 2; only played the original, so this one does have some new "features" to it (to me), but yeah pretty much all the same. Background images and transitions from level to level are kinda cool (wormhole like). Added some explosive and lightning effects for specials.

--- Alan

[DennyA]

I decided to browse the store from the phone and ended up picking up Trism; pretty cool Bejeweled-style game that uses the accelerometer. Just picked up Enigmo, but haven't tried it yet. Looks cool.

[Chuck Jordan]

I still just can't get my head around the idea of paying for a solitaire game. Sure, I've paid more than 10 bucks on stupider stuff, and I'm all for supporting smaller developers, but the principle of it bugs me. I'm in the developer program, and I've written simple versions of Klondike & FreeCell for Cocoa before, so I'm thinking of just porting those over and putting it up on the store for free. (But I'm wary of having to deal with customer support, and getting the card art is the hardest part).

As for the other games, so far the only ones I've paid for are:
Bejeweled 2: This time it's not Bejeweled 1. Just a solid port, probably the best game I've gotten (haven't tried Enigmo yet).
Monkey Ball: Looks fine, controls are lousy and frustrating, can't imagine playing this in public. I wish I'd tried it out on somebody else's phone first.

[jeff3f]

a good solitaire game is essential for a handheld. the nameless palm one (I can't remember what it's called for the life of me and I'm too lazy to scour the morass of olde files in my basement PC--because I surely still have my Palm apps folder in there, somewhere)--that nameless palm solitaire once kept me sane on an overnight flight delay in the godforsaken hell hole that is BWI airport. Thank god my batteries held out, and when those died I'd packed extra (this was an original Palm Pilot Professional and it burned batteries the old fashioned way).

So I'm OK with paying for solitaire--that's what bejeweled and tetris are, just blocks or jewels instead of cards.

I been playing Trism, I think I'll get the solitaire cities soon--but not yet. Bejeweled is probably on the list too, but I confess that my Bejeweled cravings were largely slaked by hours of PuzzleQuest action.

I emailed the Chromatron guy--ports of that game would probably be the last games I would ever need to buy.

[shang]

<disclaimer>I work for the developer</disclaimer>, but De Blob has been getting good reviews in the AppStore, so I though people looking for new iPhone games might be interested in checking it out.

[theblackw0lf]

More people need to play Dizzy Bee.

http://toucharcade.com/2008/07/12/ig...-and-polished/

The premise is you're this bee gathering fruit, and you use the accelerometer to move around the level, using gravity to move you around (kind of like Loco Roco). It looks deceptively simple at first glance, but once enemies are introduced it becomes quite challenging as you not only have to navigate obstacles, but also adjust to the fact that using the accelerometer also affects the enemies as well.

The producer of GDC has been raving about it. And for $3 it's a steal

Also, Touch Arcade (link above) is a great source for iPhone games.

[epthegeek]

I'm looking at Solitaire city--

After a lot of review reading and hand-wringing, this is the one I decided to jump on. It's very nice. The selection is good without being so damn large it's silly (watched a video of cover-flow selecting through 100 games on Platinum Solitare .. no thanks). The art/animation/presentation are solid.

I've seen reports of people having it crash a lot, but that has not been my experience (on the iPod Touch).

[epthegeek]

Sorry to play the part of the shill, but I know we released Bejeweled for iPhone yesterday. Not sure if that's to your taste or not, but since you asked....

Hey Shill man, is Bookworm Adventures, or even just Bookworm original in the works for the iphone? My wife is a word-game fiend and would love to have that.

[Joel]

<disclaimer>I work for the developer</disclaimer>, but De Blob has been getting good reviews in the AppStore, so I though people looking for new iPhone games might be interested in checking it out.

Grabbed it. It better not suck!

[theblackw0lf]

<disclaimer>I work for the developer</disclaimer>, but De Blob has been getting good reviews in the AppStore, so I though people looking for new iPhone games might be interested in checking it out.

I'm wondering why the developer went with a 2D version (similar to the DS), instead of the full 3d version that will be on the Wii. Click below for a demonstration

http://www.fun-motion.com/physics-games/de-blob/

[Wholly Schmidt]

Because it's an iPhone and not a Wii?

[mandarin]

I'm wondering why the developer went with a 2D version (similar to the DS), instead of the full 3d version that will be on the Wii. Click below for a demonstration

http://www.fun-motion.com/physics-games/de-blob/

The original student developers aren't working on any of the new De Blob products, sadly...

[theblackw0lf]

Because it's an iPhone and not a Wii?

True, but I think the 3d version looks more appealing, and I'm sure the IPhone is capable of handling it.

[Wholly Schmidt]

True, but I think the 3d version looks more appealing, and I'm sure the IPhone is capable of handling it.

Well, the link wasn't working for me when I first wrote my reply and I was just assuming it should be obvious the iPhone doesn't come close to the Wii's hardware power.

Having seen the video now, I'll grant that's a pretty simple looking Wii game, but I'm still betting it's beyond the iPhone's capabilities. It may just be that developers haven't had enough time with it, but they didn't even make the ball 3D in Monkey Ball, which is considerably simpler than what's going on in that video.

[Kadath]

Aurora and Scrabble is all you need to know.

[shang]

I'm wondering why the developer went with a 2D version (similar to the DS), instead of the full 3d version that will be on the Wii. Click below for a demonstration

Time constraints. The iPhone version is based on the mobile version of De Blob that's coming out for a large selection of handsets (not all of which have 3D capabilities).

EDIT: And I'm not sure how powerful the GPU in the iPhone actually is.

[theblackw0lf]

Time constraints. The iPhone version is based on the mobile version of De Blob that's coming out for a large selection of handsets (not all of which have 3D capabilities).

EDIT: And I'm not sure how powerful the GPU in the iPhone actually is.

Actually, I'm not even sure it has a GPU.

[StGabe]

It has a tile-based GPU. It's pretty powerful, arguably more powerful than a PSP by specs although I think in practice it is still a ways behind.