App O' The Mornin': Words With Friends Review

Grade: A
Price: free and $2 versions

After doing the news post on Zynga's acquisition of Newtoy, I realized I'd never done a full review of Words With Friends. I don't play it that much, simply because I'm pretty wired into Scrabble and its ability to allow play from iOS to Facebook. That's not to say I don't like it: I do.

Words With Friends is a very good game, with effective matchmaking and connectivity. The interface works well, and the game loads quickly and functions smoothly. Unlike some of the confusing setup issues with Scrabble's matching system, which requires you to begin creating a new game in order to continue an old one, Words With Friends just pops you right into the action.

You can get into a game almost instantly with either friends or strangers. There's an integrated text chat system, and the ability to play 20 games simultaneously. These don't have to be "live" games: push notifications let you know when your opponent has made a move, so games can be played over the course of minutes, hours, days, or even weeks.

The bonus square distribution is different in Words With Friend than it is in Scrabble, which requires an adjustment in strategy for those of us hardwired into Scrabble. My style tends heavily towards board management and blocking, and the WWF layout is different enough that it takes some time to adjust. The point values are also different in places, with J worth 10 points in WWF rather than 8 as it is in Scrabble.

Some pretty obvious features are missing. A point count for the letters in your current move is mysteriously absent. Sure, you can do this in your head, but why should you have to? There's also no shuffle button for your tray. I like Scrabble's ability to just shuffle your tiles around as you look for ideas. Words With Friends allows you to shake in order to shuffle, but this is needlessly awkward when a button would do fine.

For multiplayer word gaming, Words With Friends does work better than Scrabbles multiplayer functions, and perhaps the new connection with Zynga will bring a WWF app to Facebook.

NOTE: The free version is burdened with an aggressive advertising feature, which is removed in the pay version. 

Evilcorp Acquires Words With Friends

I've made my disdain for FarmVille creators Zynga pretty clear, and now the thing I feared is beginning to happen. Zynga is using their money and power to scoop up good companies. Newtoy, creators of the popular Words With Friends and Chess with Friends, is the first victim. Zynga promptly renamed them Zynga with Friends. I only wish I was making that up.

Zynga head Marc Pinkus allegedly considered renaming them Zynga With Friends With Benefits, but nobody could figure out what the benefits were, or how many Zynga coins they'd cost.

Newtoy also made their own FarmWille ripoff called We Rule. Compared to other compulsion loop games, it really wasn't bad, in the same way that Attack of Clones wasn't as bad as The Phantom Menace.

The Games With Friends network created by Newtoy is the most popular social gaming system on iOS systems, and Zynga has the most popular social gaming titles on other systems, so it's a pretty natural match. No word on whether the Zynga model (Step 1: Steal, Step 2: Lie, Step 3: Screw your customers) will be applied to the "With Friends" line.

Maybe we'll have to buy some Zynga coins in order to get a "Q". Or perhaps come back in 15 minutes to see if our "Z" is ready.

Giving: Mercy Corps

One charity I forgot to mention in my Getting and Giving post was Mercy Corps which, like Heifer, does tremendous work around the world. They have a special gift program that allows you to make donations for specific things, such as outfitting a classroom, planting a field of rice, or giving someone a sewing machine. A card is then sent to the recipient notifying them what was donated in their name. It's a concrete symbol of something good, and beats the hell out of that sweater you were looking at.

It's like The Human Fund, only for real.

Jane Austen's Word Game

In Chapter 41 of Jane Austen's novel Emma, several of the characters use an impromptu game of anagrams to convey thoughts and feelings they cannot express. In the case of Mr. Churchill, he offers a kind of oblique apology to Miss Fairfax by spelling the word "blunder," in acknowledgment of his mistake, and then proceeds to taunt her by spelling "Dixon," the name of another young man.

The game is played with "letters" used by Emma's young nephews for their lessons. They are probably not children's alphabet blocks, but more like Scrabble tiles. They work well for playing anagrams, which was a favorite parlor game of the English middle- and upper-classes, who delighted in puzzles and wordplay. 

Anagrams was a simple game of turning the letters of a word into another word. The characters in the novel create their words in secret, then scramble the letters and pass them to another person, who has to discover the original word. 

It's remains an easy filler game to play while waiting for others to join a game of Scrabble, or just as a fun way to help children learn their words.

Here's the entire passage from Emma, with the rest coming after the break.

"Miss Woodhouse," said Frank Churchill, after examining a table behind him, which he could reach as he sat, "have your nephews taken away their alphabets -- their box of letters? It used to stand here. Where is it? This is a sort of dull-looking evening, that ought to be treated rather as winter than summer. We had great amusement with those letters one morning. I want to puzzle you again."

Apture Bar

Some browsers may be showing a little bar at the top of the page. This is an Apture bar that allows people to search and share from within a post. I have no idea if it's useful or annoying, so if you have any feeling about it one way or another, please let me know.

App O' The Mornin': Numix Review

Grade: F
Price: free

In a career spent writing about games, you come across plenty of bad games. Most of them are badly executed, tasteless, or defective in some particular. Some are actually bad in concept (as in: who on Earth thought this was an entertaining idea for a game?), but those are fairly rare.

Numix is my new baseline for "What were you thinking?" games. Let me describe the gameplay in Numix, and see if you can find the entertaining part.

At the center of the screen is a graphic that mystifies me. It looks kind of like melted chocolate gum. My wife thinks they're supposed to be stylized mathematical symbols: plus, minus, equal, and approximately equal. That's as good a guess as any, although I'm not sure why the symbols are lodged in the middle of the screen like the wreckage of a surrealist parade float built by the MIT mathematics deparment after a wild night of psilocybin mushrooms. Oddly enough, figuring out what they were supposed to be occupied me longer and was more entertaining than the game itself. WIN!

Here's the game: numbers appear in a line at the rate of about 1 every 2 seconds. A box in the middle of the screen displays a single digit number that you can adjust upward or downward by pressing an up or down arrow. When  the number in the box matches the first number in the line, you press the "hit" button to make that number disappear. Then you .... do it again.  And again... And again...  If the line fills up, you lose.

That's it. That's all you do. I've had more fun picking ticks off my dog. Hell, at least the dog is kinda grateful afterwards, and if there's a campfire nearby you get the pleasure flicking the tick into the flames and hearing it pop. Man, that never gets old.

Numix, on the other hand, got old in about 20 seconds, which is how long it took the number line to fill up. Even the icon is ugly. It looks like a maggot puking up a dandelion.

Gameloft's Advent Calender UPDATED

UPDATE 12/2/10: Gameloft clarified today that their Advent Calendar is NOT a free game every day. It may also include links to promotional videos and other things, which makes me wonder if the Gameloft people understand this whole "gift" idea.

Gameloft is counting down the days until Christmas with a free app each day, which you can follow over on their Twitter page. Today's free game is Driver, which regularly sells for $5. A different app will be free for 24 hours each day for the next 24 days.

Crack! Bam! Dot?

photo from Project Mah Jongg

Cliches and stereotypes almost always evolve out of some truth, and such is the case with the image of the mah jongg-playing Jewish housewife. An exhibit called "Project Mah Jongg" traces this connection, and it will continue to run at The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York into January. The exhibit website is quite good, and has an large gallery of period photos as well as a schedule of special events at the exhibit.

The game was brought from China to America in the 1920s, and by the 1930s it was a genuine fad. It's difficult to trace exactly why one culture adopts a game so passionately, but there's no question that mah johngg was deeply entwined with the Jewish diaspora in America by the 1930s. The National Mah Jongg League was founded by a group of Jewish women who wanted to create a standard set of rules, and after the game's popularity faded in the rest of America, the Jewish community kept it alive. Meredith Lewis has written an article explaining the connection, which you can find right here.

Melissa Martens, curator of "Project Mah Jongg," narrates an excellent 5-minute video that summarizes the growth of the game and the ways in which is became enmeshed in Jewish-American culture.

Googling "mah jongg" can, unfortunately, lead to page after page of links to Mah Jongg Solitaire, which is a stacking game played with the tiles. It has little to do with actual mah jongg, which is really just a card game played with domino-like pieces. If you'd like to learn a bit more about the game, the wiki entry is as good a place to start as any.

App O' The Mornin': La Briscola Review

Grade: B
Price: free

Yesterday, I wrote about the popular Italian trick-taking game called Briscola. I won't rehash the rules, which can be read here. Go head, read them. I'll wait here for you.

As you can see, it's a pretty easy game to understand. If you want to test out this whole Italian playing card thing without spending any actual scratch, then Out of the Bit's simple port of Briscola is the place to start. I'm not quite sure why they added the definite article in the title, but the App itself is called "La Briscola," which means ... "The Briscola." (The word "briscola" may mean something, but the Italians aren't telling. It's the whole omerta thing.)

The port does its work and stays out of your way. There's a help file that explains the rules, and a few configuration options, but by-and-large this is a simple cards-on-a-table game with everything laid out cleanly and logically. You have three cards in front of you, a draw pile with the trump visible beneath it, three hidden cards in front of your opponent, and small area where tricks are played.

One nice feature is the array of card designs: Bresciane, Milanesi, Romagnole, Siciliane, Napoletane, Piacentine, Trevisane and standard Poker decks are all available for play. This doesn't change the game, but it does show you a nice range of traditional Italian deck designs, and really helps get you familiar with their appearance and value.

There are three difficulty levels, but I really couldn't distinguish among them. Four backgrounds are also available, and one of them isn't even hideous.

The game is free, with banner ads occasionally occupying a bar along the top of the screen. I'll never understand why publishers don't offer ad-free versions: I'd pay a buck to get rid of ads.

Gift Ideas: Getting and Giving

I use the Amazon widgets to recommend products because it's convenient, and the Amazon Affiliates program is this site's sole support. However, I also like to encourage people to buy locally when they can, and consider searching out some independent retailer. Here are a few other places to consider when you're searching for just the right gamer gift.

Getting

TaroBear's Lair: I only discovered Gary Brunger's mail order business a few weeks ago, but I'd definitely recommend it for anyone searching for imported playing cards. TaroBear stocks French, Italian, Spanish, German, Austrian, Swiss, and Tarot at reasonable prices for imports. Everything in the store is marked down until 12/23.

All Things Fun (South Jersey): This is my local game store, and they have a good stock of games and maintain a large space for gamers. Dina & Ed run a great business, located in West Berlin, NJ. If you live in Philly or South Jersey, you should check them out.

"Play in Public" Swag: Kevin Schlabach's Play in Public campaign has really taken off. The idea is to introduce people to Eurogames by playing them in public places like bookstores and coffee shops. It's a great way to get Eurogames out in the mainstream world, and now your game group can all have matching shirts so you can find each other more easily and really complete the geek tableau. (I kid, I kid...)

Great Hall Games: A reader sent me a link to this store in Austin, Texas. I've never ordered from them, so I can't vouch for their service, but their stock is quite interesting. They have a lot of pieces and historical reproductions, and a big historical miniatures business. The photos of the store make me wish I lived closer!

Funagain Games: It's hardly a small independent business, but if you can't buy local and won't buy from Amazon, then Funagain is the premier site for getting all kinds of games. They always have some sales, and their prices are usually pretty reasonable.

Games Magazine: Every Games Magazine comes with a color section of features, news, and reviews, and a newsprint section of pencil puzzles. It also gives off a pleasing scent of jasmine and lilacs, and plays Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto when the pages are riffled correctly. Please subscribe, so they can pay me. 

If anyone wants to give a shoutout to any other local game stores or small online retailers, feel free to use the comboxes. Spammers, of course, will be defenestrated. 

Giving

The truth is, we all have too much stuff already. You know it, I know it, and the people you're shopping for probably know it, even if they don't always admit it. People are suffering right now, and the best gift you can give is hope and love to another, particularly if that person is a stranger. 

Child's Play: Penny Arcade's charity provides money, games, and toys to children's hospitals throughout the world, and has become the largest charity in the game business. My children have been in the hospital, and the ability to play games was one of the best medicines.

Heifer International: One of the best charities out there, Heifer allows you to buy farm stock for poor people all over the world. Instead of just giving people money or even food, Heifer gives them the animals they need to make a sustainable living. It's a wonderful way to give.

Catholic Relief: I'm linking to Catholic Relief because I'm Catholic and they do good work. The Church remains the largest provider of charitable goods and services on the planet, and Catholic Relief gets the money where it needs to go without a lot of waste on overhead. Other religious charities, such as Samaritan's Purse and local St. Vincent de Paul Societies, are also on the front lines working with those in need.

These are just a few ideas. I'm sure you all have charities that you trust and support. I'm always inclined to give to places with the lowest overhead, or the ones closest to those in need. I never give to any group whose main function is to "raise awareness" about some pet issue, but instead focus on those who actually can make a difference. I've volunteered with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, for example, and we actually went to the homes of people in need, gave them vouchers for food from our thrift stores and pantries, helped them get housing and furniture, and paid their utility bills. In the midst of the Second Great Depression, that's where the real need lies.

Gift Ideas: Board Gaming

Here are my recommendations of board game gifts for Hanukkah and Christmas this year. (NOTE: I'm including the base set of Heroscape because this will be the last time you'll be able to buy it. The series has been discontinued.)

As always, good playing cards 1) make great stocking stuffers for any age and 2) don't have Hannah Montana on the backs.

UPDATE: Some browsers may not display the widget that's embedded above, so here's the list, in no particular order:

Dominion: Prosperity (requires Dominion), Scrabble Flash, Telestrations, Lego Creationary, Castle Ravenloft: The Board Game, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Small World: Be Not Afraid (requires Small World), Hersocape: Swarm of the Merro, and Solitaire Chess. They can all be found at Amazon, or wherever better games are sold.

Direct link to list.

Gift Ideas: Electronic Gaming

Here are my recommendations for electronic gaming purchases for Hanukkah and Christmas this year.



UPDATE: Some browsers may not display the widget that's embedded above, so here's the list, in no particular order:

Epic Mickey, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Super Scribblenauts, StarCraft II, Civilization V, Halo: Reach, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, an iPod Touch 4th Gen, Microsoft Kinect,World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the Halo Encyclopedia from DK Publishing. They can all be found at Amazon, or wherever better games are sold.

Direct link to list.

Italian Card Games: Briscola

If you buy a deck of Italian-suited cards, Briscola should be the first game you try.  Its simplicity gives you a good chance to learn the suits. It's easy, fun, and plays fast: all characteristics which have made it very popular in Italy.

There are versions for 2-5 players, as well as regional variants, but I'm just describing the 2-player version today. As with all card games, rules can be fluid, so I'm not attempting to offer a definitive version of the game: just a common one.

The Cards
Briscola is played with an 40-card Italian deck in suits of cups, coins, swords, and clubs. It may be played with an Anglo-French deck by removing the 8s, 9s, and 10s, but it loses a lot of its flavor in the process.

King of Coins: 4 points

This is a point-trick game, meaning you play to win tricks, and then add up the values of the cards you've won.

Cards have the following value:

Ace: 11 points
Three: 10 points
King (Re): 4 points
Knight (Cavalier): 3 points
Knave (Fante/Donna): 2 points
all other number cards: 0 points

The Deal
Players take turns dealing. Three cards are dealt to each player, face down.

A 7th card is placed face up under the pile of remaining cards (the stock) so that its suit can be seen. This is the trump suit.

The Play
Non-dealer leads the first trick with any card of his choosing. The other player can choose to follow suit, play a trump, or simply lay off junk (such as any number cards with a zero value). It is not necessary to follow suit, even if you can. This is an important rule to note, since it runs contrary to most American trick-taking games.

The winner takes the cards and places them in a pile on his side, then draws a replacement card from the stock. The loser also draws a replacement card. Each player should always have 3 cards in hand until the stock is depleted.

The winner of one trick leads the next trick, and so on until the stock is exhausted. The final player picks up the face-up trump card from the bottom of the deck.

Winning Tricks
Tricks are won according to the following rules:

Highest point value card in the same suit wins. If the cards are worth nothing, then highest number card wins. (This means that a 3 beats a 7, but a 6 beats a 4. Remember: a 3 is worth 10 points, while a 7, 6, or 4 are worth nothing.)

OR

Highest trump wins.

Here are some examples, with Cups acting as trump:

Player A leads with a King of Clubs. Player B follows with a 3 of Clubs. Player B wins because the Three is worth 10 points, while the King is only worth 4. Thus, B has the higher value card.

Player A leads with an Ace of Swords. Player B follows with a 2 of Cups. Player B wins because card value doesn't matter: high trump always wins, and B has the trump.

Player A leads with a 7 of Coins. Player B follows with a 5 of Coins. Player A wins. (Although both cards are worthless, the 7 is higher than the 5.)

Conclusion
When you've played through an entire deck, add up your points. It's easiest to sort cards by value, setting aside the worthless number cards and placing point cards (known as "counters") in piles according to their worth.

There are 120 points in a deck, so the person with 61 points or more is the winner.

This is a simple, fun formula with a lot of subtly to it. Finding ways to capture the opponent's cards, as well as to hold onto your own high-value cards, requires some strategy and careful timing. With only 3 cards in hand at a time, your options are limited, and the constant drawing means you never quite know what your opponent is holding.

American card players will find a certain freedom from not having to follow suit, a convention that opens up new strategic avenues. Those who value the probing, calculating element of standard trick-taking games may have trouble adapting to this more free-wheeling approach, but there's no doubt that it creates a vigorous game with more surprises. On the other hand, Cribbage players may enjoy the combination of chance, point counting, and 2-handed play.

3D Nine Men's Morris

The great game inventor Robert Abbott (Eleusis, Ultima, Epaminodas) sent along some very kind words about State of Play, as well as this illustration from a 3D Nine Men's Morris set he acquired years ago.

Click to view full size.

3D board games can be notoriously unsatisfying, but Bob says this one not only works; it's actually fun. I can see that from the illustration, which shows the traditional mills expanded into a series of nested wire-frame boxes. This is a clever design, with a logical application of dimensionality to an abstract board game. 

Not every classic game survives this kind of dimensional experimentation. 3D Chess, for instance, is not a particularly logical use of dimensionality. Adding two more planes of movement upsets the delicate balance of strategic planning and tactical maneuver that defines chess. Rather than adding complexity, it merely muddies the waters. If chess is a game of military precision, then 3D chess is more akin to a soccer scrum. 

Wayne Schmittberger, the editor-in-chief of Games Magazine, tried to solve the problems inherent in 3D chess by modifying the componants into Parallel Worlds Chess. Instead of trying to approximate chess in three dimensions, Parallel Worlds emphasizes the chaotic elements to create a deliberately crazy game. For example, every piece on the second level can move like a Queen, but they can't capture or promote. The result is entertaining, which is more than you can say for Tri-D Chess.

App O' The Mornin': 123 Pop Review

Grade: C
Price: $1

I'm little slow getting back into the swing of the app thing since my Thanksgiving recess. My device is now crammed with wonderful stuff, courtesy of the Black Friday deals that lit up the App Store like a Christmas tree. I've been skimming through so many titles, however, that I didn't get to burrow deeply into many of them, so I'm covering a simpler game today .

And 123 Pop is definitely simple. This was probably intended as a kid's game, but there's enough here for adults to find it appealing as well.

There's only one game mode, with three difficulty levels. Numbers float around outer space inside little bubbles. You tap two numbers, and then a third number that is the sum of the first two. Rockets and stars add bonus points. The goal is to get the score as high as possible in 60 seconds.

This would seem to be a pretty thin reed upon which to hang a game, but 123 Pop actually works fairlywell. My young daughter thought it was incredibly addictive, and even I enjoyed it. It's not just a simple math drill: the bubbles bounce around with a bit of physical modeling, and as they begin to crowd the screen things can get pretty tricky.

The grade of "C" isn't meant to indicate an inferior game: just one that could have used a little something more. It would be easy to improve with the addition of other forms of math, larger numbers, variable play times, and more items to mix up the action. The formula, however, is quite sound, and it makes an entertaining math driller for kids, and a light puzzler for adults.

Fantasy Flight Game Sale

There's a crazy sale going on over at the Fantasy Flight web site, with deep discounts on over 150 items. You'll find games like Age of Conan marked down from $80 to $25, and Tribune reduced from $60 to $15.

Italian Playing Cards: Regional Map

Modiano, the major producer of Italian playing cards, offers this handy map of the various regions and their cards. At the very top of the map, in Northern Italy near the border with Austria, you can see a single region using a "Salzburger" deck. These use the German-style suits of hearts, bells, leaves, and acorns for (respectively) the hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs of the Anglo-French deck. On the western side of Italy, you're more likely to find cards based on the familiar Anglo-French suits.

The Siciliane deck described in this post is shown on the eastern side of the island of Sicily.

Italian Playing Cards: Modiano Siciliane

The "standard" Anglo-French-suited playing cards have eclipsed many of the regional playing cards common throughout the world, along with the games played with those cards. Yet in certain places, regional decks are still very popular, and provide a fascinating (and largely unexplored) new wellspring of cards, games, and lore. I plan on diving deep into this wellspring, beginning today with a look at an Italian Siciliane deck produced by Modiano.

First off, you need to understand that there is no monolithic "Italian" deck. There are about 16 different regional decks, some with 40 cards, some with 52. Southern Italy favors the Spanish style which I'm about to describe, while the North has its own style. French and German suits are also used in certain regions of Italy. Even this is kind of fluid, and each regional deck has its own peculiarities.

The pictures below are from a deck common in Sicily. The most striking element of these cards are their unique suits. In the picture below (beginning at the upper left and going clockwise) we have the 3 of : Clubs (Bastoni), Coins (Denari), Swords (Spade), and Cups (Coppe). These replace Clubs, Hearts, Spades, and Diamonds of the Anglo-French deck.

There are no numbers on the cards, but there are 7 number cards in each suit, ranked 1 to 7, plus 3 court cards per suit. In many games, the 3 is of particular value, with cards ranking (high to low) Ace, 3, Courts, then numbers. (Numbers often have no value at all.) Here are what the aces look like. (Left to right: Swords, Cups, Coins, Clubs.)

Click to embiggen

Finally, there are the court cards, which are ranked Fante/Donna (a footsoldier, knave, or young woman), Cavallo (cavalier, or knight), and Re (King), the equivalent of our Jack, Queen, King.

The cards are small and slightly stiff, but the art is extremely appealing, with bold colors favoring yellow, blue, red, and green. The backs are ornate, featuring a Sicilian Triskelion (three legs around a head, usually Medusa). I bought mine from TaroBear's Lair, which provides prompt service and reasonable prices. I'm going to be talking about different games which are played with these decks, and even point you at some apps to help get you started. 

Board Game News for the Week (11/26)

Kevin Schlabach of Seize Your Turn continues to do an excellent Twitterstream digest, linking to all of the relevant board gaming news and reviews for the week. Check out the links for the final week of November.

Rabbi Simcha's Dreidel Spinning Tips

Rabbi Simcha spins a mean dreidel, so go and learn from the master.

When I was a kid, I attended a Jewish day camp during the summers, which probably wasn't a common occurrence for Catholic kids growing up Union County New Jersey during the 1970s.

To make matters even more entertaining, it was run by enthusiastic Zionists, so we began each day lined up in front of American and Israeli flags, first saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and then saying something in Hebrew which I always assumed was some kind of Israeli equivalent, but could have been a wicked recipe for kasha for all I knew. (The Jewish kids always complained because they had to attend Hebrew School. I just thought it was cool that they were learning a Secret Language none of us could ever penetrate. That's probably why I teach my kids Latin: it's the Secret Language of Catholics.)

I always wondered how the Jewish kids were consistently able to skool the silly goyim at dreidel spinning. Thirty years on, Rabbi Simacha finally provides the answer.

h/t: Kathy Shaidle.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Rabbi Simcha wrote a book with one of the greatest titles of all time: Up, Up, and Oy Vey: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped The Comic Book Superhero.

'Tis the Season

Tomorrow, I get back to blogging on my regular schedule. It was nice to have a week off, but it also made me realize that I’ve made this blog thing a part of my routine, and I kinda missed it.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the App O’ The Mornin’, as well as a new series on European-suited playing cards and the usual odds and sods. My Xbox is still in the shop, so I’m horribly behind on new titles. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood continues to sit there, mocking me.

On the positive side, I’ve been able to get Betrayal at House on the Hill to the table, and we’re liking it a lot. Plus, I’ve learned the Italian card games Briscola and Scopa, which are a blast.

With December comes Hanukkah and Christmas, both of which I’ll post about from time to time. I realize some people get bothered when even the mention of religion flickers across their consciousness. Some may well believe that faith should be shut inside a tiny little box and kept away from the eyes of impressionable types less they get the vapors, but it’s not a belief I share.

Judaism has played an important part in my life and forms the foundation of the Christian faith. My Jewish brothers and sisters begin Hanukkah at sundown on Wednesday, December 1st. My fellow Papists and I begin Advent tonight. Thus, for part of both this week and next, Catholics and Jews alike will be lighting candles in remembrance of miracles.

In addition, Hanukkah recalls the rededication of the Temple and the miracle of the oil, as mentioned in First and Second Maccabees. Although most Protestants consigned these books to "apocryphal" status during the Reformation, they remain part of Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, and thus these festivals have significance for us as well.

Holidays bring play, as well. I hope to get some directions for group games posted throughout the month, to help fill the longueurs in between the flurry of package opening and the moment when your eggnog buzz finally kicks in.

Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) lights a menorah

Black Friday Game Deals

Courtesy of boardgameoutlet.com. They scour the internet looking for deals so you don't have to.

Please remember to use the link to the right if you're shopping at Amazon.

Happy Thanksgiving & App Sales

First, the important stuff. May you and your families and friends have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving. Bring some games. It's a good way to pass the time and introduce people to something they've never played before. And may you have a fine meal of toast, jelly beans, and popcorn.

Second, the App Store is loaded with price cuts. TouchArcade has a good roundup of a the deals being offered. App Shopper is the best way to keep track of deals. They note price changes and updates in semi-real-time.

Third, TaroBear's Lair, a store selling import playing cards, is having a 30% off sale. I'm going to be writing about these amazing games in the upcoming weeks and months, including posts on playing with Swiss- and Italian-suited cards, as well as Tarot. The sale starts Friday and runs all weekend.

If anyone else knows about any sales or deals out there, post them or send them along.

Colonial Gaming: In Review

Several months ago, I started writing this series about games played in Colonial America after a family trip to Williamsburg, Virginia. I picked up a number of games while I was there, but noticed that very little had actually been written about what our ancestors were playing on the eve of Revolution.

In doing research, I learned that some areas of the country (such as Virginia and the south in general) were utterly mad about their games, while others (much of New England) were less so. I probably could have added one more piece on Whist (and still may), since this was one of the few games to find a foothold in New England. Whist is the mother of Bridge, so if you know Bridge already, then you have a fair sense of Whist.

It was fascinating to see the way games migrated from the old world to the new, building variations along the way. It was also interesting to see the way game materials intersected with the Revolution itself, in the form of the hated tax stamps placed on every deck of playing cards.

I've gathered much of my material into a long article that will run as the lead feature for the March 2011 issue of Games Magazine. This was an interesting test of the blogging process for me, as I researched and posted things in real time over a period of months, allowing me to learn and write at the same time. It worked pretty well, and I intended to do it again. In the future, I will be doing separate series about boardgame-to-app conversions and games played with European decks, such as French, Italian, Swiss, Spanish, and Tarot cards. (Tarot decks were invented for playing games, not for dubious fortune-telling practices.) If you have any thoughts about how all this came together, good or bad, please feel free to share.

Here's the entire series at a glance:
A Card Game for the Lower Classes: Put
A Card Game for the Upper Classes: Loo and How to Play Loo
A Pair of Abstract Strategy Games: Fox & Geese and Nine Men's Morris
Early Playing Cards from I. Kirk and I. Hardy
The Game of Goose: An Early Board Game
Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, and Other Board Games
"I catch you without green!"
Hazard: Colonial Craps
Introductions are here and here

COLONIAL GAMING: Hazard (Craps)

This Thanksgiving week, I’m concluding the series on Colonial Gaming with an item that would have gotten you stocked if you played it in front of our Pilgrim forebears. Hazard is, essentially, craps, and it was probably the most played “game” in both the New World and the Old.

Dice go back at least 5,000 years, and almost certainly much further. They were highly portable, easy to make, and provided a regular medium for gambling, which has always been a popular recreation. The Pilgrims frowned on dice not merely as part of their general prohibition on gambling and frivolous games, but because they would have associated them with the lots cast by the Roman soldiers for the garments of Jesus. Other regions of America, however, embraced dicing with a passion, and wherever common people gathered, dice appeared sooner or later.

There’s no telling just when the game of Hazard first emerged in Europe and England. Geoffrey Chaucer showed a ready familiarity with it, so we can place it in England at least as early as the 14th century, and almost certainly earlier. In the Pardoner’s Tale, Chaucer plays on the words “chance” and “hazard” several times, and makes an explicit reference to the game itself.

And if a prince plays similar hazardry 

In all his government and policy, 

He loses in the estimate of men 

His good repute, and finds it not again.

 And later:

And when he came, he noticed there, by chance, 

All of the greatest people of the land 

Playing at hazard there on every hand. 

And again, as part of a list of sins

O cursed sin, full of abominableness! 

O treacherous homicide! O wickedness! 

O gluttony, lechery, and hazardry! 

O blasphemer of Christ with villainy 

So hazard = not good. Check. (Although I'm pleased to see that "abominableness" is a real word.)

The word hazard comes to us from the Spanish word azar, meaning a “bad roll of the dice.” The word stopped off in France to pick up a final letter D before arriving in England via the French courts. Yes, our word “hazard,” meaning “potential danger,” comes from the name of this game.

Playing Hazard 
As with modern craps, Hazard is driven by bets placed on the likelihood of certain rolls. One player rolls at a time, using two dice.

Before the player rolls, he picks a main, which is a number between 5 and 9.

If he rolls the main, he wins. This is called throw in, or in, or nick.

If he rolls a 2 or a 3, he loses instantly. This is called throw out, or out.

The other combinations are contingent upon the main itself. They break down this way:

If the main is a 5, then 5 is in, and 2, 3, 11, or 12 are out.

If the main is a 6, then 6 or 12 are in, and 2, 3, or 11 are out.

If the main is a 7, then 7 or 11 are in, and 2, 3, or 12 are out.

If the main is a 8, then 8 or 12 are in, and 2, 3, or 11 are out.

If the main is a 9, then 9 is in, and 2, 3, 11, or 12 are out.

If the roll is neither in nor out, the number thrown becomes the chance.

On the next roll, the chance wins and the main now becomes a losing number. The roller keeps going until he hits the main or the chance, and then the dice are passed.

Wagering is done by the player and the observers at various stages and at various odds, with people betting either for or against the next roll of the dice. 

Craps

There is a straight line between Hazard and modern casino craps, so remember when you're sweating over the Pass/Don't Pass line that our forefathers were doing the same thing hundreds of years ago.

And if you’re utterly sure you have a foolproof system for beating craps … you don’t. No, really, you don’t. (And if your theory includes the names “Pascal” or “Fermat,” then you really don’t.) All of the odds set by a casino for each roll are set below the actual odds for the roll itself. The odds are better if you know what you are doing, but there is no casino game in which you can fully bend the odds in your favor. The house always has the advantage. 

Most "systems" are based on what's called the Gambler's Fallacy, which is this idea that someone who stays in a game long enough will eventually find probability turning in their favor. Probability is not cumulative. It resets itself with each roll of the dice. A gambler with a system always thinks he's "due" for a hit after a long series of misses. If the chances of flipping heads on a coin are 50/50 for the first flip, and you get tails, that doesn't mean they're 60/40 for the second flip. But that's the way many gamblers approach their games.

Here's an example just from yesterday. My daughter and I were waiting for people to join a game. We drew through an entire deck of cards, with high card winning. That's 26 draws for each of us. We "should" have each drawn 13 high cards. I drew no high cards. She drew 26. As Ralph Wiggums would say, "That's unpossible!" 

Consider this: I know games inside and out, and I never bet money in a casino unless I'm just enjoying the process of being there and willing to pay for the pleasure of a hyperoxygenated atmosphere and $10 beers. Skill does matter. Skill can improve your odds, but it never tilts them wholly in your favor. And casinos don't trade in games of pure skill: they trade in games where luck dominates. There's a reason casinos don't have chess or backgammon tables. It's the same reason that neither chess nor backgammon were all that popular in Colonial times. These are games where skill outweighs chance, and, like modern casinos, early Americans didn't favor games of skill. They only found real excitement when chance and luck were involved.

Thanksgiving Recess

I'm going to take a bit of a break from the blog this week, what with kids home and family visiting to be done and my tryptophan addiction to feed. So there will be no App O' The Mornin' and regular posting will probably be light.

The Swan of Elegance, A New Game Designed for the Instruction and Amuseument of Youth

(1814) 

Top-Ranked Chess Player Withdraws From Competition

Every generation or two, competitive Chess grips the imagination of the world outside of chess circles, and names like Paul Morphy, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Deep Blue, and Josh Waitzken start appearing in headlines. If that was going to happen again in this generation, the top candidate would have been Magnus Carlsen, a 19-year-old genius from Norway.

Carlsen earned Grandmaster status at age 13, and earlier this year became the youngest person in history to hold the number 1 chess ranking in the world. His ELO rating (the standard measure of skill level), is 2801. Only 4 other people have ever exceeded 2800. Add to this books, films, and a modeling career, and you have a perfect storm for Chess celebrity.

But when you also add in the remarkably mercurial personality required to become a Chess champion, things can get strange. Morphy quit. Fischer quit and went mad. Kasparov quit, entered Russian politics, and is now making a concerted effort to be assassinated by Vladimir Putin. Even Deep Blue wound up dismantled and forgotten until a piece of it landed in the Smithsonian.

And now Carlsen has withdrawn from the cycle of games designed to name the next World Champion.

As he states in his letter:

After careful consideration I’ve reached the conclusion that the ongoing 2008–2012 cycle does not represent a system, sufficiently modern and fair, to provide the motivation I need to go through a lengthy process of preparations and matches and to perform at my best.

Reigning champion privileges, the long (five year) span of the cycle, changes made during the cycle resulting in a new format (Candidates) that no World Champion has had to go through since Kasparov, puzzling ranking criteria as well as the shallow ceaseless match-after-match concept are all less than satisfactory in my opinion.

The man has a point. Similar irritations resulted in Kasparov splitting from FIDE, the organizing body for the World Championships, to form his own group, the Professional Chess Association. FIDE stripped Kasparov of his World Champion title, and the controversy sputtered until a "reunification match" in 2006. Now it's back again, and with the best player in the world opting out of the competition, FIDE stands to lose their credibility once again. After all, if the best doesn't compete, is "World Chess Champion" a valid title?

App O' The Mornin': Death Worm Review

Grade: A
Price: $1

I'll make this easy: every app and Flash clone of JTR's Death Worm is about 90% less entertaining than the real thing. Forget about Super Mega Worm, Effing Worms, and even the original Death Worm. Playcreek has created the definitive version, making one of the most unrelentingly addictive games in the app store in the process.

Death Worm is a bit tricky to describe. Think of it as Tremors: The Game. A giant, terrifying worm with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth burrows underground and occasionally breaks the surface to snatch people, cars, tanks, helicopters, aircraft, and UFOs from below. It moves in graceful loops through dirt and crest the surface like a dolphin ... deadly, disgusting, giant, man-eating dolphin.

You control this worm with your finger, directing its path in order to intercept targets. This isn't an automatic point-to-kill process. The worm has limits to its movement. It can only turn in certain arcs, and correctly lining it up with surface objects can be tricky. Most frustrating is the fact that you can't change your path once you've leaped in the air. This isn't a flaw, but part of the challenge. It just takes some time to get used to it and plan your surface jumps correctly.

Along the way, your worm can buy certain powerups, such as a fireball attack, a larger leap, thicker skin, faster movement, and so on. There are three environments, each with multiple levels of increasing challenges. Some of these can be pretty frustrating, such as the levels that require you to eat 10 people while remaining completely uninjured. Another level requires you to get 5 aircraft, but then runs out of the surface threats that provide the powerups which enable you to reach those aircraft. There's a workaround for this featuring underground snacks with some occasional powerups, but this particular challenge kills the intense pace of the game.

Those problems are rare, however. Death Worm is visually striking and  insanely addictive. Just get it.

Godzilla: The Game?

Okay, Toy Vault, you got my attention. I don't know a whole lot about their upcoming board game Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars, but I know that I must have it.

Kaiju is the Japanese term for movies in which guys in rubber suits stomp on little models of tanks and buildings, and I'm about as big a kaiju fan as one can be short of actually owning a Jet Jaguar suit.

There isn't a lot of info on this one, but a kaiju site does have an interview with Paul Blake, the Toy Vault designer who's working on it.

They're also working on a card game called Godzilla: Stomp.

HT: BGN

App O' The Mornin': Splinter Cell: Conviction Review

Grade: A
Price: $7

App versions of major console or PC titles always feel a bit like consolation prizes. They'll never be as flashy or as complete as their big brothers, but they can pack a lot of gameplay into a small package while still capturing the flavor of the original.

That's what the app incarnation of Splinter Cell: Conviction manages to do.  The full Splinter Cell: Conviction shattered the Splinter Cell stealth/action formula, and rebuilt it into something completely new. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends upon what you want in a Splinter Cell game, but it’s hard to deny that Conviction is a slick, fresh piece of work. 

Sam Fisher has been prowling the shadows since 2002, doing stealthy missions for Third Echelon, a “black ops” group working under the aegis of the National Security Agency. The game built upon mechanisms developed for Metal Gear Solid and Thief: The Dark Project, requiring players to stay out of sight and complete their mission without using deadly force. This odd inversion of what seemed to be the heart of action gaming (violent confrontation) proved to be an enduring addition, resulting in a new genre: stealth-action.

The key to Splinter Cell’s gameplay was Sam’s careful movement through each environment, using increasingly complex techniques to quietly take down guards, and then hiding the bodies to avoid detection. It required a slower pace and a careful evaluation of each environment, but returned residual benefits with a more enhanced sense of suspense. 

Well, most of that is gone now, and the series is striking out in a bold new direction that may or may not appeal to fans. If Conviction was your standard action movie sequel, the clichéd tagline would be “This time, it’s personal.” Fisher is out of Echelon and trying to put that life behind him, but he’s dragged back in by the promise of avenging his daughter’s murder.

Sam can still sneak around, without detection, and disappear in the shadows, but the game no longer provides the sophisticated series of interactions that made those elements so much fun. Lockpicking, split-jumps, moving bodies, and non-lethal takedowns are gone, replaced by a covering fire and movement system that doesn't work as well in the app as it did in the full game.

Once in cover, however, Sam is far more likely to kill an enemy with a single shot to the than he is to sneak around him or knock him unconscious. Each time you take down an enemy with hand to hand combat, you power up a special ability to tag multiple targets, and then execute attacks on those targets automatically, all at once.

The new flanking mechanic is more in keeping with the stealth theme of the prior games in the serious. If you’re spotted by a guard, you can move away, leaving a white silhouette or yourself at your last known location. The guards will move on this location, allowing you to sneak up behind him for a silent takedown. This creates an interesting tactical element, as you deliberately reveal yourself draw an enemy into a trap.

The app version is a seriously scaled-back version of the full game, but still manages to pack many of the features into a small package. Movement is mapped to an onscreen stick, with look-around/aiming mapped controlled by touching anywhere on the screen. This is a little bit better than dual-stick, and frees up the right corner for attack and context-sensitive action icons.

App conversions of major action titles are the dancing dogs of game design: it's enough that the dog can dance at all, even if can't do a pirouette. Splinter Cell: Conviction is a nicely compressed version of the full game, and that's just what it should be.

GAMES Magazine Electronic Game of the Year: Super Mario Galaxy 2

So you clicked on this post today and thought, "Are you on crack, McDonald? A sequel to a Mario game as the best game for the entire year? You really need to lay off the pipe and get yourself professional help."

Actually, that was what one of my writers said, but I managed to bring them around with commonsense arguments and minimal use of force.

The answer is actually pretty logical. The original Super Mario Galaxy was a victim of poor timing here at Games Magazine. First, it shipped at an awkward point in the year (November) which means we didn’t get it in time for the 2007 awards. Second, a little masterpiece called BioShock (one of the best games of all time), shipped a couple of weeks later, and shut out all contenders for the 2008 Game of the Year Award.

So when 2010 rolled around with a sequel to a game-of-the-year caliber game which improved upon the original in every way, it seemed like a natural choice for the top spot. This isn’t just a consolation prize because we couldn’t give the original the award three years ago. Super Mario Galaxy 2 has earned its place at the top of the heap by the sheer mastery of its design.

Red Dead Redemption, StarCraft II, Mass Effect II, and Battlefield: Bad Company II were all considered, while late shippers like Fallout: New Vegas, Halo: Reach, and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood would have certainly been contenders had they arrived in time. In a depressing sign of the times, only one of the contenders was an original game, while the rest were all sequels.

All of the best elements of the original have been carried forward in this sequel. This is the same engine, visual style, control scheme, and design elements that made Super Mario Gallery such a breakthrough pleasure. The first game took Mario’s familiar platforming gameplay—the jumping, bouncing, spinning, and soaring traversal of puzzle-like levels—through a dazzling array of inventive landscapes in, on, and around planets and other celestial bodies

The sequel smooths over the rough spots, eliminates what didn’t work, and expands upon what did. Galaxy 2 begins in a the 2D world familiar to players of Super Mario Bros. for Wii, then gradually introduces more complex controls and environments until the player finds himself traversing lavish 3D worlds with shifting gravity, or soaring through space from one planet to another.

To accomplish this, Mario has some new abilities in Galaxy 2, such as a Cloud Suit that allows him to create fluffy, temporary platforms, or a Rock Suit that allows you to use him like a bowling ball. Yoshi is also drafted into the space program, where he can use his tongue to grab objects or his glowing power to illuminate hidden platforms. Players can even have a friend help out, with a more fully developed co-op mode that allows another player to hop in and help grab stars.

This is just a pure delight, with nary a single element out of place. Thanks to the more gradual learning curve, an in-game helper, and co-op play, this is a good pick for the whole family, even younger gamers. There is joy in here, and families with a Wii shouldn’t pass this one up.

App O' The Mornin': iTrials Review

Grade: B
Price: $1

No one, in either Flash or app form, has managed to quite capture the bike trials format as well as the original Trials series from RedLynx. Thes 2.5D games blending elements of racing, stunt riding, physics, and side-scrolling action to create a fresh kind of action/racing/puzzle hybrid.

iTrials is the first game to really nails this formula for the mobile devices. It's not as complete or polished as the products from RedLynx, but it's a darn good imitation and the best we've seen so far.

Trials-style games are 3D games played on a 2D plane. That is, they use 3D-style graphics, but the player can only move forward, backwards, up, or down. The player needs to navigate a course as fast as possible with as few errors as possible.

iTrials does it just right. Motorbike handling feels great, albeit just a little bit bouncy. Controls are go, stop, and a slider for lean forward/backward. I wound have rather seen the tilt slider on the side than on the bottom, but you get used to it after awhile.

Courses are terrific, with 27 levels spread across 3 difficulty sets. They with straightforward ramps and jumps, and soon add seesaws, walls, spinny-things, reverse loops, stairs, sliding blocks, and other crazy obstacles. Animations are smooth and professional, with some great ragdoll effects for the rider. Visually, the game delivers the goods, although some edges could use a bit of smoothing.

This is the best Trials experience in the App Store, and at $1 it's a steal.

APP OF THE YEAR: Carcassonne

This was the first year we added mobile games to the Games Magazine Games 100 awards We chose to focus on Apps, rather than on other mobile devices, because only Apps can make a legitimate claim to being a new gaming format, with unique mechanics and design elements. Certain games are Wii games and can only ever effectively be Wii games. And certain games are Apps, and can only ever effectively be Apps.

To become a new format, a device must offer a unique language, a core vocabulary that it shares with every other item in that genre. There are distinct qualities to PC, Wii, DS, and Xbox/PS games, primarily based upon control, ergonomics, and aesthetics. Apple mobile software can make a similar claim, due to its unique blend of portability, size, multi-touch controls, and a 3-axis accelerometer (enhanced by a gyroscopic sensor for the iPhone 4).

Apps are of particular interest to Games readers because they are a natural format for all manner of puzzle, board, and card games. There are a huge variety of classic games, Eurogames, card games, and abstract strategy titles for the format, often with multiple versions of each. Many of these have multiplayer elements built-in, and also include teaching tools, variant versions, other features to give them added appeal. And all if this rarely costs more than a few dollars. It’s creating a mini-renaissance of classic gaming and puzzle play.

Our normal criteria for inclusion in the Games 100 is a title released within the current year (roughly October to September). For the inaugural edition of the App section of the Games 100, we choose the 25 best Apps in the App Store. The focus was heavily tilted towards the kinds of games our readers would prefer: heavy on board games and puzzles, light on action games and fart apps. If we'd done the list now, after having several more months of serious app gaming under my belt, there may have been some add/drops, but I'm pretty comfortable with the way the list turned out.

Had the awards come three months later, however, I might have considered Cut the Rope for the top spot of App of the Year, but it's hard to say. The winner, Carcassonne, is a time-tested favorite among Eurogamers in general and our readers in particular. The feature-set for the conversion of Carcassonne reads like a wish-list of everything you’d want in this kind of App. There are 8 different AI players, a new solitaire mode, local network play over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, Internet multiplayer via live-gaming sessions or email, a matchmaking service, an Elo ratings system, and in-game chat.

The implementation of the game itself is also quite strong. Carcassonne was always going to be a tough fit for the small screen of a mobile device. Its tendency to spread across the table makes it though to fit in a small space. The App version does a fair job of managing this by zooming in and out, and clearly marking any block where tile placement is legal.

The result is a pitch-perfect implementation of a complex boardgame design. This no small achievement, and clearly marks out Carcassonne as the App of the Year. Runner's up were Helsing's Fire and Catan.

App O' The Mornin': Finger Physics: Thumb Wars Review

Grade: C
Price: $1

Finger Physics never really knocked me out with its brilliant puzzle gameplay. It's okay, I guess, but the objects, their arrangement, and their behavior always just seemed to fall on the wrong side of the dividing line between "interesting" and "meh."

The first sequel, Thumb Wars, brings the "meh" in spades. This is a new mix of stacking and dropping puzzles that feels like an extended add-on for Finger Physics. As with its predecessor, the puzzles seem kind of random, with object behavior that requires plenty of guesswork. Even if a trial-and-error approach is fine with you, you may well find many of these just a bit stale. I'm not fan of stacking puzzles, but even if I was I'd like something a little more interesting that you'll find on display here.

I puzzled a bit over the title, assuming there were battling thumbs somewhere in the game, which would have made the experience 27.3% more interesting. No, apparently PressOK thinks that people play these games with their thumbs. Am I alone in thinking that's not really the case? I use my index finger for almost all puzzles, and I've never actually witnessed anyone doing puzzles with their thumbs. I understand that "Index-Finger Wars" isn't exactly a snappy title, but something called Thumb Wars should have, y'know, more thumbs in it.

The "Wars" title comes from the competition element that's been slathered across the surface of Finger Physics, much like old Hollywood cameramen used to spread Vaseline on their lenses to make aging stars look less wrinkly. It doesn't work as well here. The competition amounts to international leaderboards, so you can compare your "team's" scores to those of other countries around the world. I surely could care less how many stars were earned by Team Edward in Canada for solving puzzle #3.

By the way, there are some are thumbs in the game.  They're anthropomorphic little guys who occasionally introduce levels. Let me tell you something about a cartoon thumb with a helmet and a face: it bears an unfortunate resemblance to a certain part of the male anatomy. And once you get that image in your head, the game either becomes unplayable ... or absolutely hilarious.

Battle Cry: Back in Print

Before Richard Borg's Memoir '44 (Days of Wonder), Command & Colors (GMT), or Battle Lore (Fantasy Flight), there was Battle Cry. Borg created Battle Cry for Avalon Hill back in 2000, introducing the appealing and accessible system for military gaming that would power those later designs.

Battle Cry has been unavailable for a few years, but Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast are republishing it later this month. That's really good news for gamers. And if you don't know what Battle Cry is, just think of this: Memoir '44 ... set in the Civil War. MSRP is $60.

Civilization: The Board Game

A few years ago, Eagle Games took a stab at converting the classic PC game into a tabletop experience with Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame, and made a mess of it. It was flawed, unwieldy, and thoroughly unenjoyable.

Now Fantasy Flight is tackling this formidable task, and as this video shows, they have some intriguing design elements.

Shark Bites Helicopter

I'm sure some people might find Sydney Shark aggressively tasteless.  As for me, I have to appreciate a game in which a shark can leap from the water, bite a helicopter, and drag it into the water while an outraged, muscle-bound koala bear angrily shakes his fists. Also: you eat scuba-divers, cruise ships, and horses.

Mausland Entertainment also did a version of this called Miami Shark. Both are free flash games, but Sydney Shark does have a stylin' Panama hat. So he's got that going for him, which is nice.

App O' The Mornin': SteamBirds Review

Grade: A
Price: $1

Aerial strategy games usually have a niche appeal. Although there have been a number of board games tackling the subject, only a few computer games, such as Flight Commander and Over the Reich, spring to mind. That's probably because the tactical aspects of air-to-air combat are hard to capture quite right. We know how to take down the Red Baron when we're in control of a 3D sim and can perform an immelmann after a strafing run, but converting the knowledge into a turn-based tactical simulation can be tricky.

SteamBirds does a fair job of capturing these tactical elements, but it's not really a wargame or tacsim. This is a casual strategy game with an aerial combat theme. The premise offers an alt-history WWI/II in which steam-power aircraft do battle with a variety of souped-up tech and weapons. Frankly, other than giving it a nice veneer of steampunk, the alt-history aspect doesn't actually affect gameplay very much. Since all the aircrafts' powers are relative within the game world, you might as well be flying von Richthofen vs. Brown.

The gameplay itself is one of puzzle-like maneuver. You set a path or action for your planes with a little arrow, and then advance the clock a bit. The aircraft turn, speed up, reverse course, or perform other special functions in approximately 3-second intervals, and then you adjust the paths again.

Battles thus become a matter of choreography, as you jostle for the best position on an enemy six without overshooting them, or make slashing hit-and-runs on larger, slower-moving targets. It's a terrificly entertaining--and often remarkably challenging--combination of elements, and I can't really think of any other app quit like it.

The visual style is very appealing, and the designed translates almost perfectly to the iPhone format.The only tricky part is the occasional lack of precision when grabbing an arrow. They can fall fairly close to each other, making selection a little challenging. That's neither a large nor a widespread problem, but it crops up enough to be worth noting. The Java version, which has become something of an indie classic, is a more natural fit for the design, but the app works just fine.

SteamBirds is an easy one to recommend for strategy gamers, but if you have any doubts just play the game itself, for free. The entire thing can be found at steambirds.net.