There's a nice piece over on the Nokia Developer blog highlighting the story of ZingMagic, a long time favourite developer here at AAS for polished native Symbian games. The piece covers how the company got started, how its games are built and recent success with advertisement-sponsored versions of its games.
ZingMagic just 'zinged' their most popular board game conversions, with 'V' (as in five) versions of Chess Pro, Chinese Chess Pro and Checkers Pro, all also available in free ad-supported and paid for versions, for touch and non-touch Symbian-powered smartphones. There are extra variants, graphics and skill levels all round. Details, background info, links and some screens below.
SPB Online Games launched yesterday for S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3, a collection of 4 instant online, multi-player games (English and Russian Checkers, Hexagon and Reversi). If interrupted, the games can be continued from the spot where they left off. Players can also "share their game experience in the real-time chat service". Mini-review, screenshots and links below.
New(ish) in Nokia's Ovi Store are a number of interesting free and commercial 'casual'/'traditional' games from Offscreen Technologies, available for both S60 5th Edition and new Symbian^3 phones from Nokia, including Freecell, (peg) Solitaire, Video Poker and Checkers. See below for screens, mini-reviews and links. And yes, full reviews of some of the big blockbuster 'HD' games are progressing in parallel, to be published over the next couple of weeks!
Nokia today released two new first party gaming titles through the Ovi Store. Ovi Maps Challenge is a map-based geography trivia game. As you play, you unlock additional levels and collect countries in your passport. Bounce Boing Battle is a two player game, played over Bluetooth between two devices, and offers a twist on the classic Pong style of gameplay. Both games are implemented in Flash Lite and have been developed by Rovio, the same company that created the popular Angry Birds game series, and are available for all of Nokia's touchscreen Symbian phones.
Botond.FM's 'instant' games have a definite appeal for quick gaming sessions. This is the latest incarnation of MicroPinball Casino, for S60 5th Edition phones, now with 'multitouch' even on resistive-screened devices - no, really. Here's my review of MicroPinball, tested on both the Nokia 5530 and the Samsung i8910, over on our Ovi Gaming site. Also posted this morning is my review of the free Color Master, which you'll know better under its classic board game title of 'Mastermind'. Hey, there goes your afternoon's productivity!
In All About Symbian Insight 133, we start with news of the Nokia 5250, Nokia's cheapest ever smartphone, following which, Steve shares some more detail from his recent reviews of Let's Golf and Mommax's Mains Battery Charger. Rafe talks about Nokia and Intel's new joint laboratory for 3D mobile user experiences. Finally Ewan gives us his commentary on the the re-branding of Nokia Music to Ovi Music. You can listen to AAS Insight 133 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Here on AAS's Ovi Gaming site, Ewan reviews a fresh revamp of an old classic - Minesweeper - that gets turned completely on its head and given a fresh lick of stone age paint into the bargain. An unholy attempt? More a modern classic and it's got Ewan impressed. Here's his review of Dino Detective.
In our latest (and shortest?) Ovi Gaming review, Ewan looks at MotionSpeed, perhaps a modern equivalent to Whack-a-mole. The title comes across well, though it's best played using a device with capacitive screen, which in the Ovi Store world means just the Nokia X6 at the moment. Read on...
As part on our on-going series of games reviews Ewan takes a look at BoxIt2 from inner Acctive. It's a Sokobahn style game, where the aim is solve the box pushing puzzle, over multiple levels. From the game play to the graphics, Ewan finds a well executed implementation of this classic puzzle game, which earns BoxIt2 a thumbs up and a recommended rating.