The Arcade: A Monthly Roundup of Freeware Games (December 2006)

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[This article originally appeared at Just Another Mobile Monday on December 9, 2006]

Welcome back to The Arcade.  As you can see, this second edition comes with a new name (shortened from “Penny Arcade” to simply “The Arcade”).  We also have a great new masthead graphic, compliments of NoWire.

In this edition, I’ll be looking at the following five games:

1. Cities

2. FreeMine

3. Jumpy Ball

4. Dots

5. Burkozel

Cities: You are an engineer in a small country who has been assigned to construct the country’s road network. The King wants a road to each of his neighbors and he also wants all of the roads to be connected. “Cities” consists of a game board containing 16 tiles. Each tile contains roads, cities (tiles with roads and houses in the middle), and grass. The tile containing only grass is called “the blank”.  Gameplay consists of moving the tiles by swapping any tile’s position with the blank.  For more information, check out Max Tillberg’s website (in order to run Cities, you will also need to download and install Visual Basic Runtime for Pocket PC).

FreeMine: The object of the game is simple: find the mines hidden under the game board.  Anyone who remembers Minesweeper for Windows 3.1 will remember this addictive game.  In fact, I remember missing countless hours of studying in college because of Minesweeper.  The game consists of a grid of empty tiles.  Hidden under some of the tiles are explosive mines.  The object is to plant a flag on each tile containing a mine.  To help you, under the tiles not containing a mine is a number clue.  The number indicates how many mines are under adjacent tiles.  Uncover a mine before you have marked them all and it will explode, ending your game.  FreeMine was designed by China Starsoft, and is available from Pocket PC 4 All.

Jumpy Ball: Jumpy Ball is a remake of one of the oldest games available for any gaming platform (I remember playing similar games on the Atari 2600).  Guide your ball through a twisting, turning maze, while avoiding holes and other obstacles on the course.  Use the D-Pad to control your speed.  Jump over holes in the track and obstacles. With  intricately drawn 3-D graphics on three fast-paced courses, Jumpy Ball is not just a fun game, but also a visual feast for the eyes.  Jumpy Ball is available from Pocket New.

Dots: Ilium Software, the company behind some of the best software available for your Pocket PC today (Newsbreak, eWallet, ListPro, and more) generously offers the only game in its library of software for free.  You all probably remember playing dots as a child.  Gameplay is fairly simple.  Take turns connecting individual dots on grid of dots.  Each time you draw a line which completes a box (all fours sides), you win that box.  Whoever completes the most boxes in a game wins.  There are two modes of play: start with a blank grid, or with a partially filled maze.  Either way you choose to play, this game is as entertaining as it is nostalgic.  Another feather in Ilium’s software cap.  It is available from Ilium Software.

BurKozel: This is another free offering from one of the most popular software developers in the Pocket PC community, this time it is SK Software, the developers behind the award winning SK Tools and more.  BurKozel, one of three free card games offered by SK Software, is a fast-paced card game consisting of a 36 card deck (6-Ace).  The idea of the game is to score the most points (pips) in each round.  Penalty points are awarded at the end of each round based upon the number of points scored.    The first player to score 12 penalty points loses.  This turn based card game plays in a manner similar to hearts and spades.  The first player turns over a card and the others must match it by covering it with a card of the same suit.  Burkozel is available from SK Software.

I hope you enjoy all five of these games as much as I did.  They are all entertaining and offer a level of gameplay and graphics which is usually reserved for commercial products.

If you are a game player or developer, and would like to recommend a freeware game for use in a future installment of The Arcade please email me at doug@justanothermobilemonday.com.  All requests are welcome.

For even more free games reviews and thoughts, check out all of the archives for The Arcade - HERE

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