Filed under: Gaming, iPod Family, iPhone
Hands On: Big Bang Board Games for iPhone
I love Freeverse's Big But like many other developers out there, Freeverse has overlooked one big design principle. That principle is: Fingers big; iPhone small. Failing this reduces the game from "must have" to "your mileage will vary".
The iPhone is not a desktop machine. Software needs to be re-imagined not just re-platformed. Developers need to re-design around the hardware and human factors that limit the platform. And it's there that Freeverse made some mis-steps, particularly in sizing.
A couple of the Big Brain Bang games are practically unplayable. Backgammon is the worst offender, both in landscape or portrait play. Although Freeverse has done an amazing job minimizing interaction issues on a tiny screen (the legal plays are highlighted in blue and can be tapped), some game spots are nearly untouchable, leading to a dozen taps or more to advance one move in game play. Late in the four-in-a-row game, it's almost impossible to drop your pieces at the two ends of the board due to the height of the stacks.
The problems comes from two sources: first, Freeverse retained its gorgeous 3D graphics in the port. That means that board areas suffer from perspective -- they lose pixels to style. Second, the platform itself only has so many pixels to offer. It's a tiny screen and we interact with fingers not styluses. Freeverse needs to redesign some of those games to make sure that the thumbfingered as well as the nimble can play.
So that having been said, what works? Obviously, the flexible game play the big winner. Big Brain Bang offers Backgammon, Tic Tac Toe, Chess, Checkers, Reversi, Mancala, and 4 In A Row. Chess, Checkers, and Reversi remain the most playable and enjoyable. The audio design matches the desktop experience, which will appeal or not according to taste. Finally, Freeverse loaded up the package with options that allow you to adjust playback difficulty. So there's a lot of win in the package, even if you might be disappointed with some of the specific play features.
Big Brain Bang Board Games[iTunes link] costs $7.99 and can be played on both iPhone and iPod touch, although the latter requires headphones or an external speaker to experience the sound effects.
Gallery: Big Brain Games iPhone
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zac Grose said 9:06AM on 9-17-2008
I hear they're making iPod touch with speakers built in now.
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Paul said 9:11AM on 9-17-2008
I totally agree with you. Few games are unplayable. It feels that Big Bang Board Games was rush release They totally forgot that it is an iPhone and not small screen desktop. I will give 2 stars.
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Conor W said 9:23AM on 9-17-2008
How completely unexpected, a post by Erica saying how much she loves something, then going on to say how crap it is
Next she'll be telling us she loves the iPhone, and then go on and slate basically everything about it... oh wait
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Elam said 10:12AM on 9-17-2008
BThe opening line says "I love Freeverse's Big Brain Board games for Mac". See the difference? for _Mac_.
This is review of that bundle of games ported to the iPhone/iPod Touch - and how they missed an opportunity to properly redesign for a small screen and touch/select input mechanism.
Granted - she does seem to bash the iPhone a bit...but in this case you're falsely positing your point.
~ELH
ioffe said 10:11AM on 9-17-2008
Eric. How about Caissa Chess. Bring some spotlight to us. Caissa will be one year old soon. That is quite an anniversary for an iphone software. We released new big update yesterday.
As to Freeverse game, they compete with GameLoft :) They confused king's and queen's side in production release.
Speaks a lot about quality, isn't it ....
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Nak said 11:04AM on 9-17-2008
Whenever I try to launch the Checkers game, it bombs to the home screen.
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Jeremy said 11:05AM on 9-17-2008
I haven't played this as for me it falls into a category of games and apps that aren't even worth the download. The reason being the awful graphics. How hard is it to spend as much time on the graphics as it is on the coding? Those grey and yellow textures on the blocks are practically an assault on the eyeballs and recognisable as default OpenGL crap.
I refuse to buy into any game if I can make better graphics for it myself during a single afternoon with Photoshop. It just shows laziness and lack of vision from the developers.
This is a typical problem given that most game creators are coders at heart and have no idea of what art, emotion, and style is but it needn't be that way. Erica is supposedly an excellent coder, but her apps are all very well put together visually, thematically, and code-wise. These folks should just try a bit harder.
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Dylan said 12:02PM on 9-17-2008
Isn't it Big BANG not Big BRAIN?
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David said 3:33PM on 9-17-2008
I will not purchase anything else from Freeverse until they improve their quality control and customer support!
I purchased "Commander: Europe at War" at full retail ($49.99) for my Mac. There is a bug that stops all sound after playing for about 5 minutes. This was brought to their attention in December of 2007. Freeverse acknowledged the problem the same month and in January 2008 they promised a patch. It is now September and still no patch.
link: http://forum.freeverse.com/viewtopic.php?id=1445
Until they get their act together, no more money from me!
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Justin said 10:04PM on 10-24-2008
Price drop on this App :)
http://appstoredeals.com/?p=221
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