I recently got the opportunity to try out a few of the game offerings from Astraware. Astraware offers a variety of games, many of which are Palm OS implementations of Pop Cap games that may already be familiar to you.

To be honest, they offer such a variety of games that I simply didn’t have the time to give a fair review to all of them, so I spent my time with three promising looking titles: Mars Needs Cows, Alchemy, and Bejeweled. All three were quick to learn, interesting games that were easy to pick up and play when there was a little time to kill. The beauty of all of the games is that they are easy to pick up and put down without having to remember a lot of details about what was going on in the game. An additional thoughtful feature is that whenever you leave the game to use some other application the game pauses so you can restart where you left off.

All three are basic puzzle games. In Mars Needs Cows you move livestock around on a grid to move them to abduction points. Abduct the proper number of the proper animals and you move on to the next level. Alchemy involves placing arcane symbols next to each other to fill a row, which makes all of the symbols in the row vanish. Clear the board and you win. Bejeweled is involves getting three or more jewels in a row in order to make them vanish. More jewels stream down to fill the empty spots. You receive points for clearing jewels, with more points for more than three at a time.

None of these games are tough to learn, but they are all very challenging to play. Like all puzzle games, the one I like the most may not be the one you like the most. However, one easy choice is Bejeweled. This game has been available for the PC for some time. It is quite possibly the most evil game ever created. I have never met anyone who has tried it who didn’t get addicted to it for at least a short time. When it first came out people’s high scores at Bejeweled were to be found posted by their doors, salted into hallway discussions, or even included on their sig block. It has that perfect balance of challenge and ease of play that makes it like eating salted nuts. Be warned that if you get it on your Palm, you may find yourself playing through meetings and lunches.

If you feel the desire to pick up a fun game to add to your Palm’s software store, I’d recommend visiting Astraware’s site. I’m willing to bet they have a game there that would appeal to you.

Prices for most of the games are under $15, and they offer a great Pop Cap collection for under $30 that is a hard to beat bargain. It includes Bejeweled, so don’t say I didn’t warn you…

http://www.astraware.com/palm/

Tucker Hatfield
Senior Palm Editor