Tag: Weekend fun »

Chillingo and Aspyr Media’s Poker Pals has been one of the best asynchronous multiplayer games of the last year on iOS. I have played it on a nearly-daily basis since first getting to play it. This mixture of a turn-based game like Words With Friends and poker has proven to be extremely compelling over time, and I still have 8 or 9 games going at a time.

Luck is important, but so is skill, finding ways to use the hands. Maybe one move would score more, but another might set up a higher scoring play on the next hand. Playing four cards at once in order to clear out the hand is a great strategy. Is it worth making the first move on the edge of the board to open up the jokers? I’ve played one game where neither of us played a move on the outer edge until the center of the board was a 5x5 block of cards. Weird things can happen in this game, and that’s part of the fun of it, because one move can change the complexion of the board entirely.

Starting today, Poker Pals for the iPhone is going free. That’s the full version for the iPhone and iPod touch, available at no cost, allowing for those limited to the free version’s three game limit to expand out and find more players. As well, a recent update added iCloud support, so iPad owners with the HD version of the game can now synchronize their games across all iOS devices.

While the game allows for friends to be found via Crystal or Game Center, and to start up games against random opponents, to help get our readers started out, here’s a list of some of 148Apps staff’s usernames:

Carter Dotson: carter.dotson
Jeff Scott: jeff148apps
Rob LeFebvre: roblef

Feel free to add us to play a game. Stay tuned as well, because we’ve heard about something coming to the game that could be best described as... epic.

This weekend, we're going to have fun in another brain game. This time, it's a game similar to Risk, Strategery.

Strategery is a land battle game where you battle up to 4 other players on random maps of various sizes. You start out controlling an equal part of the world map and battle to control more. You initiate a battle against another country on the board and then automatic dice rolls determine the winner. You turn continues until you have done all of the valid battles you wish. After your turn you can reinforce your troops in the countries that you still control to give you stronger forces for the next round. The game continues until one player or the other obliterates the others and controls all of the countries on the map.

The game takes strategy, planning, and a little bit of luck.

Strategery includes an online, 2 player battle mode that works similar to last weeks Words With Friends. Each player takes their turn on their own time and there are push notifications to let you know when it's your turn. While the multiplayer system isn't very robust, it gets the job done.

Now, the contest part! Add your Strategery user name below so that we can have a group of willing players to play against. I am, as usual, Jeff148Apps, feel free to hit me up for a game. We'll pick a random winner for a $15 US iTunes gift card from all the entries and announce it next weekend.

If you want to check the game out before buying, there's a Lite version available for the iPhone, but it lacks the online battle mode.

Check our our previous Weekend Fun posts.

Update 5/8: Wow! What a great response. Over 300 of you joined us in playing Words With Friends. Of the 20+ games I've got going, I'm losing most of them. No big surprise there! As mentioned below, we picked a winner, emailed them and once they respond we'll send them the $15 iTunes gift card. Check back later for another Weekend Fun post about another multiplayer game and a $15 iTunes gift card winner.

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Last week, we kicked off our Weekend Fun series with We Rule. 99 of you joined us to build our kingdoms to new levels. We've announced the winner of last weekends $15 iTunes gift card on that page and emailed the winner. This week, it's time to step it up a notch and start to exercise our vocabularies a little.

Words With Friends is our Weekend Fun contest for this week. If you aren't familiar with Words With Friends, it's a multiplayer Scrabble type game. What makes it work so well on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad (with HD version), is that you play it at your own pace. Once you play your move, the control passes to the other player who will play at their own pace.

Want to play Words With Friends? The cheapest way is to download the free version (link below), set up an account, and get started. From there you can initiate a game with someone you know, or have the game pick a random player for you. If you are looking for opponents, please add your username in the comments below and I'm sure someone will be more than happy to challenge you! Feel free to challenge me if you feel like winning (jeff148apps) -- I have about a 3rd grade vocabulary. (and yes, vocabulary is the largest word I know how to spell)

We'll pick a random player to win a $15 iTunes gift card (for the US iTunes Store) -- all you have to do to win is leave your Words With Friends id (not email address) in the comments below.

Good luck, and happy wordsmithing!

Update 5/1/2010: gokbert is our winner -- check your email and respond and we'll send you the iTunes gift card code.

We Rule from ngmoco:) is one of the more popular community trading games. A genre of game most popularized by Farmville. This type of game revolves around building things and trading goods and services with other players. In We Rule one of the best ways to gain experience points and in-game currency is to sell and buy services with other players. Both buyers and sellers gain in these transactions.

To sell services, you just need to build buildings that sell goods and services. This is basically any of the buildings other than farms and homes. Users can then come to your kingdom and order from those buildings just by touching them. This is the same way that you can order services from other kingdoms. Visit other kingdoms and look for open signs to see what's available.

So let's use this post as a place to share each our Plus+ Network usernames so that we can start trading with each other. The idea being that we build a community within the We Rule community all trading with each other to build our XP as fast as possible. I'll start, I'm jeff148apps.

Add your Plus+ Network username below, in the comments. We can then all add each other as friends and start building up experience points and gold. To make it a little more enticing, we'll pick a random user from below for a $15 iTunes Gift card so you can buy more mojo in the game. We'll give away the gift card next weekend.

Also, make sure you have the latest version installed. Ngmoco recently fixed some bugs related to open businesses that should make things easier for us all.