Apps with friends

Posted by nkbish0p at 17:35

Tweet In this app review, I will be looking at a trilogy of iPhone apps that are meant to be played as multi-player games with your friends. All three apps rely on push notifications to notify the other player that it is their turn to have a go, similar to how people take turns playing board games with the added bonus that the two players can play at their own pace and do not have to be in the same room or even country. In fact, as each of these titles allow matches with random opponents, the players involved may no have even met. So far there are three games in the series, words with friends, chess with friends and hanging with friends. Each are available in the app store as ad-supported free versions or paid versions which remove the ads.



Words with friends


Undoubtedly the most popular of the three apps here. Words with friends is based on the popular board game scrabble which I am sure that most readers are familiar with already. The game uses a slightly modified scrabble board (probably for copyright reasons) but apart from this the rules are exactly the same. This app is great as a game of scrabble normally has a relatively low number of turns before the game is completed compared to some other board games. This means that even at an extremely relaxed pace a single game should last no longer than a week or so. If too long a period of tie elapses without one player taking their turn, that player forfeits the game. The ads in the free version appear after a player has taken their turn and must be dismissed before continuing. The paid version of the app removes all of the adverts and costs only £0.59 so is recommended for those that enjoy the application.

Hanging with friends


Based on the game "hangman" but surprisingly confusing. The first player forms a word out of a given selection of letters and is awarded points depending on which letters are used (bizarrely in a manner similar to that of scrabble, the letters must be arranged across a set of squares that can include multipliers such as "triple word score" or "double letter score". Each letter has its own point value similar to in scrabble). Strangely there seems to be no purpose of the accumulated points and they have no influence on the outcome of the game. Once a word is selected a notification is sent to the other player prompting them to try and guess letters that are in the chosen word. If a letter is chosen that is not in the word a ""life" is lost. Once all lives are lost the word is classed unsolved. If a player fails to solve 5 words that the other player has created they lose the game. Ads appear similarly to "words with friends" and again, an ad free version is available for £0.59.

Chess with friends


For those that have previous experience playing chess on an iOS device, it is great to know that you no longer have to rely on computerised opponents that just can't seem to be the same as playing against a real player. This app is pretty self explanatory but it is worth noting that as some chess games can contain a large number of moves before a match is completed, games played in this app can take a long period of time to be completed. Surprisingly, it costs £1.79 for the paid version of this app and the free version contains ads similar to the other two apps. It may be worth waiting for any possible price reductions before purchasing the paid version of this app as at the moment, to me, it seems slightly overpriced.

 

In short, as each app has a free version and all are great fun, I recommend trying all three today!


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