eSoft Gamepack 1

.: By: Corn Bread :: Device used: EM-500 :: October 10, 2001 :.

Ever had one of those days that you just like to sit back, take it easy, whip out your PPC and play some good puzzle games? But with the prices of some of the games nowadays, it just isn’t practical to keep on buying games right?

I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that I have found a collection of games that might be worthy of your time and money. The bad news? Well, you just might not be able to put your Pocket PC down after playing these games...

eSoft Gamepack 1 is a compilation of 4 puzzle/board games: The Fly, Traffic Jam, Marble Mania and Flower Power. Puzzle game lovers, read on.

Flower Power

Storage memory required: 2MB
Program memory needed: 1.5MB

The main board of this game consists of a bunch of colored flowers in the center of the screen and a small diagram located at the lower left side of the screen. The objective of the game is to arrange the flowers located at the center of the screen to match the one in the diagram.

Movement is done by tapping on any one of the flowers causing the 6 other flowers surrounding it to move counter clockwise until it is in its desired position. eSoft has had the foresight to include a save game feature in this game which is a nice addition since a brain-teaser game like this would take up a lot of your time. Also, it's good that I can save more than one game since it won’t disrupt my personal game if someone were to borrow my PPC and play the game.

The graphics here are a joy to look at as the game is very colorful with lots of different flowers to look at. The sound effects are also nicely done. The animation, on the other hand, looks jerky and I am annoyed that whenever I move the flowers, the wait "hourglass"  appears on the screen.

Marble Mania

Storage memory required: 1.8MB
Program memory needed: 1.5MB

If you enjoyed playing games like Bejeweled or Can’t Stop the Riot, then you’ll surely enjoy this game. The idea in the game is to swap adjacent pieces of marbles to form a horizontal or vertical line of 3 or more, of course the more pieces you eliminate simultaneously, the bigger points you can rack up.

There are 2 game modes available. In the first, Progressive Mode, you play until there are no more combinations to be made. The second, Time-based mode, is where you play till you run out of time, unsurprisingly. As with Flower Power, the graphics here are very colorful and pretty, and the sound effects are pretty nifty too. But it also shares the same problem that plagues Flower Power whereby the animation is jerky and the presence of the wait "hourglass" on every animation made can get very annoying.

The Fly

Storage memory required: 1.6MB
Program memory needed: 1.5MB

Ever wanted to catch a fly? Well, here’s your chance. The game’s objective is to capture the fly alive by tapping on the screen to make the area smaller until the Fly is trapped in the center. The movement of the trap starts on the left-hand side then continues to go clockwise.

The graphics here are very plain, although I have to admit that the fly looks very cute buzzing all over the screen. Fortunately, there are none of the animation problems that affect Flower Power and Marble Mania, and everything moves smoothly.

Traffic Jam

Storage memory required: 2.1MB
Program memory needed: 2.5MB

Now here’s my favorite game in this game pack, the classic game of Traffic. The object of the game is to move the yellow car to the exit but, of course, there are a lot of other cars blocking its way. Thus, your mission is to move the cars on the screen in such a way that the yellow car is able to reach the exit in as few moves as possible. Points are based on how many moves you make, the fewer the better.

As with the other games in this game pack, Traffic Jam also has superb graphics and good sound effects (I like the beep-beep and tire screeching sounds), plus there is no animation problem here - this game's movement is as smooth as silk. There’s also a save game feature here, a nice touch!

Overall, even with the animation problem surrounding Flower Power and Marble Mania, I can still heartily recommend eSoft Gamepack 1 to puzzle lovers everywhere, for there is no denying the solid gameplay and addictiveness of these four titles. The collection is sold for $20 and is available for ARM, MIPS and SH3, and can be installed in either the main RAM or onto a storage card.

Pros:

• Simple game mechanics yet very addictive.

• All of the games have a high score tracking board. Good for competitive people.

• Reasonably priced.

• Very attractive graphics (I especially love the intro screens - cool art!).

Cons:

• Animation problems on the games Flower Power and Marble Mania.

• No automatic icon launcher support - you have to manually copy them to the game folder.

• For such simple games, they seem to take up way too much storage space and program memory.

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