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Filed under: iPhone , iPod touch , App Review The iPhone might be the most amazing computer you can slip into your jeans, but there are some things it just doesn’t do very well. For example, you can’t really get into a bluffing match against the machine, at least not with the iPhone/iPod touch app Viva il Re ($1.99). Here’s what we mean. Viva il Re (which means “Long live the King” in Italian) is a well-designed board game by Stefano Luperto that has been beautifully ported to the iPhone by by Pro-netics S.p.A. The object is to score points and hopefully get one of your characters to become the new king, because the old king has decided to retire (can kings do that?). With the retirement announcement, “the pirouette for succession begins!” according to the official game setup. Each player is secretly hoping one of their six characters manages to reach the top, out of 13 total. When you play the board game version of Viva il Re, called King Me! , the reasonably slow pace of the game and the face-to-face interaction means that there is time to develop guesses about which characters each player is hoping will take the throne. While the app looks almost exactly like the tabletop version and most of the functionally is the same, it’s just not as much fun to compete against bots as it is to outwit other people. Continue reading and see if you agree. Gallery: Viva il Re The Game The game is played over one or three rounds, with each round ending with the election of a new king (yes, we know, kings don’t usually get elected, but work with us here). To start the game, each player gets a card listing six names. These are the characters that will score you points at the end of the game, so the higher you can get them in the castle, the better. The castle (game board) is made up of seven sections, numbered 0-5 and 10. The lower six floors are where the characters spend most of their time. In the set-up phase of the game, players place a character on a floor numbered 1-4 (each player will place the same numbers of characters, and the extras start on floor zero). Once everyone has taken their place, movement starts. Now, with each turn you can move any character up one, and only one, floor. The only time you can’t do this is when a floor you want to move to is full with four characters already. Obviously, you want to get all of your characters as high in the castle as possible, because they will each score points equal to the floor they are on when the round ends. When does this happen? When a new king is crowned. Each time a character is moved to the top floor, an election is held. You can always vote “yes,” but are limited to voting “no” to a small number of times based on how many players are in the game (e.g., with three players, you can vote “no” four times, with six, just twice). As soon as everyone votes yes on a character, total up your points and start a new round. If, however, at least one person votes “no,” that character is removed from the castle – and scores nothing – and the game continues. One special rule here: if it’s the last round in a game, if you manage to score zero points from characters, you get a bonus of 33 points. Even royalty like to shoot the moon, apparently. The game mechanics are simple enough, and the game is so enjoyable that people have made their own homemade boards that incorporate Star Trek or cute little animals . Board gamers are a pretty dedicated bunch, and you can guess that there’s something here worth keeping if they go ahead and re-theme a game. To explore the game in an online, turn-based setting, click here of download the game rules summary in PDF . The App As we said, when you go through all these steps with friends around a table, it can get pretty intense, especially once a few rounds of voting have passed. When playing the iPhone app version, though, everything moves a little too fast and the “opponents” (bots) don’t have any sort of personality to make you feel like you’re playing a bluffing game. Instead, it becomes a simple game of moving your characters up and voting now and again. Sure, this sounds like pretty much the same thing, but if just feels very different and not in a good way. The Toilet expansion is also missing. There are some nice digital-only touches. Instead of needing to remember who your characters are, they are conveniently highlighted in yellow on the game board. This makes your turns much quicker, since there’s no need to refer back to your list of candidates. It’s impossible to know if the bots ever vote “yes” to a character that isn’t on their card so as to hold on to a “no” card for later while expecting at least one other player to decline the new king, but it appears they do. We played some games where a round ended much earlier than expected, something that is certainly reminiscent of the tabletop version. The app also doesn’t remember settings – the number of players or rounds selected – from game to game, so you need to reselect them each time. Not cool. Also, each time you move a character to another level, the game automatically shifts it to the leftmost open spot on that level. This isn’t a real problem, just kind of silly. The game’s music is harmless and appropriately medieval-sounding, but why can’t we listen to iTunes while playing? This is quickly becoming our number one annoyance with iPhone games. We’re carrying around gigs of music for a reason, my friends, and we probably like our tunes better than your game’s soundtrack. On the table, King Me! is a fun and light “filler” game. On the iPhone, though, it falls flat. The main flaw of Viva il Re is that it’s for one player only. While it would make the game take longer, pass-n-play does not seem like it would be that hard to implement, and it would certainly turn Viva il Re from a C+ game into an A- in a hurry. At the very least, playing other opponents over a network would be nice. This is an interactive game, and any digital version needs to respect that. For now, we’re voting “no.” TUAW Review: Viva il Re board game app asks to be crowned originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read

Until I held the Motorola Devour in my hands, I assumed it would be a lighter, more plasticky version of the Motorola Droid with weaker specs but a better keyboard. As you’ll learn in this review, my perception gradually quickly changed. It’s difficult to review the Devour on it’s own merits when it has the same manufacturer, is available on the same carrier, and has a mirroring form factor with (virtually) the same operating system. But we’ll try… and in the end draw the necessary comparisons and conclusions because let’s face it – context is everything. Hardware Review Within 2 seconds of holding the Motorola Devour I knew it wasn’t the “light, more plasticky” younger brother to the Droid I had expected. It was heavy. It was sturdy. It screamed “tough” and wanted to be its own man phone. The aluminum body with black, ruggedized rubber contributed to the look and feel and honestly it seems like the most solid Android phone out there. The problem is that the sturdiness seems like the main attraction of a phone that’s aspiring to be things it shouldn’t: Don’t get me wrong, I like the Devour hardware and it isn’t bad when judged alone. But with a small screen (3.1-inch), average resolution (HVGA), mediocre camera (3MP/fixed focus/no flash) and other less than stellar specs, I almost wished it would just take its place in line. It’s way too big and heavy for what’s stuffed inside and while an outstanding keyboard could have come through with a buzzer beater in the clutch, it was only decent. Better than the Droid keyboard? Absolutely… but by no means one of the best keyboards out there. Keyboards: DEVOUR vs DROID vs G1 I was really hoping the Devour keyboard would knock one out of the park. In press pics it looked quite spacious, contoured and clicky. I tried to do quite a bit of typing with the Devour, even publishing a Phandroid article from the device , so I got pretty comfortable/familiar with it: The Devour keyboard is DEFINITELY an upgrade over the Droid keyboard. Not only was the Droid keyboard sub-par, the accuracy of the large 3.7-inch landscape keyboard nearly render the physical keyboard pointless (at least in my own opinion). It’s a good thing the Devour improves here then, as the 3.1-inch screen is less than desirable for typing out Emails and long text messages. Unfortunately I’d only give the Devour keyboard a “decent” rating – not terrible and not great, somewhere in the middle of the pack. You can see how HTC did a great job configuring their sliding mechanism to allow for maximum keyboard surface area. I’m hoping a few other companies make this a priority, and if you ask me, LG is a prime candidate by emulating their Voyager/enV clamshell style form factor. Software Review The Devour runs Android 1.6 with Motorola’s custom build of Android – MOTOBLUR. The idea is to aggregate all your points of communication into two virtual “filing cabinets: Happenings and Messages. Happenings are status updates from friends on Twitter, Facebook and the like – stuff that flies in by the barrels but isn’t essential to your existence. Messages are 1-to-1 points of communication that are more critical to your everyday life – Emails, TXT messages and that sort of thing. They’re displayed on your home screen as widgets and a universal status updater allows you to push your own updates to numerous social networking sites all at once. The most dedicated Android fans could have 2 main complaints about the Devour software: It runs an “old” version of Android They don’t particularly enjoy MOTOBLUR – it’s information overkill I totally dismiss those 2 arguments in the above video and I think it’s worth pointing out why. While most readers of this blog always want the most up-to-date version of Android so they can have all the bells and whistles, there are a lot of customers who this won’t bother. Even Android 1.6 is pretty darn good and coming from a dumb phone or feature phone, they’ve already got so many new features to enjoy that an extra thing here and there isn’t going to kill them. And don’t forget – Motorola says they WILL eventually update the Devour to 2.x, but until they you’re still able to enjoy the vast majority of Android goodness including Google Navigation. I understand why people don’t enjoy MOTOBLUR – it’s just not for them. Either they’re not social networking fiends, it is information overkill, or they prefer other 3rd party apps on Android Market. While I think MOTOBLUR is an interesting idea and I especially enjoy the News/RSS widget, I can appreciate that we all have personal preferences. What I can’t understand is people making a decision to purchase or NOT to purchase a phone based on whether or not it has BLUR. If you don’t like it, simply drag all the widgets into the trashcan, turn off the notifications and set up your phone as if it were a Google Experience phone. With the 1.6 and BLUR discussion out of the way, I have to say I was surprised how snappy and quick the UI of the Devour seemed. I didn’t put it under a ton of application stress, but it seems as though the processor had an easy time with the smaller and less resolved screen. The Voice Activation feature on the right side is a nice touch, especially useful if you’re in the car or multi-tasking – definitely a plus. The biggest detraction of the Devour’s UI isn’t the software at all, but the hardware. If you’ve gotten used to a Droid or Nexus, the smaller screen size and lower resolution are apparent, but all-in-all the screen is decent (although sunlight caused problems). When all is said and done, despite being an older version of Android the Devour software holds its own and all but those demanding the Android elite should be satisfied. Camera Review There are two sides to reviewing a camera/camcorder: the actual experience TAKING the picture including UI/Options/Features and then of course the result – how your pictures and videos turn out. I’m sorry to say that on both accounts the Camera is mediocre at best. The camera is only 3MP fixed focus with no flash so I wasn’t expecting amazing results, but I thought the MOTOBLUR integration might offer a little more in terms of customizing, editing and other options: The pictures are actually pretty bad. When the pixels are condensed and you’re viewing small versions of the full images they don’t look so shabby, but if you click through an image to see it’s original size you’ll notice how fuzzy and poor the quality truly is. For example in this picture there were actually several Robins jumping around the forest floor. Click on the picture, which is the full size taken at 3MP, and see if you can spot any of them. You probably can’t so here is some help – I cropped the Robin at full resolution and it looks like an Atari character: But again, you just have to know what you’re getting and why/when you’re using the camera. Other pictures came out fairly well if you just want to use them as 8

Apple may have just made a major change to the App Store that could render a large number of applications worthless. We’ve just heard from Jon Atherton, the developer behind Wobble iBoobs, who says that he just received an Email from Apple indicating that his application was being removed from the App Store because of a new policy change: Apple has apparently decided “to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store.” This could be a very big deal. Here’s the letter Atherton says he received: The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines. Your application, Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored), contains content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately. We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application. Thank you for your understanding in this matter. If you believe you can make the necessary changes so that Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored) complies with our recent changes, we encourage you to do so and resubmit for review. Sincerely, iPhone App Review From what I can tell, this isn’t an isolated incident. I’ve tried to download apps called “Exotic Positions” and “Sexy Women”, and both of them gave me errors indicating that the applications were no longer available. However, some applications with similar themes (“Beautiful Boobs”, “Sexy Girls Uncovered”, and “Sex Strip”) worked. All of these applications came with Apple’s “objectionable material” warning that requires you to affirm that you’re over the age of 17. This may be a case of Apple picking and choosing which apps are too sexual, or they may still be figuring out which apps to pull. There are reports on Twitter of other developers having their applications pulled as well. Of course, many of these “sexy” applications have been on the App Store for many months. Wobble, which lets you add “jiggle points” to any photo (use your imagination) hasn’t released a change in functionality for 6-8 months, and has been installed 970,000 times — none of these were flying under Apple’s radar. We’ve reached out to Apple for more information.

Filed under: Gaming , App Review I remember there being a joke about new devices coming out: Yeah, but does it run Doom? The iPhone does, and apparently Id is on a hot streak now . According to TouchArcade , the Doom II RPG [$3.99, iTunes Link ] was released Tuesday on the App Store. What I’ve seen is that people are enjoying it. I tend to take my time with quest-style games, so I am not really far into it (stage one of nine), but I am liking it a lot. I never had a device before that I really wanted to be playing games on, so I never spent a lot of time with Doom’s previous flavors — this one is an RPG variant on the classic Doom shooting gameplay, made just for the iPhone by Id. Right now I’m digging really digging it, and for me it’s worth the time spent because I’ll have my phone awhile still. There’s been thought and effort put into the controls of this one, and you can tell it’s a game designed to play on the iPhone. Releases like this and the continuing efforts to port old-school games forward to the current generation of hardware have been going on for years. I think it’s been going on long enough that people are less interested in doing it for the cred and more because these games are genuinely fun to play. Unless someone makes a better suggestion in the comments, once I conquer Doom II RPG I’ll be (not so) patiently waiting for the iPhone port of Riven. (Ed: Don’t tell Kelly, but that’s out, too !) TUAW Doom II RPG unleashed on iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

A Penn State graduate student and professor have built a system that transmits wireless data at 1 Gbps over infrared light. And they think it can go even faster. Just last month, we saw Siemens get to 500Mbps streaming using white LEDs, but this infrared solution works at twice that speed: Their setup sent data across a room by modulating a beam of infrared light that was focused on the ceiling and picking up the reflections using a specially modified photodetector. The pair says that their measurements show the system could support data rates “well beyond” the one gigabit per second they are currently claiming. While there are some hurdles to overcome before optical wireless networks become commonplace, the professor who guided the project believes that if the technology continues to develop at its current pace, we could see a practical application within three years. [ PSU via Technology Review ]

Some folks decided to study the calling habits of 5.3 million people over an 18-month period. 350 million phone calls later, they came to an almost obvious conclusion: Prepaid cellphone users make and return fewer calls than their postpaid counterparts. You can click on the image to take a closer look at the graphs. Initially the study done at the Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Finland, was intended to analyze reciprocity—the likelihood of an individual receiving as many calls in return as he or she makes. But during the course of the research, a clear difference was discovered in the calling habits of prepaid and postpaid users: Postpaid users tend to be more prolific, having on average 5.41 people they call. Prepaid users, by contrast, have only 3.41 contacts on average (although the notion of “average” is a little strange here since there is a very long tail on these distributions). Postpaid users also made about 10 times as many calls as prepaid users while 25 percent of prepaid users had odd relationships in which “one participant makes more than 80 percent of all calls.” Technology Review suggests that the differences in calling habits could be explained by the fact that prepaid users are more likely to be younger individuals, but I’d go as far as considering that the unlimited mobile-to-mobile or weekend benefits of postpaid plans may play a role as well. [ Technology Review via NY Times Bits ]

So you’ve got an application that isn’t ONLY available on the iPhone – it could be on Android, WebOS, WinMo, BlackBerry and other platforms. In your “description” you may want to let users know, and heck, maybe you got an award or something in one of the platforms and want to show users you’re product is noteworthy. Sound fair? Not according to Steve Jobs. If it’s Android you want to mention you better think again. Flash Of Genius, developers of an app called SAT Vocab 2.2, have had the following description in the iPhone App Store: They have just posted ( on their blog ) a letter they received from Apple suggesting they remove the mention of Google Android or else have their app removed from the App Store: Dear Flash of Genius, LLC, Thank you for submitting Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 to the App Store.  During our review of your application, we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections. Providing future platform compatibility plans or other general platform references are not relevant in the context of the iPhone App Store.   While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate  to remove “Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!”  from the Application Description [Emphasis added]. Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 on the iPhone App Store. Regards, iPhone Developer Program Apple definitely has the right to do this… it just seems… overly defensive. Doesn’t it make them seem scared of Google and Android? Perhaps they should be! Meanwhile Flash Of Genius are just wondering how they can leverage their success on Android to show iPhone users they should give the software a shot! I’m severely doubting Google cares whether or not you mention Apple or any other competitors in the Android Market. Do whatever the heck you want! You can take our description… but you cannot take… OUR FREEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM [Via Gizmodo ]

Author Joe Hill is following in the steps of his father Stephen King, and making the transistion to Hollywood. His book, Heart-Shaped Box is being developed into a big screen thriller by director Neil Jordan over at Warner Bros, Mandalay Pictures has optioned his upcoming novel Horns , and his graphic novel, Locke & Key was set-up at Dimension Films in 2008 with talk of a potential franchise. Latino Review has learned that the project has moved over to DreamWorks, where Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are developing a big screen adaptation as part of their producing deal with the studio. No word on if they will lend a hand in the screenplay adaptation. Here is the official synopsis from the publisher: Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them…. and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all…! Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) creates an all-new story of dark fantasy and wonder, with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez. Hill has received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection, the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection and Best Short Story, and the Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award-2007, among his growing collection of critical accolades. At the 2009 Eisner Awards, Locke & Key was nominated for Best Limited Series and Joe Hill was nominated for Best Writer. You can watch a trailer for the comic book that was created by IDW Piublishing: The first book in the series, titled “Welcome to Lovecraft”, is available on Amazon for around $15 ( or $16.50 in hardcover ). Daniel Craig in Talks to Star in Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens Shane Black Scribing a Doc Savage Movie for Star Trek Producers Kurtzman and Orci Definitely Not Returning for Transformers 3; Script Duties Are All Ehren Kruger’s Kurtzman and Orci Negotiating Xombie for Dreamworks Star Trek Sequel May Contain Pointed Modern Commentary Can Michael Bay Be Convinced To Fast Track a Transformers 3?

The 2010 Sundance Film Festival has finally come to an end and Brandon and I are on our way back to sunny Los Angeles. It was truly an incredible year for the both of us. It was Brandon’s first time attending Sundance and my fourth. He saw 35 films and I saw 26, so between the two of us, we saw a grand total of 61 films at Sundance. If you’ve been following our coverage over the last two weeks, we’ve been bringing you reviews, blogs, interviews, videos, and more from Park City. And as a final recap we present our Favorite Films of the Fest as well as a rundown of everything we wrote, including every last review we published. Let’s start at the top and take a look at our favorite films from Sundance 2010. While I did see a lot of good films this year, choosing my overall favorites wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I guess the best stuff was already on my mind and I just needed to pull them out and write them down. So here are our favorites: Alex’s Best of the Fest: #1 – Buried – I’m making an unconventional pick here, but I’m choosing this just because my experience watching this at midnight was the best of Sundance. And because it’s an extraordinary film, too. #2 – Blue Valentine – This film contains the two best performances of Sundance, the best cinematography of Sundance, and the most emotional, depressing story of Sundance, but it’s an amazing film. #3 – Catfish – I’m not usually someone who likes documentaries, but this one blew me away. I was literally on the edge of my seat watching it because it was so exciting and intense. #4 – HappyThankYouMorePlease – I’m a sucker for a good romantic comedy and this was the one I fell in love with this year. Not everyone loved it, but I saw it twice and enjoyed it even more the second time. #5 – HIGH School – I honestly didn’t expect a stoner comedy to be this good, but I laughed my ass of the entire time, and actually thought it was a great movie, too. Brandon’s Best of the Fest: #1 – Blue Valentine – An honest, beautifully written, wonderfully directed, splendidly acted portrayal of love and loss that engaged my emotions as well as my brain more than any film at the fest. Every viewer is given the opportunity to experience something entirely unique. #2 – Catfish – A mind-blowing, odd, funny, weird, terrifying, sad, and ultimately wholly unique film unlike any other I’ve experienced. The less said — and read — about it, the better. #3 – The Kids Are All Right – A truthfully told, heart-warming story about the strength of family and the often humorous aspects of love and marriage. Julianne Moore and Annette Bening steal the show; but it’s the strength of the writing that enables them to do so. #4 – Exit Through the Gift Shop – Always benevolent, but severely subversive, this doc pulls the rug out from under the art world while paying tribute to the artists who express themselves on the street. It’s a whole lot of fun to watch and even more fun to analyze. #5 – Cyrus – This film houses some of the best comedic improvisation, and it manages to retain its awkward edge while at the same time being emotionally engaging and just downright hilarious. As a recap, you can find two lists below of ALL reviews of Sundance films published over the last two weeks. They are organized by the score they were given in the review in order to easily find the best Sundance films. All of Alex’s Sundance Reviews: 9.5 /10 – Buried (dir. Rodrigo Cortés) 9 /10 – Blue Valentine (dir. Derek Cianfrance) 9 /10 – HappyThankYouMorePlease (dir. Josh Radnor) 8.5 /10 – HIGH School (dir. John Stalberg) 8 /10 – I’m Here (dir. Spike Jonze) 8 /10 – Nowhere Boy (dir. Sam Taylor Wood) 7.5 /10 – Frozen (dir. Adam Green) 6 /10 – Hesher (dir. Spencer Susser) 5 /10 – Howl (dir. Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman) 4 /10 – The Runaways (dir. Floria Sigismondi) All of Brandon’s Sundance Reviews: 10 /10 – Blue Valentine (dir. Derek Cianfrance) 9.5 /10 – Catfish (dir. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman) 9.5 /10 – Louis C.K.: Hilarious (dir. Louis C.K.) 9 /10 – The Company Men (dir. John Wells) 9 /10 – Exit Through the Gift Shop (dir. Banksy) 9 /10 – Splice (dir. Vincenzo Natali) 9 /10 – Un Prophete (dir. Jacques Audiard) 8.5 /10 – 12th & Delaware (dir. Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady) 8.5 /10 – Buried (dir. Rodrigo Cortés) 8.5 /10 – The Kids Are All Right (dir. Lisa Cholodenko) 8.5 /10 – The Tillman Story (dir. Amir Bar-Lev) 8.5 /10 – Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig) 8 /10 – Get Low (dir. Aaron Schneider) 7.5 /10 – The Shock Doctrine (dir. Mat Whitecross & Michael Winterbottom) 7 /10 – Howl (dir. Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman) 7 /10 – Lovers of Hate (dir. Bryan Poyser) 6 /10 – Winter’s Bone (dir. Debra Granik) 5 /10 – Enemies of the People (dir. Rob Lemkin & Thet Sambath) 5 /10 – The Runaways (dir. Floria Sigismondi) 3 /10 – Frozen (dir. Adam Green) All of Our Sundance Video Reviews: Animal Kingdom (dir. David Michôd) Boy (dir. Taika Waititi) Catfish (dir. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman) Cyrus (dir. Jay & Mark Duplass) I’m Here (dir. Spike Jonze) Life 2.0 (dir. Jason Spingarn-Koff) Splice (dir. Vincenzo Natali) For those interested, I’m also part of indieWIRE’s criticWIRE and I’ve submitted rankings and reviews as part of their coverage of Sundance. You can find my scores and a complete rundown with rankings for all of the films playing at Sundance right here . They’ve got the best overall look at all the buzz from the festival. That’s all from Sundance folks. We have a few more interviews coming this week (one with the director of Blue Valentine , the other with the director of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil ) but besides those, this concludes our coverage of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival . We had an amazing time and I’m sure neither Brandon nor I will ever forget the experiences or the memories. We met some truly wonderful people, from filmmakers to bloggers to volunteers, and trekked miles through snow, but it was all for the love of cinema. We’ll be back in Park City next year, but until then, it’s time to get some much needed rest and relaxation. See you soon! Discover More: Editorials , Indies , Sundance 10

Filed under: Gaming , Features , iPhone , iPod touch , App Review Catan . If you’ve ever visited, there’s a good chance you’re passionate about it. First unveiled as a traditional board game in 1995, the now-classic trading and settlement game has evolved over the years to include dozens of scenarios, expansions and reworkings, from limited edition game maps to browser-based Internet versions. Naturally, the Settlers of Catan is now also available for the iPhone [ iTunes link ], and it’s a a damn good condensed version. First things first. This is the full, but basic, game. The original ruleset isn’t condensed at all, but none of the expansions are present in the current version. While long-time board gamers might scoff at simple “vanilla Settlers,” the basic game as presented in Exozet ’s iPhone version acts just like the tabletop big brother. You can choose to play on the fixed beginner board or a random map, you can play with three or four people (or bots), you can trade, you can go for longest road, etc. All the things that make Catan such an enduring game are here, and that’s great to have in your pocket. Read on to find out more about Catan: the First Island on the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Gallery: Catan: The First Island The Game The Settlers of Catan is, at heart, a game of collecting resources and building a collection of settlements and cities on a modular board, with the goal of reaching a set point total (between 8 and 12, but defaulting to 10) before the other players. Players who know the rules will be able to jump right in. You can set the animations to turbo and turn off the opponent comments for the fastest possible game. If you’re quick, a full game can take around 10 minutes – about as much time as it takes some people to set up the tabletop version. Players who aren’t familiar can go through a tutorial with digital Catan’s familiar Professor Easy to learn how to build, trade and acquire points or read up on the game at Board Game Geek . The App The Catan gameplay doesn’t suffer on the iPod’s small screen. Each resource hex is clearly differentiated by both color and graphics, but colorblind players might have trouble figuring out which settlements and roads belong to which player since there are no player icons to be found. You’ll have to rely on memory to kept things straight, Figuring out how the game operates is superbly straightforward. Things blink when you can can affect them, the menus are easy to figure out and so on. If you know how to play the tabletop game and aren’t totally new to the iPhone, you will probably know how to play the app in, at most, 90 seconds. Take, for example, the trade screen. You can see the five resource types and how many you happen to be sitting on at any given moment. Flick one up towards your opponents and the number goes down. This is what you’re offering. Flick one down towards your player avatar and the number goes up. Simple and clear. Click on the big green checkmark to try and seal the deal – and notice how this icon is located at the opposite side of the screen from the decline/exit button. Very smart. If you get fed up with AI opponents trying to trade with you, there is an option to decline all offers for the rest of the turn. When you have the resources that you want already, this greatly speeds up the game (a good thing). This brings up a point: who is this app’s target audience? With the tutorial and the easy playing time, someone totally new to Catan could pick up the game and enjoy it. But, c’mon, the people who will be most excited about this are the hardcore players. A skilled player will be able to beat the game’s toughest bots – William and Hillary – with some regularity, but there is still enough challenge here to be worth the five spot. If you’re addicted to Catan and want ultra-easy access to a quick game (make your decisions fast and you can be done in ten minutes), this is the app for you. Hopefully, enough players will complain about the less-than-brilliant AI and we’ll get another update to make them play better. While it would be feasible to implement in the tabletop version, one new feature in the app is the ” resource bonus .” This setting allows a player to never go too long without getting at least a little something. Especially early in the game, a series of bad rolls can mean you’re not building anything while your opponents erect cities all over the place. With the resource bonus option turned on, after five empty rolls, a player can simply select one resource of their choice. A drought like this is less likely to happen if the dice option is set to Stack (or Stack5). When using Stack, the dice rolls have perfect distribution, so that if the game ends after exactly 36 rolls, you’ll have seen every possible combination of two dice during play. With Stack5, five random options are removed at the start of the game and the numbers reset after 31 rolls. There is a deck of cards that Mayfair Games sells for the tabletop Catan version that does the same thing, but the extra text on those cards is not included in the iPhone version. Speaking of mini-additions, the First Island is ripe for mini-expansions like The Great River of Catan or The Fishermen of Catan, and I hope we’ll be seeing some of the more game-changing expansions like Seafarers or Traders & Barbarians. They’d better be working on these options. Seriously. Looking even further down the road, should Exozet ever develop a larger version for the iPad, adding the 5-6 player expansion might also be cool, and players could play a tabletop game just by setting the iPad on the the table and going from there (dealing with cards hidden in players hands will be tricky, for sure). It’s a thought. Final thoughts For some reason, Exozet thinks players want to listen to in-game music instead of their iTunes library. The game’s music and sound effects can be muted, but is still doesn’t allow your own music library to play; that’s annoying, and one of the most-requested changes in customer reviews. Another downside is that there’s no way (that we could find) to offer trades with other players on their turn. This is important if you’re trying to offer 2-1 trades to stay under the 8-card robber hand limit, but because the game moves so fast it’s not that much of a problem, really. We’d also really, really love an undo button. The app is pretty idiot-proof, but mistakes do happen. Finally, there’s a bonus feature to this $5 app that hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves. The Settlers of Catan needs at least three players (the 2007 expansion Traders & Barbarians expansion for the tabletop game gave us a reasonable two-player ruleset, but it’s not the same game) to get going. With this app, we now have a very good way to play real two-player Catan. It’s a slight hassle to coordinate, but this app gives two people a third “player” whenever needed. Catan: The FIrst Island is the next best thing to having an extra friend around who’s always up for another trip to Catan. TUAW Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read