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Nokia 5800 Game Review: Spb Puzzle v1.00(0)

| December 27, 2009 | 0 Comments

Welcome screen

Remember those jigsaw puzzles and hours of engrossing game play, putting the pieces together? Jigsaw puzzles were one of my favorite puzzles during those lazy afternoons of summer vacation. Well, now you dont have to head to the nearest store to get your hands on a jigsaw puzzle. Your 5800 is all you need to enjoy this game in your spare time. Spb Puzzle by Spb Software is an excellent game, bringing jigsaw puzzles to our beloved 5800s.

Installation

Spb Puzzle is a paid game costing US $ 9.95 and can be either be downloaded from ovi store or from the official website of Spb Softwares. The setup file, at 7.1 MB is one of the biggest set up files I have seen so far for any application/game on s60 5th edition device. Download from the official website is surprisingly fast, making me double check if the file is really 7 MB large. Spb Software seems to have reserved sufficient bandwidth for game downloads and rightly so, I still remember the sorry state of Ovi client when it was first launched this May. I already have a good feeling about this game! I hope more application/game developers learn from this and reserve sufficient bandwidth for their download pages.

Features

Puzzle mode

Image mode

Spb Puzzle has a very well designed, easy-to-use interface. The game play is such that you dont have to bother about any settings, once you start the puzzle. Just select the difficulty level, chose the image you want to solve and start putting the peieces together. By default, there are 10 images of medium difficulty to solve and each image is unlocked after solving the previous one. The screenshots to the right, show the first image in the medium difficult mode.

Spb Puzzle provides two more sources to append additional images to the puzzle. Users can select an image file from the phone memory/memory card for the puzzle. In addition, users can also download new image packs from the Spb website and all this can be done right from your 5800. Image packs are labelled depending on the difficulty level. I downloaded the easy image pack which was around 2 MB and again download was faster than I was expecting. (Check the gallery at the bottom for screenshots).

Putting the pieces together is as simple as on paper. You can drag the pieces around the board with a finger touch and need not rely on stylus. The interface is fully finger touch optimized and all you have to do is just concentrate on putting together the pieces to form the complete image. A small arrow on the bottom left can link you to the complete image for your reference. In addition, there is a spark when you put together two peices that perfectly gel together, which can assure you that you are heading in the right direction.

Pros

Easy-to-use fully touch optimized interface
Abundant customisation options
Ability to add images from the phone memory/memory card and image packs are a big bonus

Cons

At 9 MB (after installation), it does hog some precious phone/external memory
Cannot skip through images meaning you have to solve each puzzle to unlock the next image

Verdict

With one of the best designed user interfaces, gameplay with finger touch is as easy as sliding the peices together on a paper puzzle, if not any easier. Its one of the best implementations on touch screen technologies for any application on s60 5th edition platform today. I personally like the option of adding personal images as well as image packs from the web to enhance gameplay options. In all, its a very well written package and at US $ 9.95 is quiet a steal. So what are you waiting for? Just go ahead and download this application and enjoy putting together your favorite image in a jigsaw puzzle on your favorite phone!