Now here’s a gem! Stringy Things DS is a compendium of word games, with a dice offering thrown in for good measure. They’re all professionally presented, played to a user-definable time limit and offer one to four players. For once you can come out of a game and try another by pressing the Start button – there’s no need to keep resetting your machine.
The first offering is called ‘Swaps’. You’re given a four-letter word and are invited to swap one of the letters for another, making a new word. If you succeed, you score. If you can’t make a legitimate word, just enter anything to move onto the next without scoring. The second game, ‘Crosses’, is a little like scrabble in that you place letters on a board to make words and score. ‘Towers’ has you making vertical words by placing letters in tubes.
‘Triplets’ offers you three letters. You must make a word containing them, in the order offered. ‘Strings’ is a kind of word search, where you must find words within a grid of letters, and ‘Anagrams’ does exactly what it says on the tin – it’s a bit like the letters section of the popular TV quiz show Countdown. Finally, ‘Dice’ plays like the traditional dice game Yahtzee.
It would be nice if high scores were saved onto the storage unit instead of being reset every time you restart, but other than that, it’s a cracker..
Above: On the Nintendo DS
To Return to the competition home page click here
Breakout DS The arcade classic finds its way on to the Nintendo DS thanks to Max Media Player. |
DSokoban Clever treasure puzzle game with puzzles ranging from easy-peasy to tricky enough to make you pull your hair out in frustration. |
DSudoku The pen-and-paper classic comes to the DS, and the developer has put a great deal of effort into turning it into a videogame. |
Earth Invaders Positioned at the foot of the screen Space Invaders style, You blasts out bullets with attitude for as long as your stylus is on the touchscreen. |
Super Snake DS Guide your roving reptile around the screen, eating the fruit and food scattered around the playing area. |
Warrior Training an interesting mix of game styles. |
AMAP4DS A map of the London Underground is always a handy thing to have when visiting the capital. This is the Nintendo DS version. |
Stringy Things DS Stringy Things DS is a compendium of word games. |
Minesweeper DS Fans of classic gaming will soon be able to play it on the move. |
DDRlite It does what it says on the tin, with no real surprises. |
Battleship Now here’s a game worth playing! A fair old rendition of the classic pencil-and-paper offering. |
Memory What can you say about Memory that isn’t obvious from the screenshots? |
Tic Tac Toe This one’s Noughts and Crosses on the DS. |
Prohibition Interesting – an Amstrad CPC game brought to the DS in an unofficial conversion. |
Joggle DS It’s daunting at first, but as you sit and think, all sorts of words present themselves. |
PaddleBattleDS Now here’s a text-book example of how to make good use of the touchscreen and create a game which could only have appeared on the DS. |