PDA Pundit: Games PDAs Play

Yardena Arar, PC World

Got a question about handheld computing? Write to The PDA Pundit.

I freely admit it: I've justified spending $200 to $500 or more on a PDA because it helps keep me organized and productive when I'm on the move--but my inner child really sees it as a great portable game player. At my age, it's a lot more socially acceptable to be playing games on a Palm or Pocket PC than on a Game Boy Advance.

Even high-end games for handhelds tend to be moderately priced, which makes them good candidates for last-minute holiday gifts. To a small collection of longtime companions, I've recently added a couple of new Palm versions of full-sized board games--one well known, the other less so.

Trivial Pursuit

The old standby is Trivial Pursuit. Handmark sells both Palm and Pocket PC editions for $30 each; I tried out the former on my Treo 600 and found that it does a good job of recreating the classic circular board on a very small screen. One nice feature is a little zoom toggle that lets you view the entire board, or an enlarged version of the portion in which your token is located.

You can play the game solo, which basically turns it into a trivia challenge since getting something wrong doesn't mean ceding a turn to an opponent, or you can play it with opponents on networked Palms. The devices can be connected over the Internet, over Bluetooth connections, or simply via the devices' infrared ports, which is how I faced off against a colleague. To play, one of the participants must host the game, and the others then join.

Once we got going, Trivial Pursuit on the Palm's tiny electronic board was as much fun as the old board game (which I hadn't played in ages)--until a power-saving mode kicked in on my device and shut down the IR connection. That basically put us out of business: Since I had been acting as host, we couldn't restart.

If you want to just cut to the trivia and eliminate all fussing with a board, you've got another option: Handmark includes a Flash mode in which you answer questions to scale a ladder (each right answer moves you forward). You set the length of the ladder (1 to 20 rungs) before starting, and for each rung you get a choice of two categories. I found this a more efficient way to test my trivia smarts than the classic board version played solo, but either way you'll enjoy the game.

Blokus

Blokus, a less well-known game, also survives the transition to a tiny screen quite nicely. This is a game for two to four players, each of whom plays Tetris-like pieces of a different color (red, blue, yellow, or green). At each turn, you must place one of your pieces on a large grid in such a way that it touches at least one previously placed piece of the same color at a corner without coming up immediately adjacent to any side of a same colored piece.

You play until you run out of pieces or can no longer legally place any of your pieces. You score one point for every square covered (pieces cover 1 to 5 squares) plus a bonus if you play all your pieces (which isn't easy) or if the single-square piece is the last you place.

You can also go it alone: You play two of the colors and the Palm device plays the other two. This isn't a networkable game, so if you play the regular version you have to pass the Palm between the players, and all four colors must be played. The Palm version costs $12; there's no Pocket PC option.

More Puzzle Games

The other game in heavy rotation on my Treo is Bounce Out, one of the many fine handheld puzzle games you'll find at Astraware. In the tradition of Bejeweled, Bounce Out involves arranging three identical balls in a straight line by switching the positions of two adjacent balls, with the added complication that you can't move any black balls that begin to replace the cleared colored ones with increasing frequency as the game progresses. Palm and Pocket PC versions go for $15.

While you're at the Astraware site, you should also check out Bookworm and Text Twist (a pair of word games), and Alchemy, another puzzle game. Alchemy will be familiar to denizens of MSN Games, where you can play it online for free. These games cost $15 each and are available for Palm or Pocket PC devices; all are on my Treo; and any one of them would make a nice last-minute gift. Happy handheld gaming!