Best “Pictionary” game on iPhone

One of the reasons why I love my iPhone is the way it has revolutionized gameplay. Capacitive multi-touch screen and reactive motion sensors allow mobile gameplay to be more than just smashing your fingers on a tiny keypad.

There are many good examples on the App Store. This one that I’m going to share with you happens to be my favorite because I just looove Pictionary.

Charadium. A new ngmoco multiplayer game (same developer as We Rule), where a small (random) group of players challenge each other in a draw-and-guess style like in Pictionary.

In Charadium, players score individually. Both the drawer and guesser earn points when a word is guessed correctly. The faster the correct answer is guessed, the more points you get. You get 30secs each round to draw/guess. Highest scorer at the end of 15 rounds wins. If you draw terribly and no one gets the right answer, you get -5 points deducted. So it’s all fair play, you will want to be the best drawer and the fastest guesser!

Of course then people get competitive, they don’t want to lose points so they resort to “spelling out” the answers to the guessers. At this point, you can choose to report the player as “cheating” (using the in-game button). If two other mates also reported the same player, that player gets kicked out of the game. Scary? Hehe don’t be. You can choose to skip the word if you are not confident of drawing. You can also award players with stars to commend them of good drawings or good guesses.

Want to play with people you know? Just create a new game room and invite your friends to the challenge!

R.T

Social Gaming on the iPhone

It wasn’t too long ago that social gaming hit its peak on Facebook.

For a while I was trying out some of the social games on Facebook, like Café World, and it just got too tiresome to keep up. For one, these are real-time virtual simulation games. You get to create, own, manage a virtual world, and it keeps running 24/7 even when you are logged out, so you need to always play in order to maintain progress. Secondly, in Café World, if you leave your food out for too long, it would go bad and attract flies. The next time you log in, you have to clean up and recook for another 3 hours or so (depending on the dish). Not good when you will be away from the computer for a substantial period of time. Other types of social games I’ve tried on Facebook include Castle Age and Ninja Saga, web-based and flash-based battling games.

It’s definitely high engagement for a committed social gamer, but the cost of lacking engagement can sometimes be quite high for the gamer (in game terms). So I gave up soon after.

The social gaming experience has since revolutionized a little. Now, social games are no longer just played on social networks through your web browser, but on your mobile as well. And effectively, iPhone has become a new “mobile social network” connecting the many iPhone users from around the world.

As you can imagine, it’s a lot more easier to manage on the iPhone because you can do it whenever and wherever you go. Interaction with other players is much more active too, as players can receive push notifications to alert them of the progress in game, and choose to respond to it immediately. In some games, you can even compete with your friends (or a random player online) LIVE. You can then broadcast your game status to your social networks (Facebook and Twitter) and also invite them to join your league.

Read more about social gaming on iPhone, the history and future, on Web Crawler (CNET).

Thinking of becoming an iPhone social gamer yourself?

Watch this space for reviews on some of the best free social games to kickstart your iPhone social gaming career. Coming soon.

R.T