Review - Monday 1st January 2007 - 12:00am
Runes is a great logic game that I used to play back when I was into Palm Pilots. Along with Bejewelled, Runes has got to be one of the permanent fixtures in my battered old Palm OS Zire. Now that I’ve moved on to using the O2 XDAII which runs on the Pocket PC 2003 OS, I can’t wait to give the Pocket PC Runes a whirl.
The graphics of Runes are very sweet looking for a logic game. The colors are gorgeous and are petty soothing to the eyes. That is a good thing for me, because I found myself glued to playing this version of Runes for hours on end. You won’t hear any music when you play the game which is a shame really, because most games of this type have some great sounding tune to accompany you as you give up significant amounts of your time to playing the game. You’ll hear a steady beep as you score points, and I found myself turning off the sounds because the beeping can get annoying and would only get in the way of your concentration. A nice calming tune would have been a welcome addition to this game.
Gameplay is both simple and addicting. You have to make either a horizontal or vertical line involving three blocks by replacing a block from a pool of blocks that you have in reserve. The game can get pretty delightful especially when you set off a chain reaction of continuous blocks forming their own sets of lines, just by replacing a single block. Webvisia wasn’t content with releasing a simple logic game, there are also two modes to plays Runes. You can either take your time with a relaxing block matching game, or you can attempt to accomplish the same albeit with an unforgiving time limit. I have to admit that the gaming experience can get frenetic with the clock ticking down on you. There are also three difficulty levels and if you think the game is pretty easy, you should take a garner at Runes with the hardest difficulty setting. Whoa! Now that is an intense logic gaming experience.
Runes in whatever platform still remains a great game. I highly recommend Runes to everyone looking for a good logic game to play on their mobiles. For the old fans of Runes who made the switch to the Pocket PC platform, this is like welcoming an old friend, always entertaining and very comfortable to spend time with.
