Mastermind, you'll recall, is where your opponent picks a combination of colours for a four peg 'code' and then you have to start making guesses at the code. Get a peg right in colour but in the wrong position and you get a white marker, get the colour and the position in the code right and you get a black marker.
The kicker is that the markers only indicate the presence of these right guesses - they don't tell you which pegs they refer to. So you've got to try different solutions, checking they're all consistent with the marks you've been given so far. Trust me - it's not easy.
In an attempt to simplify the original game to fit on a small-screened smartphone, Offscreen have gone for less colours (four, instead of six) and less rows in which to guess each code (six instead of ten) - but then to make sure it'snot too easy(!), they've implemented the 'hard' version of the original rules, in which the code maker can include duplicates (e.g. two greens).
This was a huge problem on the original game because you quickly ran out of pegs, especially if the code maker chose (e.g.) three reds in the code. On the virtual version, running out of colours isn't a problem, thankfully.
Colours ('colors' - sic) are placed by dragging from the palette at the bottom into the right positions in the next row in which to guess. If you misplace a colour, just drag the right one on top of it etc. Once you're happy with the guess, tap on the row to ask the game to 'score' it - and so on. There's a timer ticking away in the corner of the screen and this compares your final time with your best ever effort - but there's no further record storing other than this.
The level of difficulty (in terms of the gameplay tweaks) is just about perfect and you'll have to have your mind in gear to win consistently. There's only one problem with Color Master and it's a surprising one. I had great difficulty with the touch interface itself, finding that many attempted 'drags' simply didn't work - it seems that the screen coordinates where colour dragging can start are too tightly restricted and the start of each drag gesture is simply getting missed. All very frustrating, and this should have been picked up in testing.
Dragging problems aside, it's another delightful little title from Offscreen and well worth a place on your microSD card, especially as it's completely and utterly free.
Steve Litchfield, AAS, 8 Sept 2010