There are very few people who can hold a candle to Steve Litchfield in the “well, back in my day” stakes, but John Holloway of ZingMagic is one of them. It should be no surprise that we here at Ovi Gaming have played many applications written by Holloway, so do bear that in mind while reading through our review of Gomoku, available now through the Ovi Store.
Gomoku is a classic game, played on a Go board with Go pieces, but having very little relation to Go beyond that. Gomoku sees two players take alternate turns to place their pieces on square board with the winning goal to get a line of five pieces in a row, either horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
ZingMagic have carved out a strong niche in two-player games on the S60 platform, with multiple computer AI's and skill levels. If you've played any of those games then you'll be instantly familiar with the user interface; in it you can set up a number of game profiles, with different computer players or varying skill levels. These game profiles will hold the saved state of an individual game, so you can have a number of games on the go if you feel the need. I tend to carry two games in these profiles, one set up as with incredibly high skill level, a game that I can take a lot of time over, and a second game that is set to a much lower skill level for those on the go games that I want to play in the odd moments during the day.
Playing the game itself is a matter of moving a cursor around the screen on your turn, and playing a piece by pressing in the d-pad. A nice simple control method. You can also change the colour of the Gomoku board and the style and colour of the playing pieces, which is a nice touch and lets you set up the graphics so that they work for you.
As hinted above, there are various skill levels, and even the basic level will provide a challenge to novice players – ZingMagic games generally have a well balanced AI level for all their games, and this title is no exception. Whether you enjoy Gomoku is another matter, and that's far beyond the scope of this review, but it's a challenging strategy game, with no time limits or other gimmicks. I like it, and there's little in the ZingMagic packaging that upsets that simplicity.
Multiplayer is supported in an unusual way. Alongside the hotseat mode, where you can have two human players set up to play each other using the phone as a digital board, you can play over long distances using SMS. By setting up a new player for the game profiles, you can link them to one of your contacts, or add a mobile number. Your move will then be texted to them, and their reply will be texted back to you. Set up your copy of Gomoku to 'listen' for the incoming texts, and away you go with multiplayer.
Check your SMS costs though, but with huge bundles now common you should be good for a couple of games!
There's very little wrong with this version of Gomoku. The user interface is clear and well thought out – a product of many years of refinement – and the game is challenging to players of various skills. It's a clean look, with very few extra bells and whistles, but it does a great job of letting you play Gomoku. Recommended.
-- Ewan Spence, June 2009 (Reviewed on the Nokia N95 8GB)
Ovi Gaming Score: 81%
