We've looked at ZingMagic's Bridge title (sometimes named Omar Sharif's Bridge) periodically since it first came out on S60 in late 2003. As the Symbian platform grew, as did Bridge. Now available for the touchscreen 5th Edition devices, can it still be one of the best card games after almost seven years?
Before I answer that, a quick guide to playing Bridge. It's regarded as a complicated game, but in fact it isn't. It's simply the game of Trumps with two extra changes compared to the Trumps you might be used to playing.
The first major note is that while Bridge is a four player game, you actually play as pairs – team members sit opposite each other at the table, and these are usually named after the cardinal compass points. With all the cards dealt out, there are 13 rounds [played], and the highest card played wins each time. So in total each pair can score up to 13 “tricks”. It's not just the highest card though, because there can be a trump suit, and any value of trump beats a regular card, and when two are played, the highest trump wins.
The paired play is the first main change; the second is in how the trump suit is decided. Rather than cut a card for it (as you would do in more traditional trump/trick based games like Whist), the four players may, in turn, talk to each other, describe their hand, and try to get the best trump suit (or even play with no trump suit) that will let them win more tricks than the opposing pair.
The catch is the vocabulary is limited to the numbers one to seven, the four suits and the phrases “no trump”, “double”, “redouble” and "pass". Essentially you are bidding how many tricks more than six you will win if you have a certain suit as trump. So saying “Three Hearts” is saying you'll win nine tricks if hearts are the trump suit. Each bid must be a bit higher, until there are three passes, where the last bid becomes the contract - the goal for the bid winning pair of players.
Both of these elements make Bridge exciting, strategic and give it a huge amount of depth. So how does Zingmagic's Bridge translate to the smartphone from the real world game? Pretty well, if I'm honest.
To be fair, the developers behind it have had a Bridge title out in some form since the first S60 handsets, so the basic gaming engine and AI have been tweaked, perfected, and subjected to consumer opinion for many a year. I'm not going to spend a huge amount of time testing out (yet again) John Holloway's Bridge AI. It's sufficient to say that it provides more than enough challenge for the casual player, while having the depth needed for the more professional card sharp.
If you're new to Bridge then there are a lot of tweaks and settings to contend with, mostly to do with the bidding process and what certain calls can mean, “4 No Trump” doesn't always mean win 10 tricks with no cards as trumps, it can mean “How many Aces do you have” (that's called the Blackwood Convention). A number of the major conventions like this are available in the options, depending on how the more adept Bridge player wants to play.
I'm not a strong Bridge player, which means I can't push the AI, but it does give me a significant challenge when I really focus on the game. I have a tendency to play very quickly and that naturally gets me into trouble. The speed that ZingMagic's app plays Bridge means that games can be over quite quickly, which loses one of the attractions to Bridge in the real world for me – i.e. a nice leisurely game over a Pimms – but it does remind me how exciting the game can be.
Being the first version on a touchscreen device also makes the game just that little bit more accessible. It's far easier to touch the icon of the bid you want to make, or the card you want to play. While this does nothing to change the mechanics of the game, it does make it a lot easier to play. Part of playing bridge at a card table is where one of the players places all their cards face up on the table (so each player can see 26 cards at the start of the trick taking). If your partner is the one to place the cards down, you play them by either saying or pointing to a card. This makes playing on a touchscreen device very intuitive.
While ZingMagic has constantly updated Bridge over the years, I don't feel that having to pay for the latest version of the title on the newest devices is a hardship – others may differ, but given the smaller pool of potential users of this title I think asking for the fee for the full update version is acceptable. There is niche appeal, but like all the ZingMagic titles a huge amount of respect has gone into the development. This is the Bridge app for Bridge lovers, and if that's you, I've no hesitation in recommending this. It still scores 80, because the fundamentals haven't changed, but it has continued to keep pace with the available technology.
-- Ewan Spence, May 2010.