Freebie Friday

It's Freebie Friday again so let's take a look at what Santa has brought us...

Andoku is Sudoku for the Android. It is ad supported (as are many of the free titles) and offers several skill levels to challenge even the best Sudoku player. It also allows for hints to be placed in the cells (i.e. multiple numbers as a reminder of resolved logic). I'm not crazy about how the ads hug the bottom row of numbers, but yeah I get it... I might accidentally click on the ad. All in all a great Sudoku for Android.

Evade It! is what I like to call junk. The premise is that you control a parrot that has stolen the pirate's treasure and you're on an island avoiding cannonball fire from the pirates. The cannonballs drop from the sky (apparently) and control of your parrot is simply enough... touch and he zips to that point on the screen. At least he does until he gets a mind of his own and darts off to another random location. The game is basic and boring so do yourself a favor and skip it.

Mancala is an Android version of the classic Mancala. The game isn't jazzy and gets right down to business, but looks nicely done.

NimDroid is Nim for the Droid. But not really. In Nim you have three rows of sticks and can remove any number of sticks from one of the rows. The last player to remove a stick loses. In NimDroid you have 21 sticks if you go first or 7 sticks if the computer goes first. One a turn you can remove 1, 2, or 3 of them regardless of rows meaning this isn't really Nim. And the computer always wins. Sound fun? It isn't. [Why does the computer always win... I'll try to quickly explain for when I go first. If I go first we start with 21 sticks... 21 is a multiple of 4 plus 1 (aka 5 x 4 + 1). The computer always pairs my move to make sure exactly 4 sticks are taken. I choose 2... it chooses 2. I choose 1... it chooses 3. After 5 rounds of us going 20 sticks are gone leaving me with the last one and the loss. That's why the row rule is pretty important.] I suppose giving the game to someone to figure out why they always lose might be fun, but the game itself isn't.

Pyramid Golf is a solitaire card game where you have a pyramid layout of cards and have to discard them one at a time based on numerical sequence. Get stuck? Flip a card from the draw pile. Get rid of the pyramid and you win much like in Klondike (the solitaire people are so familiar with due to its default installation on all Windows PCs). I didn't find Pyramid Golf very exciting and much prefer Klondike, but for what it is it is at least well done.

Throttle Copter is another "travel through the cave, touch to go up, release to go down, see how far you can go" game like SFCave. Perhaps this one is better than SFCave as I have to admit that it's more fun piloting a helicopter than a dot. The game play itself was comparable.

Tiny Little Western is a simple shoot 'em up game where the bad guys dance back and forth behind some scenery and you have to shoot them. As you progress through the stages the game surprises with power-ups and even a bonus stage. The bad guys are as dumb as mud, but the game places several on screen at once to keep it somewhat challenging. Not bad for a look.

Zilch is a dice game when you roll/reroll to try and get various combinations of dice such as pairs and straights. It is a bit of a push your luck game as you have the option of rerolling to score more point, but at the risk of losing everything. The game is quite well done and deserves more play time.