DSiWare Game Reviews
Review A Kappa's Trail (DSiWare)
A trail you may want to follow
A Kappa’s Trail is a bizarre game: you play as a little turtle/fish/sea creature and your objective is to escape the depths of the ocean to reach the land of the humans, but it’s a clever idea, and plays great in many areas where other DSiWare games seem to do the opposite. It’s a really neat and tidy game with...
Review 16 Shot! Shooting Watch (DSiWare)
Rhymes with "tap"
In one of bumbling cartoon father Homer Simpson's humorously ineffective attempts to please his children, he hands his son Bart a pen to click as an alternative to annoying his sister Lisa by purposely squeaking his chair. Of course, the clicking only makes things worse, but the coup de grace is when Homer proclaims, "Hey,...
Review Don't Cross the Line (DSiWare)
Simple fun when you're low on funds
If you've ever been a child, you've probably encountered your fair share of activity books. Within these collections of mazes, word searches and other such sources of momentary amusement, arguably the most forgettable of the bunch is the "don't cross the lines" puzzle. It's so underwhelming that if...
It is indeed crazy that we're still getting Sudoku games on DSiWare
Counting this new release, there are now nine Sudoku games available on DSiWare in Europe. Some offer a little more than others, but all in all it tends to come down to the price and amount of puzzles available. Crazy Sudoku does well in both areas, but with so many other choices...
A nice piece of tail
Flametail began life as the "Square" bit of the rather unique WiiWare release MaBoShi: The Three Shape Arcade. Instead of a straight port of the game, the developers chose to not only give the game a nice little visual facelift but also a host of new gameplay twists and options to add to its depth. Oh, and it's...
Review Music On: Electronic Keyboard (DSiWare)
Hits a few bum notes
The first in a new series of portable instruments from Abylight, Music On: Electronic Keyboard offers up a range of voices including pianos and clarinets, and accompanying styles, from reggae to polka, to create a simple musical keyboard you can access on the go. One of the first issues with a portable keyboard is space, and...
Review Flips: The Folk of the Faraway Tree (DSiWare)
A classic book revisited
Following the release of The Magic Faraway Tree, EA's Flips series continues with a digital version of The Folk of the Faraway Tree. As with other games in the Flips series, there are sound effects played when certain words are tapped and finding coloured mushrooms throughout the book unlocks some interesting projects,...
Review Flips: The Magic Faraway Tree (DSiWare)
Faraway but not over the hill
The latest in EA's Flips series of digital children's books, The Magic Faraway Tree is part of Enid Blyton's well-known Faraway Tree Stories, with other stories from the collection due to arrive in the coming weeks. As with other games in the Flips series, there are some interactive features to maintain your interest:...
Review Hero of Sparta (DSiWare)
God of War for cheapskates
Gameloft is often panned for making games that look, play and feel similar to other titles, and its latest is no exception. Taking obvious inspiration from Sony's God of War series, this is a fairly linear 3D beat 'em up with a Greek mythology theme. As King Argos, who has washed up on a beach somewhere and lost his entire...
Review Animal Color Cross (DSiWare)
Picross with a twist
Despite there being so many different number-based puzzle games, some publishers seem to love putting nothing but Sudoku games on DSiWare. Nintendo has sadly not delivered a download for "A Little Bit of Picross DS" yet, so for now, this is the only game of its sort available on the service. Based on a fairly recent DS...
Review A Topsy Turvy Life: The Turvys Strike Back (DSiWare)
The Turvys strike out
Have you ever played a shoot 'em up title and wished that you could finally have a chance to be the bad guys, attacking with a constant barrage of swarming fighters and cannon fire onto the ship below? If so, Tecmo has just the unique shooter twist to scratch your itch. Now you can flip that DSi system upside down and command...
One of DSiWare's best and most ambitious adventures yet
If X-Scape is any indication, Nintendo should encourage more developers to revisit the deepest depths of their back catalogue and make sequels to their obscurest of games. This here is the follow-up to the 1992 Japan-only Game Boy release X. The original was developed by Dylan Cuthbert's former...
Review Just Sing! National Anthems (DSiWare)
Off-key
How many national anthems can you sing? We're guessing you can comfortably sing your own country's anthem most of the way through, but you would probably struggle with any other country's. That's why the premise of Just Sing! National Anthems is so puzzling: a collection of five European anthems, you're unlikely to be able to – or even...
Review Telegraph Sudoku & Kakuro (DSiWare)
Quality sudok... hey, where are you going?
Sudoku and DSiWare are seemingly inseparable at this point, so forgive our lack of shock when another incarnation of the numeric puzzle game peeks its head out from behind the bush of Nintendo's weekly downloads. What did surprise us, and pleasantly so, was just how nice of a package Telegraph Sudoku &...
Review World Poker Tour: Texas Hold 'Em (DSiWare)
Nice try
For a portable poker game, World Poker Tour: Texas Hold 'Em could've been great. It uses probably the biggest licence in the game in a faithful way to how the tournaments are shown on TV along with a pretty meaty single-player component and a few nice touches. Unfortunately, it also makes some really dumb mistakes that drag it down. Like,...
Review Telegraph Crosswords (DSiWare)
Box clever
Last year Nintendo took a stab at the handheld crosswords market with Nintendo Presents Crossword Collection, and it did a decent job, with plenty of variation and a decent interface drawing in gamers who like to dabble in the occasional crossword. If Crossword Collection was the tutorial, Telegraph Crosswords is the final boss; every...
Review Real Crimes: Jack the Ripper (DSiWare)
This is how criminology used to work?
Don't be misled by the title of Real Crimes: Jack the Ripper. Neither the notorious serial killer nor crime solving itself really serve as anything more than a framework for I Spy -esque seek-and-find puzzles. Nevertheless, once you realise what this game's all about, you might end up having a lot of fun while...
Review Advanced Circuits (DSiWare)
A puzzler that keeps chugging along
There's certainly no denying that, a year in, the DSiWare service has quickly filled up with puzzlers, maybe even more than we originally expected, so the sight of yet another making an appearance isn't too surprising. The developers at BiP Media have taken a familiar formula and woven a very challenging puzzle...
Dancer in the dark
The hotly-anticipated sequel to Flashlight, Discolight is the next big thing to hit DSiWare. Not familiar with it? Well, wait until you hear what it can do. It flashes different colours. In different patterns. Oh yes. Naturally there aren't many screenshots available, so here's a short video that should give you a better idea of...
Review A Topsy Turvy Life: Turvy Drops (DSiWare)
Tetris D.I.Y.
A Topsy Turvy Life: Turvy Drops puts an interesting spin on a classic puzzle game and presents a fairly bare-bones package thereof, resulting in an entertaining little release. Its basic conceit is Tetris with a twist – as opposed to waiting for the right pieces to drop, you'll draw those pieces with the stylus, clicking empty...
Review Frogger Returns (DSiWare)
Guess who's back... again
He may not have gone anywhere in the hearts of classic gamers, but Frogger is apparently back again. This DSiWare edition of Frogger Returns is essentially the same game as on WiiWare, albeit without the underwhelming multiplayer of that version. The stages, modes, power-ups and graphics are largely all the same (although...
Review Looksley's Line Up (DSiWare)
Great idea marred by a crap camera
Lookskley's Line Up should be a near-perfect game. It's beautiful, immersive and inventive. It fails, however, to perfect the area in which it innovates, and the experience suffers as a result. The game does something quite creative with the system's hardware, and that's to use the camera to track the player's...
Review Flips: More Bloody Horowitz (DSiWare)
More bloody Flips
A 14-year-old boy and his mysterious octogenarian neighbour he can't seem to get out of his head. A murder gone horribly, horribly, horribly, laughably, horribly wrong. The whiniest family of reluctant tourists ever to visit New York City. All of these tales, a "horror" soundboard and more await in EA's latest Flips entry...
There will be panic when you buy this game!
A simple, fast-paced, arcady DSiWare game that costs only 200 DSi Points. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a few things, actually. There couldn't possibly be any less to Fire Panic's objective. Fires are breaking out all over the city, so the mayor has given you the task of sending out two fire trucks...
Cerebral bore
A version of Brain Drain has already released on WiiWare in North America, and now it's Europe's turn to sample its item-moving action on DSiWare. They both share the same basic principle: rearrange objects into a specific pattern displayed on the top screen as quickly as possible. The best reference is a sliding block puzzle, only you...
Review Chess Challenge! (DSiWare)
Chuck, mate
Chess is over two thousand years old and still hasn't gone out of style. It's arguably the perfect game of strategy, enjoyed the world over by countless bright adults, reflective retirees and nerdy youths. Just about every city has a hub, a certain coffee shop or public park, at which one can go to watch two competitors going at it, the...
Review Metal Torrent (DSiWare)
Bullet hell with training wheels
Most gamers are familiar with "bullet hell" shooters: shoot-'em-ups with so many enemy projectiles that over half the screen is covered in them at most times. Despite this, however, many Western gamers haven't actually played any (as a lot of them are Japan-exclusive) and only know them from YouTube videos...
Music to your ears
It's tough to know how to approach Rytmik: it has no game elements whatsoever, only existing to allow you to create beautiful (and sometimes not-so beautiful) music. Although its complexity is initially off-putting, spend some time with it and you'll realise it's a very competent and enjoyable music studio. One of the most...
Review Flips: Silent But Deadly (DSiWare)
You get the picture
The range of Flips books available on DSiWare keeps on growing, with Silent but Deadly the latest in the Too Ghoul for School range released. With the same interface and style as previous entries in the series, you won’t be surprised to hear it “plays” as well as the other entries, with a smooth page-turning system making...
Miniature golf, billiards and marbles all rolled into one
We've already seen a few attempts at golf on DSiWare, some obviously better than others, but we haven't seen one quite like Crazy Golf yet. Instead of merely sticking with a simple miniature golf gameplay theme, the developers have instead tossed in some marble and billiard influences to...
