Just when you thought there was no more room for another Bejeweled-style game or, for that matter, another card came, Poker Pop comes along. In fact, I might have just spoiled this whole review - this game is pretty much summarised by those comparisons.
Poker Pop is Bejeweled/match-three/poker/solitaire. It’s really good, as you’d expect. Let’s give it an eight. Enjoy!
Oh. We’re both still here. Apparently that summary, complete though it was, doesn’t earn me a bucket of Pocket Gamer gold. Let’s embellish on the particulars before you go and buy this superb casual card game, assuming you haven’t already.
As soon as you see the cards laid out in a Blockbusters-style honeycomb arrangement, the game mechanics announce themselves so loudly it’s hard to believe you didn’t think of Poker Pop yourself.
As we’ve already established, this is akin to a match-three game, but instead of matching three cards (by number, suit or whatever) you’re building poker hands. Simple to the point of being blindingly obvious, and the entertainment value is remarkably high because of it.
Rather than the cards being laid out in a grid pattern, every other column of cards is offset to the one next it, and it quickly becomes apparent why. Selecting a card highlights the surrounding cards, and it’s from these that you can make your next choice and begin to build a hand.
By offsetting the columns, the available cards surrounding your selection are at once more limited and more obvious - forming something of a circle of playable cards rather than a rather large square.
It’s up to you how many cards you play in each hand, so long as it’s no more than five. For instance, making a pair only requires two cards, and although you can select another three from the game board just to remove them (and force extra cards to drop from the top to fill up the gaps), you can just play that pair and add them to the round’s requirements.
The game takes you around different countries, playing in major cities as you go, though virtual travel really makes no difference to the gameplay (other than slight regional variations in the card faces). The real difference between rounds is how many repetitions of specific hands you must complete to progress.
A level might demand you make nine pairs, four three-of-a-kinds and two straights, for example, and with a variety of special cards appearing to double your hand score, or restart the level if a ‘smoking’ card touches the bottom of the screen, there really does feel like a hell of a lot to do.
Reading back through this review, Poker Pop appears to lean toward the complicated, but in fact it’s remarkably simple and accessible. As soon as the game board is revealed, the purpose and mechanics of Poker Pop are wonderfully apparent.
It’s this immediate ease of use that makes it such a superb variation on the match-three game. Poker Pop comes highly recommended for card players, puzzle gamers, strategists and casual gamers alike.
Poker Pop
Immediately engrossing and ingenious of design, Poker Pop is the perfect casual game for beginners and experienced pocket gamers alike – offering loads of different stuff to do all within an ultra-simple and recognisable arena
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.