Hands on with Jenga for mobile
Who said we couldn't use two hands and a vice?
Jenga? On a phone? What's the point of that? The game is purely physical: it's about having nerves of steel and feather-like delicacy in your wrist-action as you slide those wooden blocks out of their beautifully stacked status and try to place them on top of the tower without making the whole thing come crashing down.
It's all about the feel, in other words. Making a mobile game of it is about as ridiculous as doing one based on Rubik's Cube. Oh, someone actually did that a few years ago.
However, off with the grumpy hat. Some playtime with I-play's new Jenga mobile game is making us reconsider our stance.
It follows the idea of the original game (if you need an explanation, check that opening paragraph again), wrapping around it a structure of increasingly difficult levels.
There's a tutorial showing you the rules of Jenga, as well as the controls, while in Quick Play mode there are five difficulty levels ranging from Novice to Master.
But really, it's the controls that'll dictate whether Jenga works as a mobile game. It seems promising, with you in charge of a hand that floats around the tower.
You can prod to test how stable certain blocks are, before using a combination of the '2' and '8' keys to push or pull them out, and subsequently dropping them on top of the stack.
It looks nice, with nifty tower-wobbling to let you know when you're taking a risk. It almost looks like a Digital Chocolate game, in terms of its production values. This is a good thing.
There is a valid question around how fun this can ever be compared to playing real live humans at the actual game, but I-play seems to be taking the right approach to turning Jenga into a playable mobile game.
Click 'Track It!' to find out if it succeeds when our review is published.
