Many of you may know the color matching / Tetris clone Dr. Pocket from the author of for example Travel Collection (reviewed in the <code>Windows Mobile Multiplayer Bible</code>).



While the previous version didn’t have much to write home about, the new one is MUCH better. First, it sports multiplayer capabilities and, second, no other than Jaybot7 (well-known musician; for example, most PDAMill games sport his music) himself has written some really cool music tracks for the game. (Note that, should you want to listen to Jaybot’s tracked music, it’s in the res/music subdirectory of the home directory of the game. Should you want to have a module player to play them, read my related roundup HERE)

Availability, price

It’s available here. Note that the new version is free for anyone who's ever purchased Dr. Pocket and only costs $9.95 if you want to purchase it.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer is lobby-based (screenshot). This means that, unlike with Travel Collection, it’s not possible to play Internet-less games (for example, over local Wi-Fi peer-to-peer or Bluetooth PAN connections). Hope the developer adds support for direct IP-based playing (it’s already there in Travel Collection), while, of course, keeping the central server (lobby)-based approach too. This would offer the advantages of both game types (lobby-based: no need for entering IP’s; works when both parties are behind firewalls / NAT’ed; easy to find opponents; direct: no Internet connection needed and works over even really local (pico)networks).

The game, when played in multiplayer, is simply parallel, as with the similar, comparable multiplayer Teris & color matching titles (for example, CanTris and Quartz 2). While you do see the other player’s current game on a minimap (in the lower right corner), along with his or her frags (three is needed to win the game), he has no direct effect on your playing – except for someone’s entirely filling in the entire playfield, that is.

A decent feature is that the two parties can agree upon the game type (there are three of them), the game speed (three), the number of colors (three or four) before starting the game using a GUI (screenshot). You can even select your favorite music in here.

There are, unfortunately, no in-game chatting features.

Compatibility

I’ve encountered no compatibility problems on any of my test Pocket PC’s (PPC2k2, WM2003, WM2003SE, WM5, WM6; some of them VGA). Note that the game is one of the VERY few titles that (still) support the Pocket PC 2002 OS; note that you may want to install GAPI before running the game (if it doesn’t find it, it’ll report so you don’t need to keep in mind whether it’s already installed). Note that, as can also be seen in the screenshots (taken on my VGA WM5 Dell Axim x51v), there is no hi-res mode.

Verdict

I really recommend the new game if you like Jaybot7’s music and/or just want to have a simple Tetris-alike game. As with Travel Collection, highly recommended if you don’t hate color matching titles.

Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices, 2006, 2007. See my PPC & SP blog HERE.