Review: MindFeud for iOS – The Social Boardgame With a Twist

Social board games are all the rage on the iPhone and iPad. While Words With Friends is probably the first game of this type that comes to mind, there have been many entries into this rapidly growing game genre. What can a game do to set itself apart from all the other games? MindFeud from MonkeyBin Studios offers a new way of challenging your friends, but with familiar game play that offers a few twists.

Overview

The basis of mindFeud is simple. Challenge your friends, total strangers, or even MindFeud’s bot ADAMA to a game where you have to choose the right formations of tiles of different colors and symbols in order to gain points and beat your opponent.

The objective is disarmingly simple, take the different tiles in your tile bar and choose the right formations with no duplicates, yet have a matching characteristic. This means, that say, all blue tiles should be together in a row, or all circles need to be grouped together. In the case of the blue tiles, no symbol should be the same, so you can only have one triangle, or one circle in the group. In the circle group, all the circles have to be a different color. Simple right? Uh-huh. By the time you get into the game and have your butt kicked by ADAMA a couple of times you’ll start seeing just how challenging the game can be.

The game has heavy social integration, so you can challenge and chat with your friends, or total strangers. If you’re feeling anti-social, or on the odd chance you can’t find someone to play with, you can challenge ADAMA, the MindFeud bot. ADAMA is NOT a pushover. I have yet to beat him in my many attempts.

I do recommend going thru the well laid out tutorial before playing the game. While it’s a logical game and easy to pick up, the tutorial does give you a nice heads up on how the pieces should be played. I didn’t play the tutorial before attempting to play, and wound up going back to it after a few frustrating messages from the game about how i was trying to play my pieces.

I played both ADAMA, and human players during my time with the game, and found the ADAMA gave an excellent challenge, as did most of the human players. As a beginner, I got my butt handed to me by almost everyone I played, but that just gave me incentive to get better at the game. When you first challenge ADAMA, you are notified that you only get a few challenges with ADAMA in the free version. You can however purchase unlimited ADAMA games through an in app purchase. The in app purchase also puts and end to the in-app ads that pop-up from time to time.

Verdict

I would highly recommend MindFeud to any lover of social games like Words With Friends, Scrabble, or DrawSomething. The game is easy to learn, and while it takes awhile to learn the quirks and scoring opportunities, it’s not overwhelming for a new player.

MindFeud will be staying on my iPhone for awhile. At least until I can beat that darned bot! I’m coming for you ADAMA!

MindFeud is available now in the App Store. (Free, App Store Link)

MindFeud is a Universal App and can be played on both the iPhone and iPad. The game was reviewed on the iPhone.

Rating: 4/5[rating:4]

Pros:

• A challenging game. Especially against ADAMA the game’s bot. He’s no pushover.
• The social aspects of the game are well integrated. Most of the folks I played against enjoyed chatting while playing the game.
• The graphics are simple, but well done. I was reminded of the classic arcade game “Omega Race” for some reason.

Cons:

• I did feel the board layout was a little small when viewed in normal view. However the game easily allows you to zoom in, also I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem on the iPad.
• The colors of the pieces could be a few shades farther apart to make it easier to tell them apart. The colors were a little muddy.

This is a paid review via Review Roster.