The lovely Alison knows how much I love word puzzles, and she has been teasing me with the idea that something was coming from them soon that would be right up my alley, and now here it is: Astraware’s new brain-teasing word game Bubble Babble.

Challenge - create a set number of words against the clock,
Target - reconstruct the separated word from the letter bubbles,
Mystery - try different permutations of letters to find the hidden word,
Freeplay - just enjoy making words to boost your points score.

This game is available for the Palm OS, Pocket PC, and Smartphones; I’ve just loaded it to my MWg Zinc II, and I’ll give it a try later today. You can give it a try, too - just hit the Astraware site and download the trial.

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It wasn’t that long ago that Clinton and I tag-teamed on Astraware’s Solitaire; as you have probably guessed by this post’s title, they have now expanded the game’s platforms to include Symbian S60 and UIQ devices. Alison just sent the news that they are now available, so bring on the Pyramid and the Canfield…and ten more games!

“Astraware Solitaire is available for smartphones running S60(R) 3rd Edition and UIQ(R) 3, priced $19.95. To save $10 off the regular price, get Astraware Solitaire before 23rd June 2008!” If you’re the type that’s slow to commit, you can download the trial, here.

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Were you aware that WES is currently going on? If you aren’t very knowledgeable about the BlackBerry scene (admittedly, I fall into this category), then you might not have been aware that WES is the Wireless Enterprise Symposium, or the “Biggest BlackBerry Conference of the Year”. This is the event where developers and IT professionals go to be trained, certified, and explore the latest in BB goodness. We actually have a warm body there, and he should be posting more info later this evening.

It stands to reason that announcements will be rolling out during the symposium, and here is one of the first…

Premier mobile media provider continues to expand mobile catalog for BlackBerry customers, together with Astraware(R), the Handmark Game Studio

Orlando, FL - Wireless Enterprise Symposium 2008 - (May 13, 2008) - Handmark(R), a global leader in mobile media, today announced new, exclusive applications for BlackBerry(R) smartphones including Bible translations; a new ringtone application, Ringtone Junkie; as well as best-selling games from Astraware(R), the Handmark Game Studio.

“A rapidly growing number of BlackBerry users are turning to Handmark for their mobile information and entertainment needs,” said Cassidy Lackey, VP of Handmark Studios. “Astraware, the Handmark Game Studio, focuses on providing only the best mobile content, and we are pleased to bring these new, quality titles to BlackBerry.”

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Alison from Astraware has just passed on this month’s Club Astraware discounts; this time you can save on the game Golden Skull!

The Club Astraware Member-only discount offer for May 2008 is Golden Skull for just $9.95, that’s a huge saving of $10 off the regular price!

Golden Skull is a puzzle adventure game that will take you on an unforgettable journey through undiscovered Mayan pyramids and long forgotten ruins.

Featuring amazing graphics, and an entertaining story mode, Golden Skull delivers challenging gameplay with unbelievable production value. It’s a puzzle adventure game the whole family will enjoy.

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I really like how Astraware has begun to introduce their games to platforms other than just Palm, Windows Mobile, and a few odd iPod titles. Bringing their flavor of fun to the Symbian S60 and UIQ platforms means that even more people can enjoy losing themselves in a really good game, and now we can add Hidden Expedition: Titanic to their growing catalog.

Alison has also passed along this bit of goodness for those of you with Symbian S60 or UIQ phones:

On a related note, we’re still recruiting volunteer beta testers for UIQ and S60. If you think your readers would be interested, please point them to our blog post here: http://www.astraware.com/company/blog.php?entry=88

Here are many more screenshots, as well as information about Hidden Expedition: Titanic…
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[Note: This is a joint review between Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! and Gear Diary, and it is being simultaneously posted on both sites. Clinton's comments appear in black; Judie's comments appear in italics.]

I love card games.  From the first time my mother taught me how to play Spades to my addition on Free Cell on Windows 95, card games have always been at the top of my list of things to keep myself entertained (Nintendo Wii aside of course).

I was more of an Uno kid while growing up, but once I discovered Solitaire, Pyramid, and Poker, I was hooked. Being able to play these games on a computer was the ultimate in convenience - no shuffling, I could play these games by myself, and learning intricate card layouts was not required…yay! The first card game I remember playing on a PDA was Pyramid, on my Casio Zoomer in 1993ish, I scratched that screen terribly!

While there have been a slew of card games made available for the Windows Mobile platform, few have had a comprehensive list of different types of card games you can play or, even worse, did not perform as well as they should have or were expected too.

That has changed with the release of Astraware Solitaire from the UK-based developer Astraware.  This collection of no less than 12 individual card games has a great range of difficulty levels, “luck” levels and packs hours of fun for players.  Top off the smooth game play, the variety of games and options and a Trophy Room to help celebrate your victories with great graphics and you end up with what has easily become the best card game application I have ever reviewed for Windows Mobile - hands down!

I would have to agree! Normally I don’t like to start a review by lauding the praises of the product, but from the moment I loaded an early release, I knew that Astraware Solitaire was going to be installed on all of my PDAs - present and future.

Astraware Solitaire is installed on your Windows Mobile Professional device via ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center and requires approximately 4.7MB of storage space on your device.  You can installed the application on a storage card or in main memory, and your device must be running PocketPC 2002, 2003, 2003SE, Windows Mobile 5 or 6. Astraware Solitaire supports both QVGA and VGA and square screen devices, it is also available for Windows Mobile Standard devices.

Well, while we are listing the OSs that it plays nicely with, we should also mention Palm. As usual, Astraware has all of the popular formats covered.

When you start Astraware Solitaire for the first time, you are prompted to enter your name or alias. By doing this, all of your achievements will be tracked by the game which is important for the Trophy Room and your statistics.  With your name entered you are sent to the main screen of Astraware Solitaire which is where you can choose your game, see the luck, skill and difficulty of each game as well as the time required to play that game.  The range of games offered is impressive, ranging from the almost universally known Klondike to the lesser known and more difficult Calculation.

The graphics used on the main menu were my first hint this this game was going to be something special - they are engaging and humorous.

To change the game you wish to play, tap the up or down arrow on the main display to rotate to the games available or use the up and down functions of the D-Pad on your device and the Action button to select the game.  When you change games, the information related to that game changes as well.

The right side of the screen features two arrows that when pressed create a dynamic scroll, through which the twelve games will rotate. Specialized circular icons for each game are displayed, with the featured game’s icon magnified in the center.

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I just received news of a “Spooktacular” Sale from Astraware; the long and the short of it is that you can get some spooky savings on six of their games by purchasing between October 27th and October31st. Club Astraware members get an even better deal.

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