Quince, Popular Second Life Game, Becomes (Very Addictive!) App for the iPhone and iPad

Quince in Second Life and on the iPhone

Quince, a popular casual game developed in Second Life by Aargle Zymurgy (maker of the even more popular Zyngo), has been turned into an app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad -- App Store link here. To my knowledge, this is the first port of a Second Life game to a handheld gaming platform since Tringo made the leap to Nintendo DS, in 2006. Ported by Myra Loveless, Quince is a deceptively simple solitaire game where you arrange randomly generated playing cards on a 5x5 grid, creating valuable hands, based on poker scoring rules.

I downloaded it to my iPhone a couple days ago to check it out, and don't let the no-frills art fool you: it's cleverly designed, fun, and fricking addictive. Along with the usual playing cards, you get joker wild cards to enhance your score, angel cards you can use to delete bad cards, and devil cards that degrade your combinations. Those playing variables work perfectly together to make for an ideal casual game: extremely easy to learn, challenging to master. It's also an ideal game for the iPhone, launching you immediately into play sessions that last a few minutes each. (I think the iPhone's the best game platform out there now, but a lot of the best titles are so graphics intensive, they take minutes to even start.)

Aargle Zymurgy tells me he's sold over 10,000 copies of Quince, and the game has been played many more times in Second Life on his land alone. (It's hosted by many more landowners across the grid.)

I asked Zymurgy why he think it's become so popular.

"Quince is so many of the things people like about Zyngo: plays fast, you have to think, but not think too hard (like chess, for example)," he speculates. You can always have as much of a sense of accomplishment with a solo game as you desire."

In Second Life, you can play Quince competitively, which enhances the fun that much more, and here's a clever thing: the iPhone port of Quince contains links to Aargle's Second Life land, so if you like the solo version on your phone, you can teleport into SL and play it there too. [Direct SLurl to his Quince boards here]

"One of the things I insisted on as we developed it," as Aargle Zymurgy puts it to me, "was that we have links to SL and encouragment to join SL and play here as well."

Comments

[Raz]

how funny if he made a Facebook version

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Hopefully they won't try and login to Second Life from an iPhone.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Adam will do quite well once Congress legalizes internet gambling and LL allows it back in.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Make that Aargle will do quite well. Along with other game makers and casino operators. but Aargle is certainly building up a commanding lead in the sector.