Jelly Bear Is A Tasty Treat For Your Eyes
Jelly Bear ($0.99) by 7th Playground is not just great eye candy, but delivers on the fun as well. Too often, games are pretty but fail to get the fun element right, but I was glad to see Jelly Bear emerge triumphant on both counts.
No, this is not an overly-complicated brain teaser. The gameplay is straight forward and easy to grasp. My three-year-old has just about learned how to play, yet it's still fun enough for adults to enjoy, too.
Jelly Bear is a little like Bejeweled in its concept of color matching. You use your finger tips to connect jelly bear squares of like colors that are adjacent to each other. The more you connect, the better your score. You must match a minimum of three. Connect 5 and you earn a jelly bomb, connect 8 and you will create a jelly bear which can double or triple your scores.
There are two different modes of gameplay to choose from: arcade and speedy. Arcade gives you a score to beat - beat it and you beat the level. Speedy gives you a time limit - score as many points as you can in the allotted time. You also get to choose the size of the board before you play which is a nice twist.
I would like to see an endless mode and an iPad optimized version. Every time I chose the 10 x 10 board for the iPhone, the squares were so tiny that I had a hard time drawing lines. This game could look really great in an HD version and I hope to see one appear in the app store soon.
Jelly Bear is a great game to pass the time. No deep thinking required - just connect the squares as fast as you can and challenge your friend's scores in GameCenter!
