Uno Bundle

Uno is one of those card games that everyone knows how to play - a bit like snap. And if they don't, they can learn in about twenty seconds, because its rules aren't much more difficult.

It's often the case that the simplest games are the best though, and that's certainly true of uno. It might be a more a game of luck than judgement, but there's a bit of strategy involved, mainly in making sure your opponents don't manage to get rid of all their cards before you do. And, if they do, making sure they score as few points from the win as possible.

First though, it's worth mentioning there are two uno games included in Uno Bundle - Uno Challenge and Uno Freefall. Challenge is what we've just described, with Freefall being a completely different type of game, more akin to a game like Zoo Keeper than the traditional card game. It's also a lot slimmer than the card game, but it's still an appreciated addition.

To describe Challenge in a bit more depth, though, it's essentially a four-player card game where all players start with seven cards then do their utmost to get rid of them all first. The uno card deck comes in a variety of different colours and numbers (or shapes) and - come your turn - you're only able to place a card on the 'discard' pile if it matches the card on top in some way.

If you don't have a card you can play, you can draw a new card instead. If that one doesn't help, you pass to the next player.

There are other considerations beyond simply placing cards. Four different types of action card let you penalise opponents with extra cards, reverse the direction of play or allow you to choose the colour the next card played must be.

If you're playing alone, you play against three AI opponents, but you can also set up a game with human opponents and pass one phone from player to player. It's all pretty simple stuff but - like blackjack - it's easy to get hooked on.

The game's visuals and sounds sadly aren't so easy to praise, being more functional than exciting - the screen displays your opponents, your cards and also shows how many card everyone has left, overall points and the direction of play. And that's about it. A little more would have been nice, but the core game doesn't really suffer from it looking a bit bland.

Uno Challenge is played at quite a pedestrian pace - especially as you're waiting for three other players to take their turns before you. So Uno Freefall, the second game in the bundle, is quite a nice alternative to it with its quick-thinking gameplay.

In Freefall, you play on a Tetris-style board of uno blocks. The board fills gradually with rows of falling blocks and you need to clear them - by highlighting touching blocks which match in colour or number - before the board is filled up completely. The larger the group of blocks you clear, the more points you score.

So the game is a constant search for like-coloured blocks with a bit of strategy chucked in as well courtesy of some special blocks. These three randomly falling types of block will reverse the blocks on the board or scramble them up, and there's a special Wild block too, which can clear all the groups on the board in one go.

Like the uno card game, the rules are simple and the visuals very plain, but it's still a very playable game. Unfortunately, though, there are so many puzzle games out there offering just a bit more complexity that Uno Freefall doesn't manage to stand out in any way. By combining it in a bundle with Uno Challenge, the two games together are good value. But both lack a little in presentation and - for a couple more quid - you can easily find better card and puzzle games out there.