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Freeverse rolls freemium social striker We Bowl onto iPhone

Round balls, square heads

Freeverse rolls freemium social striker We Bowl onto iPhone
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| We Bowl

It seems like an age ago that ngmoco bought Freeverse, turning it into a freemium publisher in the process.

Still, despite that deal happening back in February 2010, the release of We Bowl is only Freeverse's second pure freemium game following on from Coin Push Frenzy.

Polished surfaces

As the name suggests, We Bowl combines Freeverse's proven experience with its Flick Bowling series with the social style and monetisation of ngmoco's We Rule series. Indeed, as with many of ngmoco's games, We Bowl was released in Canada weeks ago, only now judged solid enough for wider deployment.

A free-to-play game, like Coin Push Frenzy, it works on either a time or cash-based schedule.

You're awarded an additional ball to bowl for every 30 seconds you play in the game, or one for every three minutes when you're not logged in. This accumulate works up to a limit of 20 balls.

Alternatively, you can buy more balls using the in-app purchase system - 99c/59p for 40 or $9.99/£5.99 for 500.

Of course, more balls means more bowling, but more important is the way your success in bowling rewards you with tickets that you can use to buy items to decorate your bowling alley, or pimp your avatar, with better clothes, a bigger moustache, cat eyes, ponytails, X-ray glasses etc. (And further confusing the issue, you can also directly trade balls for tickets at the end of each complete bowling leg.)

Play together

The reason for this drive to win tickets and focus on customisation is the social aspect of the game as you can - apparently - play in turn-based head-to-head competitions with individual friends, using the Plus+ system.

This mode didn't seem to be enabled in the version of the game currently available from the App Store - at least I couldn't work out how to challenge people from within the game.

For example, the menu option to Explore the Community resulted in the warning We Bowl Forums Coming Soon.

We're sure it will appear at some point, and in the meantime We Bowling provides an arcade yet playable solo bowling game that feels like a casual port Flick Bowling, and it's free.

You can see what it looks like in the following video.

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Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.