Win@Backgammon

The way some of our most traditional boardgames are taking mobile gaming by storm is laced with a certain amount of irony. A decade or so ago, the press would routinely kick up a fuss about video games, claiming that kids were devoting far too many hours to violent titles that would not only corrupt their tender minds, but that would also lead to the downfall of more placid games – games like Backgammon.

Yet searching for Backgammon in Pocket Gamer's handy search tool will show you that this is far from the first game to realise the potential of this centuries-old tradition on the mobile phone. So, in this current climate of reinventing the old for the new, just what does Win@Backgammon bring to the table that its rivals don't?

Well, in truth, it's hard to think of anything.

This is backgammon without any frills and with no effort made to reach out to pastures new. Though the game comes with leagues of text describing every element of play, they're hardly the most user-friendly when displayed on a blank screen, with jargon slipping into every sentence. What Win@Backgammon really needs is some sort of demonstration mode, where the rules, regulations, tips and techniques it's seemingly desperate to convey to you can be delivered in a way that opens the game up, rather than shutting it down.

However, for those who are already adept at gammoning their backs – or whatever the official lingo might be – it's hard to fault the way Sprite Interactive has delivered this interpretation. Control is incredibly simple, with actions such as throwing the dice assigned to either the left soft key or '5', and selecting the checker to move a case of scrolling left and right with the '4' and '6' keys, respectively. Hints are available during play for the unschooled but, again, the wording is so complicated you're better off on your own.

Even play modes are restricted to just two – the Single Game mode, which gives you just one crack at the game, and the Match Game mode, where one game follows another until either yourself or your opponent passes five points. While the AI provides a fairly stiff challenge, there is also a two-player mode that enables you and a friend to square off against each other, passing the phone between the two of you. It would have been incredibly remiss had this been left out, though some of its competitors have made that mistake in the past.

Which gives Win@Backgammon one up over some of its alternatives, though it's still hard to escape the feeling that this is a quick-fix job designed to appeal to faithful fans of the game rather than the expanded mobile gaming audience. This is a title that preaches to the converted, in other words, and if you're new to backgammon then this most definitely shouldn't be your first port of call.

However, it's hard to deny that for those who know the game inside out, Win@Backgammon provides a perfectly palatable mobile home for them to test out their skills while on the move. It just goes to show that sometimes old and new can actually co-exist without one tarnishing the other.