Tablet PCs are neat devices and the Kindle Fire is no exception. While they’re great for watching videos on, and even pretty good for reading and listening to music in a pinch, I’ve not found games to be all that functional before now. Maybe it was just the fact that my iPad is a bit too large and heavy for comfort, but anything more complex than Angry Birds gets old pretty quick. In this respect, the smaller form of the Fire makes a huge difference. It’s been a lot of fun to play with the past couple weeks, so I thought I would share some of my new favorites.
Plants vs. Zombies (Kindle Fire Edition)
Plant flowers quickly and strategically in order to protect your house from a zombie invasion. You get a variety of stages, loads of seeds, and hordes of zombies who just can’t wait to pick your brain for a minute or two.
I’m sure this one doesn’t surprise many people. It’s available on pretty much every platform in existence, yet it always manages to impress. The Kindle Fire edition is particularly well done, in my opinion, and will provide hours of fun to new players and old fans alike.
Dabble HD
A while back I picked this one up for the heck of it when Amazon offered it up as a daily freebie. Word games are neat and it looked essentially like a Boggle clone, so why not? It turned out to be incredibly addictive.
You are given five rows of what are basically Scrabble tiles, each row slightly larger than the one above it (ranging from 2-6 letters from top to bottom). From these, the goal is to use all your letters. Rather than simply finding all possible combinations, you need to find the one combination that will allow all lines to be filled. There are elements of strategy that enter into it, particularly if you’re having a very good game and can be picky about which row gets your highest scoring tiles, but even when you can’t figure out that last piece in the puzzle it is hard to put down.
Quell
Quite possibly the most highly rated game in the Amazon Appstore at the time of my writing this. It’s a fun little puzzle game that’s so simple to learn how to play that you almost don’t realize how complex it can become.
The controls are simple, and the concept is likely to be familiar. You swipe in the direction that you want to go and then move in a straight line until you hit a wall. The idea is to achieve the highest possible efficiency while achieving your goals. Definitely not as flashy or fast paced as many other options you’ll find in the store, but sometimes a simple, elegant option will be more appealing. Supposedly a sequel is right on the horizon as well, just in case the 80 or so boards you have to solve in this version don’t do enough for you.