Mastermind Preview

Mastermind, one of board game maker Pressman's best-known titles, is making the jump to the mobile arena, giving those who rocked those polychromatic pegs through grade school a chance to reclaim the glory over GPRS multiplay.

The mobile Mastermind actually improves on Pressman's formula, allowing both game participants to play the role of solver, with the computer as the puzzle master. This was a good design choice, as it's probably not that amusing to envision your absent opponent struggling to solve your color combination. Also, instead of having a finite number of moves in which to solve a puzzle, you are limited by your opponent's progress.

Those unfamiliar with Mastermind won't find it difficult to pick up. Depending on the game's difficulty level, you'll have to figure out a code of four, five, or six pegs in length. Each peg is a different color. If you place a peg on the board of a color that's found in the correct code, the computer will give you a white response peg, indicating that you have yet to place that peg in the right slot. If you put a peg of the correct color in the appropriate slot, you'll get a red response peg back. These response pegs don't correspond to the order of your pieces, so you'll have to figure that part out on your own.

As there are more available colors than there are peg slots, you'll always have at least one "control color," to be used to isolate variables. A good strategy is to start each game by trying to find the control color.

Mastermind's multiplay is perfectly serviceable. You start by creating an account. Although you can choose to be randomly paired with an opponent based on the skill level you have mutually selected, you can also add buddies to an Xbox Live-like friends list, and you can start games from there. Our modern, sluggish GPRS speeds are perfectly adequate for a slow-paced puzzler like Mastermind.

Chasma Interactive developed last year's multiplayer puzzler Amoebas, and therefore has some good experience with the challenges of the genre. Mastermind isn't terribly ambitious, but is clearly a good match for the mobile platform.