Review:
Magic Ludo (GameFront Singapore) for the iPhone/iPod touch

No matter how hard game developers may try, sometimes it’s the classics that are the best. They’re classics for a reason, and have entertained the young and old for years. Forget fancy graphics, and complex gameplay. Sometimes you need something simple and old fashioned, and GameFront Singapore's Magic Ludo for the iPhone and iPod touch delivers just that - a no-fuss, fancy-free iteration of the popular boardgame.

Magic Ludo follows the standard rules and layout of the board version. You pick a colour, and at the roll of a (virtual) dice, you attempt to get your four pieces out of the starting zone and to your colour’s home. Sound easy? Not quite… you need to roll a six to start, and if an enemy piece lands on one of yours as they track around the board’s set path, your piece is “killed” and gets sent home. The tutorial level for Magic Ludo invites the player to imagine the four colours as four competing factions of knights, all racing for a place in the castle. With this in mind, Ludo is a surprising amount of fun. Once all of your pieces are out, choosing which to move with each dice roll becomes a delicate strategic decision, and with the game’s sword-clashing sound effects, every kill goes straight to the heart.

Unfortunately, like the traditional version of the game, Magic Ludo matches can go on a bit. With four colours having four pieces each, even getting a piece onto the board can be a drag, and the continual “death” of your pieces at the hands of the other colours can turn a quick diverting game into an intense thirty-minute marathon. For an iPhone game, this is actually quite a long time to be playing. Handy for waiting at the dentist, perhaps, but less comfortable sitting at home and playing purely for the fun of it.

Design-wise, Magic Ludo is nothing special. While the board game is by necessity very simple, there is scope here with the iPhone or iPod touch to spruce the graphics up and provide a more modern, maybe even three-dimensional look. As it is, Magic Ludo is a very basic 2D top-down board game, which may be brightly coloured, but is lacking in imagination. The controls, thankfully, are quite clear, and a single touch is all that is required to roll the dice, select your piece, and make your move. The main game consists of a 13-level challenge mode, with each unlocking after successful completion of the previous level, and a 3-level casual mode, which appears to unlock only after you have mastered some of the challenge modes.