Not too far back, I was given the opportunity to play with Midway’s Touchmaster series of games for my iPhone. A series of 5 games taken from Midway’s successful Nintendo DS title. You can get each game individually for $.99 or the whole bundle of 5 games for $3.99. The 5 titles available are:

• Spellwinder – This is a word search game with a twist. Only adjacent letters can be used to create a word. Make words in any direction without using the same letter twice.
• Dice King – Swap two adjacent dice to form matching combinations of three or more dice. Attempt to form the listed combinations displayed on the top portion of the screen and watch your score rise.
• Prismatix – Prismatix is an easy to play hexagonal matching game. The wheel shows a color sequence. Try to eliminate gems by matching the sequence in any direction.
• Combo 11 – With face cards removed from the deck makes sets of 11. As cards are eliminated, you can press the “Next” button to add available cards to the playfield. If no moves are left, you can use “Jumble” to mix up the cards.
• Carpet – A new take on the card game you know and love… Solitaire. The object of the game is to move all cards to the foundations where the aces have already been dealt.

I took some time writing this review as I wanted a chance to play all 5 of them. I don’t have Touchmaster anything for my DS so this was my first experience with the series. For an iPhone/iTouch app, these sit in the ranks of the better games available for me as I don’t really get into the tilt and drive style of games (as of yet anyway). I like something quick and simple for when I’m waiting for someone or whatever. I haven’t gotten into the big games for iPhone yet. Te short simple ones seem to fit me just right. That said, the Touchmaster series sounded right up my alley. and that they were. I truly enjoyed the games as they were just right for a quick break away from a mundane day or to kill some time. Not the best graphics on the planet, but entertaining, none the less.

Spellwinder was my favorite out of the bunch and that surprised me. I’m not a big word search gamer. In fact, I don’t recall ever spending more than 5 minutes with any type of word related game. But for some reason, this one was a great time killer for me. It’s got a bit of a twist as you have to find the words listed by looking for the letters adjacent to each other. I found that only a couple times I was able to sniff out the word with it’s letters in the right orientation but it wasn’t “the” combo the game needed. That was a little frustrating but easily overlooked once I found the right combo of letters.

#2 on my list would be Combo 11. Just a simple card matching game. nce again you’re looking for adjacent stuff. This time it’s for cards totaling 11 until you run out of cards or options. The goal is to get runs of matches before having to shuffle the cards. This one works great while waiting in line at the Starbucks drive-through.

Dice King sits in the 3rd spot for me. Kind of like bejeweled but with dice and you are looking for specific sets of dice to fill up a queue (or whatever it’s called) above. You are looking for specific sequences of dice to fill the top portion of the screen. This one is more of a “waiting at the airport for my flight” type of game but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I’m not a big solitaire fan so Carpet wasn’t a big draw for me. I did play this one to break up my day though and kill some time waiting on a video to render so it did serve it’s purpose quite well.

Last but not least, Prismatix. I don’t know why, but I’m just not a big puzzle fan and this was way too puzzle-y for me. I gave it a good college try but in the end, I just went back to playing one of the others. Prismatix got the least amount of play out of the 5 Touchmaster games (for me).

All in all, a great little suite of games for the iPhone in my opinion. I’m glad to review them and I do recommend them if you are the sort that finds yourself drawn to puzzle-type games or spends a good chunk of your life waiting for something or someone like I do. I don’t consider $3.99 too expensive in the least for 5 games, but maybe that’s just me.

I will admit though, as much fun as I had with these quickie, simple games, I would love to see the crew at Midway do a couple of their other bigger, more well-known titles on the iPhone. I wouldn’t mind touch punching and kicking for a bit. I can’t imagine it being the easiest task for them, but I’m just saying. Give us an idea on when we can expect a little sub-zero action, that’s all. I loves me a good action game!