10 Betting Games And More From MindPol
We’ve mentioned the Galatea game engine in the past and how impressive of a job it does at 3D rendering – I’m still impressed. Well the guys behind it at MindPol Games have just released two new free 2D games to demonstrate their gaming engine.
First up is a game simply called “10 Games for Betting” and it is just that. It’s a series of minigames of sorts that you could bet on but let 
me tell you, this is not your typical game. The graphics (which are intentionally cartoony) are beautiful, vibrant and fluid. And all of the minigames feature phenomenal animation. In fact, even the start up screen features a moving background with moving icons that are a pleasure to look at and all of the games are very well put together and have aesthetics and ease of use in mind. As the title suggests, the games are intended to be ‘betting games’ so they aren’t necessarily challenge games. For example, the first game is ‘bomb’ where there’s a pulsating 
bomb in the middle of the screen and 5 triggers. Take turns and try to avoid blowing up the bomb. Next up is ‘dice’ which is a rolling and bouncing die. “Golden Egg’ is next which features seven hens and only one is sitting on the golden egg so you take turns and try to find the hen sitting on the golden egg. ‘Number’ generates a random number from 0-9 but it actually does it in a ‘computer’ so a math equation kicks out the final number. ‘Casino’ is a roulette wheel where the wheel goes one way, ball goes against it and you watch the ball bounce around and finally come to rest on a number. ‘Robot’ features a 12 digit remote where players take turns and some numbers cause the robot to advance multiple steps while others do nothing. The goal is to not be the person who presses the button when the robot hits the wall. In ‘fishing’ you’re a penguin fishing in the water and you need to select the fish to reel in without picking the garbage. ‘Coin’ is a simple heads or tails flip performed just by tapping the screen. And ‘RSP’ is a rock scissor paper game where the computer picks one for you. The last game is ‘yut’ which is a Korean game which I’m just going to suggest you read this wiki article if you want to play cause I don’t get it:)
Before we go further I think if you have a tenth of an interest in these games then it is worth trying. Again, all of the games are graphically very appealing. Any of these games could have simply been done by displaying the end result but the fun is in the way they were designed. There are subtle and obvious animations throughout the mingames that are really appreciated and anyone using Windows Mobile should check them out to see how smooth and beautiful games can look. Whether you use these to bet money, drinks or anything else is up to you:)
I also want to mention the other game that they released simultaneously. It’s called ‘Buggy Exterminator’ and it’s not a game per se. It’s a real bug repellent. The app makes that annoying high pitched dog whistle noise intended to keep bugs away. It even opens with one of those warnings to not run it around anyone or anything you care about. If you’ve tried these types of apps in the past they are brutal on your ears – never tried it on bugs but I know they sell things like that in Home Depot so may as well try the free version on your phone:)
The download links including the source code for the apps (not the engine itself) can be found here. On that page you’ll see the source code download links and two links to forum posts – the forums posts have cab download links for the games (located in the top right corner of the posts). Take a look and tell me what you think. Thanks again to MindPol – great work!
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Comments
cool They look great and menus are nice, but the games actually suck. I know they’re minigames but i lost interest after 20 secs with each game. I would love to see them put out a full game though. A little more time spent on gameplay with animated gfx like that and theyd be in business!
DavidK @jimski- i haven’t had that problem but obviously ROMs differ…I was actually demoing them one by one as I was typing the post so I went through and played each of them consecutively
@cool- these are betting games, not game games:) Try it with a friend and a few pints and see if they’re better:)
jimski Sorry for being negative. After reading your post I tried it a third time with the same results. Opening the app after a soft reset with nothing else running (only at 36%) when starting up. Using a stock ROM with .NET3.7, so I think it’s a pretty typical setup. Tried increasing File System cache, File System filter cache and Glyph cache and still got a freeze up as soon as I opened. After a soft reset I got through sampling about six games and another freeze. Was really hoping to get this to work. Oh well.
[...] The games are simple games like rock paper scissors.. but they are graphically very appealing via fuzemobility , thanks [...]
DavidK jimski- 1800PocketPC did a video walkthrough so you can see what you’re missing:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlQ1eLRlexM&feature=player_embedded
Maybe it’s the updated .net you’re using instead of 3.5?
jimski Yep. I was thinking the same thing. So I reinstalled and was going to change the relationship to NET2.0 (don’t even have 3.5 installed) with NET Configuration, but 10 Betting Games is not listed (not every app is on the configuration screen) so I can only assume it does not use NET.
So I tried closing TouchFlo and yahoo…it worked! Played with all the games for 10 minutes without any problem, except for an annoying message that pops up (beeps) in the background saying that ManilaTodayPage can’t open. I use TF Detacher so opening/closing TF3D is as easy as tapping a shortcut.
As ManilaTodayPage polls the device (I don’t know why) about once a minute, I wonder if when it was running (with TouchFlo active) MTP was somehow interfering with this game. I really don’t think the few MB’s that TouchFlo released would have made that big a difference. And each time the game locked up, it was at a different interval. Once after 3 sec. and again after about 60-75 sec. At least now I know how to get it to work. But who is going to remind this tired brain to disable TF3D before launching. Hum…maybe a little Mortscript to launch the app.
Thanks for your patience.
[...] The games are simple games like rock paper scissors.. but they are graphically very appealing via fuzemobility , thanks [...]
Very nice graphics…while they lasted. Froze when I opened it after install so I did a soft reset. Got into the game on the second try and went straight to the roulette wheel. But after one spin, froze again. On the third try, I went through Coin, Bomb, Golden Egg, Dice and RSP before it froze up on Numbers (on my second spin). Sorry, but that’s enough fun for one day.
Don’t know if it matters, but I did have it installed it to my Storage Card. So I tried it in Main Memory and got a freezeup on the first try (Coin Toss). Oh, and it uses 32MB of memory so it wasn’t going to stay there anyway.
Too bad. The graphics were really nice.