Deal Or No Deal has caught the imagination of millions of people. It might not have the audience or the prize of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire but its audience are definitely fanatics.
The concept of the TV show is simple. There are 22 sealed boxes each containing a prize ranging from 1p to £250,000. There are no general knowledge questions, just try and pick the correct box. Every so often the 'banker' will offer you some money to buy your box from you. The offer usually depends on the remaining amount of money that is out there and whether he can force you to sell a box that could potentially contain £250k for only £10,000. It may sound rather bizarre but the TV show is highly addictive mostly due to Noel Edmonds and the buzz of the audience.
Transporting this away from the TV studio to an electronic game has proved very successful for the pub quiz machines where the game has transformed into a trivia quiz where the intellectuals have a chance of winning £20 or 10p. The mobile version has no real money that can be won, no online play and no free entry into a raffle. It is just for fun. The idea of Deal Or No Deal on the mobile sounded great when we first heard about it but the fact that no money could be won would surely be its downfall?
G@meloft are no slouches and they have managed to create an engaging non-gambling game. This is all thanks to the Challenge Mode. The mode is made up of 20 episodes where you have to win a certain amount of money. The game starts of 'easy' and only requires a deal of £10,000 to win and then the next episode is unlocked. It's not long before the threshold rises to £50,000 and you realise you are in it for the long haul if you want to force the banker to offer you such a large some of money. They have managed to make you ignore the fact that no real money can be won by rewarding you with unlocked, harder levels and the end result is a game where you actually care about how many virtual pounds are in your box. There is even a very small element of general knowledge where you have to answer a couple of questions in order to qualify for each episode. This is a minor aspect to the game and is just there to give some distraction from the box game.
There is also an Instant Play mode where there are no questions to answer and you just play a normal game and try to win as much as possible. All the results from all the games are saved in the stats section. Here you can see how much money you've won in total and how well you have performed in general. Once again this is just an added feature to add something to game that is all about chance. Undoubtedly, the randomness of the game will grate after a while and longevity must be an issue after the challenges are all completed. But with such tough challenges it should still take a while to finish.
The layout and format are spot on to the TV show with the ever present prize board and the big mugs and big phone. Unlike Millionaire and Family Fortunes, the presenter is actually in the game. It is a very good likeness to Noel but his movements are very laboured each time he goes to pick up the phone and talk to the banker. Noel does provide some humour and reacts to your game with some standard one liners.
This is a very difficult concept to bring to the mobile but as always G@meloft have managed to pull it out of the bag.
240x320
Click to Download
No comments:
Post a Comment