KSE Entertainment Pack for Microsoft WindowsCE^®

I bought my WindowsCE handheld with the expressed intention of getting my life a little more organised; you know the sort of thing, nice tidy address book instead of scraps of paper, a diary which did not sit in the desk draw all the time and a ToDo list which would nag me until I got things done. These things WindowsCE does well.

There is, however, more to life than being organised. It is good to have a little diversion when killing time for whatever reason, be it waiting at the airport, travelling on the bus, waiting for a show... Microsoft realise this and have provided at least one game in all of its recent operating system incarnations; WindowsCE even has its own version of Patience called 'Solitaire'.

This leads us onto KSE Software's Entertainment Pack which is a collection of 5 traditional type board/card games. The five games in the pack are Backgammon, Cruel, Solitary, Tetragon and Yachtzee.

Installation

Although this is marketed as an 'Entertainment Pack', each game is stand-alone and utilises its own InstallShield PC based installation. After a tidy splash-screen, each installer prompts for the user to enter Name and Company details followed by the obligatory ELUA. Interestingly, each of the games supports five european languages, this is set during setup by selecting English, German, French, Italian or Spanish as the preferred language.

The program and supporting files are then copied to the HPC. There is no opportunity to either alter the install directory or install to a PC Card. The default installation folder for each game is '\Program Files\<GAME>\' and this is where the program executable resides. A Language.dll and the help files for each game are also copied to the '\Windows\' folder. (Note. Although the games could be copied onto a flashcard after installation, the ReadMe file for each game specifically discourages this due to performance issues.)

The installer then places Shortcuts both directly onto the desktop and into the Programs folder of the Start Menu. I personally like to be asked whether an icon is placed onto my desktop and feel it bad mannered to insist that icons are created. Worse still was the fact that the Start Menu shortcuts were placed neither in the games nor in their own folder. I do like the icons, I would just prefer the choice of whether or where to install them.

The whole area of program installation should be handled better by now.

The Games

KSE Backgammon 1.5

The game of Backgammon is for two players, each player trying to get their 15 counters around the board to the finishing rack first. The board is divided into 24 'Points' denoted by alternate coloured triangles. White plays clockwise from top-left to bottom-left, whilst Black plays counter-clockwise from bottom-left to top-left.

The 'home board' is the last 6 Points of a player's circuit. When all 15 counters are in the 'home board', the player may then move the counters out to the finishing rack. The game is complete when the first player gets all their counters onto the finishing rack.

KSE's Backgammon may be played with any combination of Human/Human, Human/Computer, Human/Remote or Computer/Remote. Interestingly, remote games are played between 2 HPCs using their IrDa Infra-Red ports.

KSE Cruel

The game of Cruel is a Solitaire card game similar to the Microsoft version supplied with WindowsCE but with a twist.

The playing area is divided into 2 sections. On the left there are 12 stacks of four cards and on the right there are the four aces. The aim is to move each card in turn onto the aces in numerical/suit order until all the cards are on the 4 'suit' stacks.

KSE Solitary

Solitary is the age-old game of marble solitaire. You are given a board with 33 holes and 32 pegs arranged in a cruciform with the centre hole vacant. Pegs are moved, 2 spaces at a time by jumping over and capturing adjacent pegs. The aim is to capture all the pegs leaving a single peg in the centre of the board.

KSE Tetragon

This is a straight copy of Alexey Pazhitnov's Tetris as found on the Nintendo GameBoy.

The game consists of a column, 10 blocks wide, into which various shapes made out of 4 blocks fall. The player has to rotate the shapes to that they all fit together, the aim being to make complete rows. Points are awarded according to how well the shapes fit together and how many lines are completed. The game is over when the stack reaches the top of the screen and no more shapes can fall.

KSE Yachtzee

Everybody must have played Yachtzee at some stage of their life. The idea is to complete the game card, with as many points as possible, by throwing a pair of dice. 1 to 4 players take it in turns, either against each other or against the HPC, to roll the dice and record the highest score possible each round.

Support

Thoughtfully, KSE has made it very easy to find the Support details [Help/Support...] by displaying a dedicated dialogue box detailing the support options. This is far preferable to hiding these details deep inside the help system.

System Requirements

Conclusion

I was impressed overall by the quality of each of the games. Each one is able to stand up as a separate product and as a complete pack it is very good value for money. Backgammon and Yachtzee are the best two games of the pack, whilst Solitary does seem to be a bit of a box-filler.

However, each game could benefit from a little additional work. There are several inconsistencies in the user interfaces which highlights the fact this is a collection of individual programs. For example, icons on the button bars are slightly different between games, the text in the menus varies slightly and we have two very different methods of rolling dice in the two dice-based games. If these points are rectified, along with the small issues raised in each review, this pack would be transformed from good to excellent.

Goto CELair ( http://www.celair.com/kseentpack10.htm ) for the full reveiw.

18/04/99