The interface is well-designed and easy-to-use. Buttons and icons are clean, large, and finger-friendly. Games are bite-sized and can be fit into short periods of play while waiting in line. At the same time, you can derive hours of enjoyment from Word Whirl simply because of the nature of the gameplay. Each level is unique until you’ve exhausted the lot (which will take a long time), so there’s no danger of seeing familiar combinations. Overall, this a very engaging and timeless game and the interface is just right – keeping it as simple as possible while offering full gameplay. Word Whirl is a paid app on the Palm App Catalog.

Gameplay is very, very good and offers a really immersive and social experience. Each player profile can have a photograph associated with it, making gameplay significantly more personal and engaging. In the works is the ability to buy additional chips and other in-game purchases. Once again, the app manages to present a lot of information and options in a surprisingly uncluttered and appealing manner – there’s a lot of stuff on screen, but it’s organized very well and blends in with regular gameplay. This free app is very well designed and offers full and engaging Texas Hold ‘em on the Palm Pre – a must download for all Pre gaming and cards fans.

Two-player mode comes with a very useful new feature – the ability to flip the board between turns. You can also enable a force-jump rule that can speed up and simplify your game when obvious jumps are present. These two features add quite significantly to the overall experience of playing in two-player mode. Other settings from the lite version remain, so you can switch between three different board themes and enable or disable sounds and haptic feedback. Overall, Checkers Pro is a very solid progression on an already excellent free version. Several upcoming new features, including online play and better achievement tracking will make this game one of the best on the Palm Pre.

The scoring system is very well-designed, with intermittent “blank” letters that can play the role of any and all letters that complete a word. This means one or two “blanks” can push your score very high pretty quickly. You can also sacrifice points to refresh the grid completely to have another go if you’re drawing a blank on the current one. The interface and look-and-feel is very polished and customizable. Most aspects of the game are configurable, including sound, “shake to clear” and the theme. Overall, this is an excellent game for the Palm Pre – engaging, interesting, and easy on the eyes.

As mentioned before, the preferences pane lets you configure the AI level as well as the computer speed. In addition, you can set who gets to make the first move, toggle sound settings, and switch between who gets to play with “X” or “O.” The problem with Tic Tac Toe of course is that as a game, it is quite limited once you understand the basic idea. You can pretty much force a draw every single game, and the computer AI at level 3 certainly knows how to do the same. That can mean a string of draws unless you reduce the AI level, which can feel like cheating. However, that is not the fault of the app itself. Tic Tac Toe for the Pre is a well-designed game which can help you spend a few minutes while you’re waiting for someone or entertain kids in the back seat.

m:Vampire is a similar multi-player role-playing game but is based on the theme of vampires and dracula. The app is unusual in that it appears to be full-screen on the Palm Pre, even doing away with the traditional top-level menu bar with the app’s name. The gameplay is quite engrossing and the games boast a thriving existing community that you can instantly join. With the same game present on the iPhone and Android devices, with solid reviews, you’ll be joining a happy community of m:Mafia or m:Vampire players. Overall, these are well-designed games with excellent graphics and engrossing role-playing gameplay.

DeadMan on the Pre comes with some fancy transition effects and fitting graphics, but if it is at the cost of a large memory footprint, the developers might have picked a simpler approach altogether. The gameplay itself and the graphics during the game are quite excellent, and the app comes with some pretty difficult words so it’s definitely difficult to beat the last two levels every time.  In the pass-and-play version, you can pick the number of rounds you want to play beforehand. This app is a perfect candidate for networked play, but so far the developers of Word Ace seem to be the only ones to think along those lines. Overall, this is a well-designed app bringing a classic game to your Palm Pre, but comes at the cost of eating up a lot of your valuable smartphone memory.

Each game session comes with up to three hints (with usually five differences to spot). The icons that show that you correctly picked a spot are all customized. For example, in the Vintage Cars version of the app the icons are old 3-spoked steering wheels. Tapping in the little “i” at the top right of your screen will take you to information about the image (in the Vintage Cars case, it’ll give you the model name), and a link to a web resource with the image. Clicking on “Tell a friend” will launch the email app for you and you can send off a pre-filled email with a link to the image (there’s something interesting about the subject line with this version of the app, it is left to the reader to figure it out). Overall, this app for the Palm Pre smartphone is quite addicting and you can even learn about specific topics  - a good way to sharpen the old noggin with the morning cup of coffee.

Other thoughtful touches include separate views presenting the history of the game and a help and about screen.  The game lets you vary the difficulty of the computer opponent, but you may find even the most difficult setting to be easily beatable. You can also let the Pre show you your next possible moves along with the flip count for the move. Hopefully the computer will have improved algorithms with subsequent updates. For now, you may find the game a little too easy and the app loses some of its appeal as a result. Overall, Reversi is a well-designed and thoughtful game for your smartphone, and is sure to become quite popular once the algorithm is improved to make it a little more challenging.

There’s also an option to require a box, and the ability to vary the size of the grid. The computer opponent is quite good and with the large grid option, you may find yourself playing for far longer than expected. Overall, this a simple and well-designed Palm Pre app.