Pachee

Pachee – Peg moving board game entertainment brought to your mobile phone!

We’ve all been stuck somewhere twiddling our thumbs and scratching our heads trying to fend off the inevitable boredom of a cold winter evening or just seeking a distraction which will keep you occupied for long enough to take your mind off work, the journey ahead of you or whatever it may be. For me one of the best distractions is playing a game of some sort.

If all this high action, speed and so on are not your cup of tea then why not go back to basics and play a board game? Sure everyone’s heard of Monopoly but what about Pachee? Well, this game’s been named by other companies and slightly different rules have applied to it over the years, but this game is certainly entertainment and relief all in one handy little bundle.

You have two different settings; quick game and journey mode. As the name suggests, quick game is just the straight forward mode which allows you to play against three other computer opponents in a race to get all your four coloured pegs from the start zone, around the board and back home safely. To do this, you must roll the highest score on the dice to see who goes first then to get your peg on the board you have to roll a six. In a clockwise motion you take it in turns to roll the dice and move your piece accordingly. If you roll a six you have the choice of moving the piece you have on the board and taking another roll or launching another piece onto the board.

To complete the game you must bring all four pieces home safely by moving them into the four slots at the end zone but be careful, the whole time the piece remains in open play your opponents can take your slot and bump you back to the start, where you must roll a six to get launched again. The good news is, you can return the favour and be as tactical as you wish.

In journey mode, it’s largely the same but by successfully completing each stage you will be able to unlock new features and rules. This is a good thing that will keep the interest levels quite high.

I will say that I did find myself just pressing the OK button repeatedly and not really thinking about tactics too much as it never made much difference too much either way as ultimately it’s down to plain old luck as to whether or not you get to start or move your pieces and whether or not the AI will pick on you too much (although on harder settings it seemed less likely to get the numbers on the dice and it was all too common to find the pieces back at the start).

Overall though despite the repetitive nature of this particular game, I did find myself enjoying it and could certainly find it a welcome distraction to the day to day activities and could certainly imagine any board game lover out there would feel the same way too. There’s only one thing however, you can’t pick to play any friends on this game as the only opponents you had are AI ones. For me this was a bit of a blow against what board games are about. True, on mobiles it’s largely geared towards one player, but it could have made this game jump rapidly up the stickability rankings.

Rating 72%

Positives

Pretty addictive

A good distraction

Something that old and young can play

You can modify the game and its appearance as you unlock more features

Negatives

Graphically it’s pretty tame

It’s all too easy to just tap the OK button and not really think about your next move

Games seem to go on forever at times