miniMatcher

Summary

Memory-y-y, all alone in the mo-o-o-nlight... You don’t have to be a tired old alley cat in order to sing praises to one of the most important functions the human brain is capable of: remember stuff. How would you evaluate your memory? Quick, can you tell me where you’ve left your phone/keys/wallet? If you’re looking to train your memory a bit without resorting to grueling intellect-stimulation tests why not try a simple game like miniMatcher, a virtual version for Android of the old favourite a lot of us will remember from our childhoods.

Okay, let me honest: miniMatcher doesn’t make a great first impression: the background has that old fashioned Windows 95 look, the Options page is over packed, the backs of the cards aren’t particularly cute and the design for the buttons is very ho-hum. At second glance, however, the game does turn out to be a great virtual version of the actual ‘memory’ game, without the hassle of having to travel around with a pack of cards.

While miniMatcher does seem to have a bunch of configurations options, they are not directly apparent. Go to ‘Custom Settings’ to check them out. There are no guidelines for the different game modes; instead, a player can play a game in a degree of difficulty and then choose to play another game. Simple, to the point, not very much room for user-creativity. Some appreciate the simplicity, others get huffy over the lack of options.

There’s a highscore page on which you can view who has matched cards making the least amount of moves in the shortest period of time. The scores are sorted according to the degree of difficulty, making it possible to compare your scores and see how you’ve evolved.

Bottom line:
miniMatcher is one of those applications that does just what it promises to do, but nothing more. The graphics are nothing to write home about, there aren’t any sound effects or other gimmicks and, let’s face it, the game is not particularly multifaceted. All in all this makes for the type of game that can be played in-between things in my book. If you happen to be a passionate memory player you will be over the moon with miniMatcher, though!
 

The app’s controls are very intuitive to use. The game is generally navigated via buttons and when playing a round the cards are turned over by point or tap.
I’m not very partial to miniMatcher’s design—I especially dislike the colour choices… as mentioned previously, the whole thing has a very Windows 95 feel to it.
I do appreciate how easy it is to switch between horizontal and vertical view, as well as the simple fact the miniMatcher provides users with both options.
 

miniMatcher gets top score in this category. There were absolutely no problems that came up during our test run: the app performed very well.

miniMatcher is available for free from the Android Market.