Oh Marbles!

Oh Marbles! brings the classic marble games of ringer, ring taw and dropsies to your iPhone.  There are fifteen different locations for playing the games but I only found Marbletown. I have a feeling those locations probably need to be unlocked and since I stink at playing marbles it’s going to be awhile before that happens for me.

Oh Marbles! lets you look through your marble collection and then choose the ones you want to play with in a particular game. When you select a marble it shows up large on your screen. You need to use the pinch/zoom motion to shrink the marble and then “drop” it onto the screen. I found this process a bit awkward and slow but it got easier as I got the hang of what I needed to do.  Plan on doing some experimenting with dropping marbles into play and shooting them. The app will prompt you when it’s your turn to play. I appreciated this feature because as I mentioned, I’m really no good when it comes to playing with marbles.  When you get tired of playing you can head over to the app’s Marble Factory. Here you can decide if you want to keep the marbles you’ve won or give some away.  You’re given a set of marbles to begin with and you also get to keep the ones you win in games, as well as unlocking new sets as you play.

I like the graphics in Oh Marbles!, they’ve got a retro, comic book type feel to them. At times the game play felt slow to me, especially when the app was loading and resizing my marbles. Older players might not mind this but I could see kids getting frustrated with the delays. This really is my kind of marble game though because it comes without tiny round objects to tempt my eleven month old.

*Update 6/2/10 -There’s now a video that demonstrates more about Oh Marbles! See it here.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

*There is a free version of this app available.

Seller: Auxenet.com

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.