iPhone Review: Sea Battle Classic

Publisher/Developer: A. Kurulenko
Genre:Battleship/Board Game
Price: $2.99
Verdict: Wait for a Price Drop
Pros: Online multiplayer!
Cons:A little pricey for what it offers, essentially something you can do with pen and paper

Anybody else remember those childhood days when we didn’t have Game Boys or iPods to entertain us? Instead we had pen and paper games like Tic-Tac-Toe, Cross and Lines and of course the unbeatable Battleship.

It was a simple guessing game. Four grids of squares were drawn up and each individual square numbered and lettered for identification purposes. Then each player arranged a number of different ’ships’ on each square, such as an aircraft carrier (consisting of 5 squares) ranging to a little patrol boat of only 2 squares. The other player then has to figure out where each ship is located to win the game. Simple stuff, I know, and I’m sure somewhere you are yawning with boredom at the concept, but it really was quite fun.

So we come to an iPhone clone of Battleship: Sea Battle Classic. It’s actually a pretty faithful conversion too. Action is on a grid of 10×10 squares with 10 ships of predefined sizes to place, and well, that’s it really. Graphics are quite appropriate with everything looking how you would expect a pen and paper version of Battleships should look, with scribbles and hand drawn crosses depicting the action. Selecting a point is extremely simple as well as positioning the pieces at the start of play.

Sea Battle Classic offers a nice variety of options when it comes to who you can play against. Besides playing against the game AI, you can also play against another friend via wi-fi and bluetooth, and most pleasingly: play online. Currently there seems to be quite a reasonable community for the game online so it wasn’t hard to find someone to play against at peak times. Only time will tell how long this will last for but it’s good to see it still quite busy after a few weeks of release. An online matchmaking mode in a future update would be particularly nice to see though.

Sea Battle Classic is a pretty faithful conversion overall. But is it worth $2.99? Well this all depends on just how much you love Battleship and whether friends of yours plan on buying this too. It is good fun to play, particularly if you want a game that is easy to drop in and out of for five minute doses. However it does feel a little on the steep side for such a basic concept, making it a little difficult for me to recommend to everyone. If you’re made of money, though, go for it!