Video games are pretty much everywhere these days. You can play them on your PC, your console, your phone, your tablet, your watch, etc. And now, thanks to Yaruslav Akhromov’s MailGamer (out now, $0.99), you can even play them right inside your email messages!
This ingenious little app comes loaded with two classic turn-based games, Tic-Tac-Toe and Sea Battleship. Both games can be played solo against the computer (embodied by a cute robot mascot), or with friends over email. Being able to invite friends to play is a cool feature and the process is impressively straightforward. You simply enter yours and their email addresses into the app and it sends out the challenge. Then, once they’ve accepted, you take turns to make your moves. Since games are played directly within email messages, only one party ever needs to have MailGamer installed on their device.
MailGamer’s renditions of Tic-Tac-Toe and Battleship are both very well-designed and come packed with an array of features like different board sizes, difficulty levels and visual layouts. They can each also be played in ‘Spy Mode,’ a special mode that strips out the games’ graphics and renders them in plain text instead — which is very handy if you and your buddies fancy playing MailGamer somewhere where you’re probably not supposed to, like at work or in school.
My only real gripe with MailGamer is that it feels a bit bare bones and lacking in content at the moment, so fingers crossed the developer fleshes it out with more games in a future update. I think the likes of Dots and Boxes, Hangman and SOS would work quite well, and could help the app appeal to a wider audience. Don’t get me wrong though, as it stands now, MailGamer is quite a bit of cleverly devised fun. If you find yourself intrigued, I recommend you at the very least give the free trial version a play.
Verdict
MailGamer delivers on its interesting concept and serves up an enjoyable means of playing simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe and Battleship with your friends using email messages. This is the kind of app I can really see brightening up a dull school or work day!
