Rating: 
Review Conditions
SPB Quads was installed on two devices, a Nokia 5800 XPressMusic, an S60 5th edition device with Symbian OS 9.4.
Installation
Installation is simply via the Nokia Application Installer available in the Nokia PC Suite.
First View
Realizing the potential of the Quadronica, which is one of the brain training modules in SPB Brain Evolution, SPB has created an entire new game SPB Quads, based on the same theme. Lets check it out.
Game Play
SPB Quads is a classic arcade game, with multiple levels, that rapidly increase in complexity.
The entire screen is filled with 600 tiny cubes of various colors. The objective of the game is simple – collapse rectangles with four corner cubes of the same color and gain points. You get more points if you collapse larger rectangles. When you are racing against time to collapse as many rectangles as possible before the countdown completes, the adrenalin increases to great levels and it makes for addictive gaming.
Bonus points can be gained with six different types of bonuses – Item Freeze, Atom Bomb, X2, Dynamite, Time Freeze and Eye bonus.
The game offers two modes – Ever Mode which is the endless strategic and Time Mode which is time limited.
Rectangles can be collapsed by touching the opposite corner cubes or 3 out of the 4 corners.
Graphics and Animation
Quads comes with great animation. The cubes on the game screen have a three dimensional effect and the rectangles collapse with a blast towards the bottom of the screen. The bonuses are all animated to attracted. If you don’t pick a rectangle for a few seconds, Quads help you by pointing to a rectangle.
Music Score and Sound Effects
Pulsating music plays in the background as game sound effects for collapsed rectangles and bonus points add to the overall sound effect. There is no complaining in this department.
Interface
Here’s another example of how the menu driven UI model of S60 can be avoided to create an excellent user experience and navigation. I thoroughly enjoyed playing SPB Quads.
The game is both finger friendly and stylus friendly. I had no problems using both forms of input.
The interface to enter your name gives a weird keyboard that makes you search for various alphabets and numbers. It could have been the qwerty keyboard for ease of use and familiarity.
Publishing scores online
The curiosity of finding out how good you are, not just among your friends but anyone who has played SPQ Quads, on any platform, all over the world cannot be avoided. SPB maintains a database with all the highest scores where you can check and publish your scores. There are quite a few maniacs out there with scores that are phenomenal.
Weaknesses
SPB Quads doesn’t allow multiple logins to be created. When you finish playing, you can pick a user name and upload the highest score. It would have been great if you can set a user name before you begin and have multiple use names.
Conclusion
With uncomplicated but engaging game play SPB Quads is good stuff and I’ll give it 4 of 5. SPB Quads can be downloaded here for $9.95.
