Well, it appears our good friends at Zynga have done it again. First they brought us the delightful scrabble-like Words with Friends. Then they brought us Chess with Friends and Scramble with Friends, which is a play on the game ‘Boggle’. More recently they brought is Matching with Friends, the coloured square puzzle game, which is yet to fully catch on but is delightfully addictive. Not ones to rest on their laurels, they now bring us the fantastic puzzler, Gems with Friends.
The idea of Gems with Friends is you have to match numbered gems with other similar numbered gems to make a connection of three. That then leaves a gem with the next number up in the place of last connected number. This allows for the chance of chain-reactions and multipliers galore. Make sense? It’s a lot easier to play than it is to explain, believe me. You and your opponent each have three rounds and the individual with the highest score at the end wins. Hurrah!
The usual Zynga features are all in attendance. You can connect with your Facebook friends or start a game with a random opponent. It has the paid, ad-less app if you really buy into the game, chat features and a coin shop for buying power-ups. You can even check the progress of your other ‘with Friends’ games right from the app. This is a brilliant feature if you are a ‘with Friends’ addict like myself.
The game does exactly what you want from a social game, it’s easy to play, takes about five minutes of your time to fully complete a round and provides a fun, welcome break whilst you have a spare few minutes. That is the best thing about the ‘with Friends’ series and what makes them so addictive. Gems with Friends is the latest, and undoubtedly not the last, in a long line of social games and continues the tradition of high quality, usable applications from the Zynga house.
Daily waffle rating: 4/5
