DSSingleCard.com
Setup & Timing
The menu is set up like dots on a giant circle and every activity is on the main menu, meaning only a few items are shown at a time. Worse yet, there are no menu labels until after something is selected, so scrolling through a long menu means blind guessing unless you already know what you're looking for. The opening credits are short and the download time is average.
Menus & Navigation
The menu options are a little tight: the borders of the tappable areas are pulled to as small an area as possible. There's more than sufficient buffer space in between options.
Ease Of Use / Play Control
The actual gameplay is simple: you tap. Tap on the card you want, or tap the arrows on the scroll bar to see more cards in Crazy Eights. It would be more convenient if the cards in Crazy Eights were all on-screen at a time, but it's more than playable as is.
Content
Visually, the game is about as simple as it can be, though it doesn't need much for the two card games available via Single-Card Download. Sound-wise, the entire experience is forgetable. The sound doesn't add to the game and can actually get in the way of conversation or potential smack talk. The sound effects also don't sound like what their real-world versions would sound like; they sound off. In terms of content, there are two card games, both with a standard rules set and an alternate rules set. For what's there, it's nice, but there's so much more in the core game that doesn't make use of Single-Card Download play.
Overall Fun
My DoItAll is set up as program with a little bit of everything... productivity software (i.e. calculator), games (i.e. Crazy Eights, Nintety-Eight), educational (i.e. periodic table), and more (i.e. voice changer)... but the only area brought into the realm of Single-Card Download (and thus the only area reviewed here) is the gaming.
My DoItAll provides two simple card games: Crazy Eights and Ninety-Eight. Each one is nice, but they have a speed balancing issue. If the people playing the game are actually interested in playing the games, the messages that pop up to remind players whose turn it is end up slowing the game down significantly, and there's no way to turn the messages off. Where a simple tone (or selectable sound from a list of unlockables?) would suffice, messages are the only option and the game is slowed to a crawl at best. But I digress...
What really annoyed me is that only two features make use of Single-Card Download play, yet there are sixteen (16!) options on the main menu. What about the other options? Where are the downloadable demos for the calculator, voice changer, or periodic table? Why aren't any of the other gaming applications compatible? The games that are included are nice -- don't get me wrong -- but they're not really anything special. Add to that the fact that the two activities that are there are overshadowed by the other 14 that aren't there and you're going to feel at least a little disappointed.
Offer some of the productivity software (calculator, maps, voice changer, periodic table, etc.) as downloadable demos.
Restructure the menu system to include labels before the options are selected.
Increase the size of some of the tappable areas: scroll bars, everything furing Friend Card creation, etc.
Redesign Crazy Eights so that cards in your hand overlap four deep, allowing 16 cards on-screen at a time.
Replace the sound effects with more accurate sound effects.
Offer players a way to turn off messages (like those declaring whose turn it is when it's your turn) and replace them with a tone or selected sound.
Category Score: 10.5 / 15
Overall Single-Card Download Rating: 68 / 100 (a.k.a. 34/50)
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