Frenzic is an interesting puzzle game originally developed for Apple’s Mac OS X which has now been ported to the iPhone. I had played the demo for Mac some time ago but came away unimpressed. The use of the Apple iPhone’s touch screen for controls really made the game a lot more fun than it was for the Mac.
The game consists of a ring of six circles that are all cut into six slices. There is a seventh circle and this shows your current playable game piece. The game pieces are the slices of circles in either green, orange, or purple. You need to fill the circles entirely to score points, but you can only place a slice if there isn’t one already in that same spot. Filling an entire circle with pieces of the same color scores you bonus points and gives you an extra life. Each piece that is played starts a new timer, you have to place the piece before the timer runs out or you lose a life, and the timer goes faster as you go on. There are also power-ups in the game such as Double Score, Slowed Time, and an Explosion that clears all your circles.
Using your finger as opposed to the mouse makes the game a lot easier and you can more quickly place pieces. The graphics are still very much the same as they were on the Mac and they look great on the iPhone. Even though it is mostly static images they are very pretty and polished.
I did find though that it wasn’t very engaging. I played it a bit here and there but eventually found myself not even loading it up anymore. If you are a die-hard puzzle game fan or if you like quick, twitch style play, you might enjoy it a bit more than I did because it is a very unique game.