Fun games to while away the hours

Sanook.com has launched an Android application for users of Android smart phones who just can’t resist playing games on the go.

The GameHall app from Sanook is a portal that provides access to download a wide variety of games. All you have to do is install them and run them on your phone.

The games are divided into action, puzzle, casual and sport categories or you can also browse by groups of new games, hot games and ones you already have.

Before you can install via the app, you need to set your Android phone to allow installation of non-Market apps. I installed GameHall on Motorola RAZR MAXX without any problems and the downloads from GameHall ran fine.

Run the GameHall app and you’ll see an attractive home screen with the icons of 16 highlighted games. Click on each icon to bring up the detail screen of the game, which will tell you whether the game is free or a paid one. The detail screen also provides a short description of the game and some screenshots as well as the link for you to download or purchase the game. For the paid games, you will be charged only Bt55 each, which is very reasonable, while the free games come with certain forms of advertising downloaded from the game developers’ servers, which may use some of your data bandwidth. It’s best to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot when playing the free games to save your mobile data usage.

On the second screen of the GameHall, you can browse the games by category or by groups of new games, hot games and “my games”. Here, the game icons and titles are accompanied by a button each. The button will show “details” if you have not installed the game yet. This turns into “install” if you have downloaded the game but have not yet installed it. For a game you have already installed, the button will change to “run”.

I found several free fun games in the puzzle category and topping the list was Four in A Line. Played on a horizontal screen, you take turns with the AI of the game to drop a piece of plastic coin down the seven rows, each of which has six stack lines. The player that can make a line of four coins either vertically, horizontally or diagonally, wins. It’s fun as you are required to plan ahead and force the moves of your AI opponent to win it.

Another challenging puzzle game is Enigma, also known as “Master Logic”.

The game requires you to use your logical thinking to guess the colours of hidden pieces. There are six levels of the game – Beginner (no duplicates), Novice (duplicates allowed), Junior (no duplicates), Senior (duplicates allowed), Expert (no duplicates) and Master (duplicates allowed).

For the Beginner and Novice levels, the puzzle colours are generated from six colours while at the Junior and Senior levels, the number of colours to be randomised for puzzles is increased to seven. For the levels of Expert and Master, the game uses eight colours for randomising the puzzle.

You have to select four colour marbles and place them in correct order and then press the check button. The game will give you a white mark in the check row if you guess the right colours but wrong position. The game allows you to make nine guesses.

Other fun and challenging puzzle games include Reversi, Pegz, Chess, Checkers, Linez, and Gems Memory.

For example, the Gems Memory game requires you to find out each pair of gems, which are in different sizes and colours. It costs Bt55 to download. Linez, also a lot of fun, is similar to the Four In A Line, and is free.

The action games include Lie Detector, Phoenix, Air Racing, Bacteria War, Base Jumping, Big White Boarding, Carnival Cruise, CrazyXray, Bird Fighter, and ZombieHunter.

ZombieHunter at Bt55 is likely to be a hit, with users playing the role of Devilish Trigger Jill, the best agent from the Special Tactical Assault Resistance Soldiers. You have limited weapons and resources to defend a fort against an invasion by zombies.

Big White Boarding is a free game. The game lets you play snowboard down the alpine slopes of Chamoix to the rough Rockies. You will play the fabled “Big White” courses in the game.

The GameHall app can be downloaded from Google’s Play Store or you can use the following link to download it: https://play.google.com/store/ apps/details?id=com.tencent.qqgame.ibgthailand