Games For The Amazon Kindle

You may be surprised to learn that you can now get games for the Amazon Kindle reader. The e-ink technology display, whilst ideal for an e-book reader, is possibly not best suited for gaming. However, whilst we may not be talking about Halo or Call of Duty here, the screen is more than capable of dealing with word and number puzzle type games.

There’s a growing selection of this type of game available for the Kindle. They first started appearing in the Autumn of 2010, and there's a fair selection available now. They typically cost just a few dollars – and some of them are even free!

We can probably expect to see more and more Kindle games appearing over the coming weeks and months. Here’s a selection of what’s available on the market right now:

Scrabble

This classic family game is proving to be extremely popular with Kindle owners right now. It’s by EA – Electronic Arts – and usually sells for around $4.99.

You can “pass and play” with a friend or play against a computerised opponent.

There are three levels of difficulty to choose from and the stats facility will help you to keep track of your progress.

Whilst it may not have been around for as long as Scrabble, Mine Sweeper is still a classic in its own right. The idea behind the game is to uncover all of the mines hidden in a grid. Whenever you click on a square, the number of mines immediately adjacent to it is revealed.

Use this information to clear the minefield marking the position of suspect mines as you go. Keep going until you find all the mines or until you accidentally click on a mine and get blown up.

The Kindle version of Mine Sweeper has three different grid sizes depending on how hard you want the game play to be.

The really good news is that Mine Sweeper for the Kindle is free!

Another classic game from Electronic Arts which usually sells for around $3.99. There are twelve different versions of solitaire to keep you amused:

• Klondike
• Freecell
• Golf
• Yukon
• Spiderette
• Eliminator
• Peaks
• Baker’s Dozen
• Canfield
• Easthaven
• Wasp
• Pyramid

That should be more than enough to keep you entertained for quite a while.

Every Word is a word scramble type game where you try to make as many words as possible from a collection of scrambled letters. You are given six or seven letters and have to find as many words as you can.

Fill in words on each empty screen slot to score points using the letters at the top of the screen. Continue until you either complete the board or run out of time.

Every Word is a free game (from Amazon Digital Services).

TripleTown is a puzzle strategy game by Spry Fox. It normally sells for around $2.99.

The aim of the game is to construct the biggest possible city – the bigger your city, the more points you score. You build your city by matching three or more identical game tiles. Combine three grasses to make a flower, three flowers to make a bush, three bushes to make a tree – and so on.

Keep going until you have filled the board with houses, cathedrals and castles. Watch out for evil barbarians and wizards who will try to impede your progress.

Shuffled Row is another free game from Amazon Digital Services.

The idea is to make as many words as you can from 60 letter tiles. These are added to your row one by one so that you're constantly working with a new set of letters. Once you enter a word, the letters used will be removed and new ones will be added.

A bit like Scrabble - different letters have different scores. You can increase your score by using more difficult letters and by creating longer words.

There's also a time element involved. Letters which are not used quickly enough are removed - so you need to decide if you want to be conservative and use short words or take a chance and see if further letters will appear to allow you to form a longer word.