Less than perfect are the bumpy touch controls and awkward scrolling issues. The AI is a little frustrating in the game, since it seems to swing back and forth from mind-numbingly stupid to practically psychic, which makes the experience a little uneven, but overall the multiplayer experience isn’t too bad. There is also space for up to four different player profiles, complete with customizable avatars, in addition to several AI players. You can tweak the settings at the beginning to choose which color cards you want to play with or how many cards you need to win. Succeeding at or failing a challenge wins you cards. Finally, a blue card has everyone racing to find an object the fastest. A green card has you roll a die and challenges you to find that many of an object. A red card has each player bid on how many of a particular object they think they can find in a given time limit. The die decides which of the three task cards you’re assigned. Once you’ve selected your opponents, either flesh and blood or AI, you roll a color-coded die to determine your task. Multiplayer mode uses the same seek-and-find mechanic, but gameplay is a little more complicated. In Adventure mode, each level has you racing to locate items in a vast sea of jumbled stuff before time runs out. Gameplay is based around large, fantastically illustrated, static images populated by hundreds of random objects, people, animals, etc. Pictureka comes with two different playing modes, a single player adventure mode and a local, “pass and play”, multiplayer mode.

A port of the popular board game, Pictureka has gaming heavyweights Hasbro and EA behind this surprisingly bouncy and engaging app for almost all ages. In general, I would say that the iPhone doesn’t lend itself well to family game nights, but Pictureka is a lively exception to the rule.

This is for the Where’s Waldo lovers out there looking to inject a little more adrenaline and social fun into their hidden object finding.

Download pictureka for android