The usual problem with online multi-player games is that in the early days it's hard to find someone to play with. So you give up - which means that there are even less people for others to play with - and so on. SPB seem to have got round this by putting some 'bots' on their servers, which take up the slack with some decent AI (appropriate to your declared expertise level - novice/amateur/expert), being a virtual opponent for when there are no humans around. A nice compromise, though it would be nice to know when you're playing a human and when a machine!
The in-game chat is a nice idea, with pre-prepared phrases that you can use to save typing, in addition to proper free-form input. However, the chat system interfaces rather clumsily with Symbian's text input (where have we heard that before?!) and there's a distinct flash of the Symbian app menu between game screen and text input form each time - disconcerting.
Even more disconcerting was that while trying to converse with a real player during a game, SPB Online Games crashed completely... but left its 'move timer' sound system active in memory, so that I had to endure its beeping. The game wouldn't restart and I ended up having to reboot the N8 to clear it from RAM. Very irritating!
This is a good first start for SPB in online gaming, but it's a long way from being complete or polished enough. What's needed are fewer bugs, more games (where are Backgammon and Chess?), more interface integration (no screen flashing, please) - and, eventually, a larger online community!
Comments welcome if you get a chance to try this. Here's the game's web page and here's the download page (a time-limited trial).
We'll keep track of this and do a formal review in more depth once SPB have sorted out the teething troubles!
Steve Litchfield, AAS