Jirbo Arcade is comprised of two games, Jirbo Match and Jirbo Says. There is a third, separately downloaded, component called Jirbo Avatar which allows players to send high scores and friend other players. The development company behind the games, Jirbo, is located in Los Angeles, California and claims that “Jirbo is blossoming into the worlds first true mobile social gaming community”.

Jirbo Match:
Jirbo Match is very similar to every other memory matching game. The player is presented with a 5×6 grid of randomly arranged cards turned face down. On the other side of these cards is a picture of an animal. Players turn over two cards at a time to see if the animals match. If they do, the cards are left face up, if not, the cards are returned to their face down position. Jirbo Match handles this part of the game play well giving or taking away points for matches and non-matches. While the gaming engine works pretty well, the overall game is short on features.

I would’ve liked to hear sounds specific to the cards being turned over or, at the very least, a different sound for matches and non-matches. Additionally, some statistics about the number of mis-matches would be an interesting addition to the game as would an option to change what the card back looks like. I know, it’s a free game. I’m not complaining, just reviewing

Jirbo Says:
Jirbo Says is another Simon Says implementation for the iPhone. The player starts out with 4 colored squares each one displaying the face of a Jirbo Animal. The game indicates a square and then the player must tap the same square. This completes one turn. On each turn the game adds one square to the sequence, challenging the player to remember the correct squares to tap. After a few successful turns Jirbo Says will add another row and column of squares while continuing to build off the same pattern. The game engine works well and the matching process is quick and somewhat fun.

Although, Jirbo Says is a free game, some sound effects would have been nice. As it stands the game doesn’t seem to have a single note in it.

Both Jirbo Match and Jirbo says allow you to save your high scores and sync them with Jirbo.com if you have a free Jirbo Avatar account. I setup an account and played around with the social side of things for a bit. Ultimately I found it a bit clunky. While, I absolutely love the idea of social and mulitplayer elements in iPhone games, I’m not sure these simple games, where a score is all you can submit, is going to hold the attention of most players. All in all Jirbo Arcade is free, comes with two pretty good puzzle games which should keep you entertained for minutes upon minutes.

By: Aaron Robbins