Zynga's Matching with Friends for iOS is likely to be a hit

At the beginning of a game your job is to match up your colored tiles (bottom) with those on the board.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Matching with Friends (2.99, full version - Free, ad-supported version) is another in a long line of Zynga apps that lets you play turn-based games with a friend on mobile devices. But instead of playing word games loosely based on Hangman, Scrabble, or Boggle, this time you'll be strategically placing matching colored blocks on a gameboard, then sending your move to a friend.

Like other Zynga games, getting connected with your friends is easy. Upon launch you'll be asked to either sign in through your Facebook or Twitter accounts. Once logged in, you can search for other players from your friends' list or get automatically matched with another random player.

I started up a game with a random player right away and fortunately my opponent was active in completing her turns for the sake of this review. While playing, I found the colors vibrant, the controls easy to understand, and bonus alerts self explanatory. The only thing difficult about Matching with Friends is how to describe the gameplay.

Using the board from the first screenshot, ... [Read more]