AckWire

Within a few weeks of each other, two clones of another old Mac game I used to play (Power Players) were released for the Palm. The first was Conquest, and although it is truer to the original game and has a slightly nicer interface, it is very buggy, freezing and causing fatal exceptions on a fairly regular basis. In fairness, the developer openly says this is a preview version. The second is AckWire, a freeware variant, that has been rock-solid. Unfortunately until the latest update it was also extremely slow. It also isn't as fully featured as Conquest. A new version of AckWire came out last week that greatly improved the speed to the point where it is comfortable to play.

AckWire by Juergen Bermann is a real estate stock game. The game has four players - you and three Palm players. Each player is dealt a series of cards that map to certain positions on a grid. In turn, each player places a card on the board. Valid placements are marked by an X. If you place a piece somewhere that doesn't touch any other squares nothing happens. Anytime you place a piece next to a single occupied square you create a new company. If you place a piece next to an existing company, that company grows and goes up in value. If you place it next to two companies, they merge and the larger one survives.

After placing a piece, you are allowed to buy up to 3 shares of any company on the board. Each company, hotels 1-7, has 25 shares available. There are two reasons to buy stock - to increase your money as the companies grow larger and to get bonuses when companies merge. Basically, when two companies merge the majority and largest minority owner receive a bonus. At that time they are also given several option on how to redeem their stock. They can sell it for the market value at the time of the sale, trade it for a commensurate number of shares in the company taking over (if shares are available) or you can hold on to the shares. If you hold on to the shares, they are worthless until that company is reformed (by placing a piece next to an occupied square that isn't part of a company).

The AckWire interface is a little awkward. There are three main screens, and I find myself constantly switching between them. The first screen is the map screen that shows the gameboard. Here you can see the placement of pieces and which squares you can place your pieces in. You can also see the size of various companies and their proximity to each other.

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