Astraware Seven Seas Game Review

Seven Seas is Astraware and PopCap’s take on high-stakes action and strategy on the high seas. Seven Seas is hard to categorize but easy to play. Essentially, it’s a pirate-themed version of Battleship with some real-time, cannon blastin’ action elements (think Rampart) and chess (think Rook’s Revenge) strategy thrown in for good measure.

During each single-player-only mission, the player must not only obliterate the enemy naval fleets but also avoid the usual nautical perils such as whirlpools, islands and sea monsters.

Pros:

• Bright, colorful graphics are easy on the eyes. No squinting even on a small Treo screen!
• Two levels of difficulty and ddjustable speed settings
• Perfect for older 160x160, OS 4.x, or grayscale Palm OS devices
• Rousing, atmospheric digitized sound effects and a full soundtrack
• Reasonably priced

Cons:

• No native 320x480 support. 160x160 and 320x320 native support only.
• The usual button arrangement difficulties with newer Treos (but not hopelessly broken like some titles)

Technical Details
Seven Seas is available now from Astraware for Palm OS 4 or 5 devices at a very reasonable cost of $9.95. It is also available as part of the PopCap Games Pack 1. Palm OS 4 and 5 devices are supported in160x160 and 320x320 resolutions, both color and grayscale. The game takes up 588k of memory for the high-resolution OS5 executable. It runs fine from an external SD card.

The only major technical problem I encountered was finding my Treo 700p’s home button disabled during gameplay. Fortunately, my TX’s ever-present status bar keeps this from being an issue on this device. Unlike some older titles that require a reset to quit the game, I was fortunately able to exit Seven Seas by pressing “shift” + “home” on my Treo.

I tested version 2.3 of the game. While this is the most current version of the title, it was last updated in September 2004. The game ran without problems on my 700p and TX other than the home button issue noted above.

A limited trial version is offered for download. In addition to the Palm OS version, versions for Windows XP and Windows Mobile/PPocket PC are also available.

Conclusion
Typical of most PopCap/Astraware productions, Seven Seas is just a fun little game in every aspect. I found it a nice mixture between action and strategy. It’s colorful, cartoony graphics and appropriately pirate-themed audio is a great addition to the game. I just hope Astraware can crank out a new version of this title in the near future to support the reshuffled hardware buttons of the recent Treo devices. For owners of older Palm devices, this is a fine title that has stood the test of time and is easily worth the sub-$10 purchase price.

My Rating: 3.5 / 5