So here we have the second game from Treeapps; TreeConnect. The name makes sense in the context of the brand and the fact that the developer has used the tree metaphor to name its upcoming projects ‘seeds’, but if you’re unfamiliar with the developer—as we were—the name strikes you as a little odd, really. It sounds like what you have to do is connect tree trunks together when that’s not the case.

Instead what you have here is a reflex based arcade game in which it’s up to you to set the pace. Tapping the buttons at the bottom advance the pieces along if you select the right one and not if you don’t; but that’s okay because the goal is simply to get as many as you can within the time limit that you select; 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute or 3 minutes. This is perfect for a quick game and TreeConnect even saves your progress if you get interrupted.

You can also select the number of colours (2, 3, 4 or 5), for a total of 20 variations, but the game is most fun with just two or three colours as you can speed up the gameplay a great deal. What’s also great fun is the multiplayer mode that works via Bluetooth in which you have to reach the target score before the other person; we can’t help but feel that it could be a little more dynamic; getting many pieces chained together could earn you power ups to shorten the length of the opponent’s queue, or shrink it down so it was harder to see, or even temporarily add in a third colour.

The game also requires you to be connected to the Internet in order to make the most of OpenFeint; we missed out on achievement points simply because the developer didn’t include a local storage system for scoring and some way to track achievements offline. We don’t always play games when we have an Internet connection; in fact, playing games is a great way to pass the time when you’re nowhere near a WiFi hotspot and don’t have a strong data connection. Of course, when you’ve already done the achievement the game won’t trigger the OpenFeint connection again so this could use a bit more work.

TreeConnect also needs a little more work in the presentation department; music is completely absent and the sound effects are fairly nondescript. But it’s nonetheless a surprisingly addictive game; if the multiplayer mode was deeper and the OpenFeint support cleaned up a bit it’d be even better.

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