Traffic Mania
from PDAmill and Pocket Napalm

Has anyone noticed the quality of games coming from PDAmill recently? They really are amazing. With the recent releases of Flux Challenge, Gamebox Solitaire II and Gamebox Asia, they have had some real winners here. Now, they have released Traffic Mania. It’s a real true-to-form puzzle game.

Traffic Mania features

• Full version includes over 300 levels of fun with increasing difficulty
• Three different cartoon style characters and different game rules
• Special action features like dropping bombs, shooting rockets
• Five missions of brain-challenging arcade action puzzles with hectic storyline
• More than twenty 3D-rendered cars and crashed cars added to the game
• Perfect solution of a puzzle awarded by extra animation and cups
• Internet Highscores, so you can upload your best scores and compete against everyone
• High detail city map helps to explore the city and solve every mission

The object is to get the car out by moving (or destroying) cars in it’s path. The games consists of five missions, three characters and a total of 300 levels to work your way through. The graphics are quite amusing. You have three characters and you must play them all. First you have the big lipped woman, next is the cool 50’s type guy and the dump truck driver. Each of them have different tricks to get through the levels. The cool guy (Juan), has rockets he can use. However you have to pick them up first and have them mounted in your launcher. The dump truck driver (Butch) has three bombs. Be careful, there are cops everywhere. The big lipped woman (Gwendy) doesn’t have a time limit like the other guys.

The music is cool and exciting. The sounds effects are cool as well. The bottom of the screen contains the number of your moves, the lowest moves and the minimum number of moves. If you can match that number, it’s perfect and you get a gold cup. It takes 10 cups to make it to the next mission. If you can’t get through in the allowed time, you crash! No problem, just try again. Taking too many moves, just click REPLAY. The time and moves will reset. Trust me, every level can be done in the minimum number of moves listed. Move the car by dragging them. When you let go of a car, that’s considered one move. Be careful not to let go before you drag it out the right side door. It will take an additional move. Your score is based upon the number of gold cups you have. You can even upload your score to PDAmill’s website for comparison.

It’s great fun and very addicting. It’s also very challenging. PDAmill has announced if you make it through all 300 levels in the first week after buying the game, they will give you another game for free. I think you’d have to play for 24 hours straight to beat that! The levels aren’t as easy as you think. Sure, the first levels are easy, but it gets harder. You’ll begin to think it’s impossible!

Give Traffic Mania a test run and see if you’re gutsy enough for the job. They offer a trial version or you can just buy a copy for only $9.95. That’s what I love about PDAmill - their prices are very reasonable!

Special thanks to Peter and Zita from PDAmill for allowing us to review a full copy of Traffic Mania.
This game was tested using a Samsung i700 Pocket PC Phone Edition and an iPAQ 3955.
Both are running Windows Mobile 2003.