Drop everything and download: Uno
The best card game ever invented is now available for your phone
There are two types of people in this world: those who think Uno is the pinnacle of human achievement and those who don’t know what they’re talking about.
Carrying a pack of the colourful cards with you everywhere isn’t always convenient but if you want to squeeze in a quick game on the bus or the lav, Uno addicts now have a solution: an app version for iOS and Android.
The question is: can it translate the magic from the tabletop to a smartphone screen?
WHAT IS IT, THEN?
Uno is a card game that involves matching cards from your hand with the last one played. You can match by number or colour but if you can’t go you have to pick a card up. The first person to get rid of all their cards wins. Simple, right?
The problem is there are also action cards that reverse the order of play, make the next player miss a go, or cause them to pick up two or more cards. These can also be played on top of each other, meaning the poor person who ends up picking up can find themselves with more cards than they can hope to get rid of.
The mobile version allows you to set up games against your friends, or it’ll match you with random opponents around the world if all your friends stopped talking to you because of how competitive you get when you play Uno.
Games are limited to three minutes, which rules out the possibility of the epic ebbs and flows you sometimes get in analogue games of Uno, but with various extra game modes that add more action cards or allow you to play in pairs, there’s plenty for die-hard fans to explore.
Any downsides?
As with every game that’s free to download there’s fairly incessant badgering to get you to spend actual money within the app, but it’s by no means necessary in order to play. The in-game coins required to join games are easy enough to win just by playing.
We also encountered a few connection problems but can probably but that down to the tidal wave of Uno fans that are trying to play the game on its first day of release.
Oh, and the music is really annoying, but you can turn it off from the settings menu.
WHERE CAN I GET IT?
Uno is available to download for free for iOS and Android.
Tom Wiggins
Contributor 
