AppSmile hasn’t given much attention to the iPhone card game genre. We apologize to all you card sharks out there. To make it up to you, we’re bringing a review of one that has our fingers humming! Say hello to Pick’T Poker Challenge by ChromaTick. Pick’T Poker Challenge is a poker game at heart with the objective of choosing cards that will give you a Full House, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Flush, Straight, Three of a Kind, Two Pair, One Pair, or High Card. In every hand you are dealt two cards. Select three more cards from the table to complete the best hand possible. The better your hand, the more points you achieve. But here is where Pick’T Poker gets good -- and we mean really good.

A Progress Meter resides at the bottom of the screen. As you acquire more points, your energy level will increase.

Gain enough energy to reach 100% and you will advance to the next level and be given a Magic. Magics are magic powers you can use during the successive rounds. They give the ability to move, destroy, protect, and change any of your cards or the table cards. These Magics make Pick’T Poker Challenge stand out above the crowd. Each time a Magic is awarded, the game provides pop-up instructions on how it can be used. The more you fill your Progress Meter, the more Magics you will receive.

This also works in the opposite direction -- a bad hand will cause you to lose energy. Watch out that you don’t accumulate too many bad hands (more than two cards remaining). Once your Progress Meterlevel drops to zero, the Shake-o-meter will activate. If the Shake-o-meter gets volatile enough to reach its limit, the game will end. Pick’T Poker Challenge has many additional game play features like Wild Cards that will keep you smiling.

Now that we’ve given a general overview of game play, let’s talk about the overall user experience. In terms of menu design, animations, sound effects, music, and ease of use, Pick’T Poker exceeds our expectations! The game really is phenomenal. ChromaTick provides high quality visuals throughout the game.

All the menus are animated appropriately. Even the game play animation is fun and high quality. Icons are well arranged on every screen. ChromaTick has even included a tutorial to help you get familiar with the game. Sound effects and spoken alerts are both nicely executed. Our AppSmile team also fell in love with the musical soundtrack made up of 5 lively tracks. Out of all these top notch elements, the only hiccup we found was that our user name doesn’t show up in the score listing screen. Surely, ChromaTick will address this in future updates.

The AppSmile team highly recommends Pick’T Pocker Challenge. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Pick’T Poker Challenge gets our AppSmile 5-Dimple rating: