Play Marbles, Darkside Entertainment’s trip down nostalgia lane, is available in the app store for players looking to reclaim a piece of their youth. Put away your dusty sacks of marbles from the third grade and whip out your iPhone for some old-fashioned fun for the whole family.

Play Marbles offers plenty of options to satisfy pretty much any gamer, with the promise of much more to come in the form of future updates. The menus alone speak to the attention to detail and polish that can be expected from gameplay. Each menu screen is a circle of marbles. Swiping left or right spins the circle to highlight a different marble (option). Tapping on the marble selects that option. If that option brings up a new menu, a new circle of marbles (options) rolls into view. The opening menu allows you to select either single player or multiplayer (pass ‘n’ play or local network), as well as check out your collection of marble sets, read tutorials for controls and game rules, edit your user profile, and tweak game settings.

Single player mode presents you with options for quick play, league play, tournament, or career. Before beginning a game, you can choose from four locations (yard, tv studio, whitespace, or playroom), choose how many games to play (from one to best of 7), game rules (ringer, pound, or moon), and marble set (five to start, with more downloadable from the as-yet-unfinished web site). Once these options are set, you’ll be hooked up with a random AI player. The rules for each game are explained clearly within the game, but the general ideas are fairly simple. In Ringer, there are 13 marbles set up in the circle. You take turns shooting your marble into the circle in an attempt to knock marbles out of the ring. The person who knocks out the most target marbles is declared the winner. Pound is similar to ringer, except it utilizes an extra ring, called the pound. Seven target marbles must be knocked out of it to score points. Like Ringer, points can be stolen if your opponent leaves his shooter in the pound and you knock it out on the next turn. Moon has you trying to knock only your own marbles from the ring to avoid point penalties. Again, a shooter left in the ring can result in points being stolen if knocked out. There is a final moon tip marble that must be knocked out to win.

Graphically, the game looks terrific, with a very clean interface, terrific interactive menus, very smooth framerates, and an overall pleasing presentation. Sounds are adequate, with some electronica loops playing in the background on menu screens and some tense “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”-style music when it’s time to get down to business. Of course, the expected marble-clicking sound effects are present, and you can play your own music if you so desire. Controls are terrific, using a combination of accelerometer and touch controls. You tilt your iDevice to aim your shooter. There is a virtual joypad in the bottom left corner that controls camera angles and, since you aim in the direction that the camera faces, your aim. We spent most of the time using this control. Hopefully, whatever is causing the issue will be resolved quickly, as the dev team is very responsive to player feedback and committed to frequent updates. There is another joypad in the bottom right corner for zooming. To flick your shooter, simply swipe up in the direction that you want to shoot. The speed of your flick determines the power of the shot. In all, it is quite simple, as you would expect a marbles game to be.

There is even an option to customize your marbles with pictures taken with, or loaded onto, your iDevice. Local leaderboards track your scores. Tournament mode sets you up with March Madness-style brackets to work through in order to determine a champion. Replayability is very high, as new content should be coming fast and furious. This is the first game of its kind available in the app store, and it is quite a feat. Darkside Entertainment has set the price at a very attractive $1.99, and it’s worth every penny. Play Marbles shoots a 5-Dimple masher for the win.

Play Marbles gets our AppSmile 5-Dimple rating: