InstaMatch Review

Our Review by Jennifer Allen on February 23rd, 2012
Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar :: ORIGINAL
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A game of pairs that always offers different images, courtesy of Instagram's users.

Developer: Tiny Hearts
Price: $1.99 (currently on sale at $0.99)
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4

Graphics / Sound Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar
Game Controls Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar
Gameplay Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar
Replay Value Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar


As anyone who follows me on Twitter will know, I'm a big Instagram user. I love taking snapshots wherever I am, and also checking in on my friends and what they've been up to. Being able to 'play' with the photos is something I hadn't considered however, until the arrival of InstaMatch.

InstaMatch offers a game of pairs through the use of photos from the Instagram catalogue. That means over 500 million photos and counting. Five themes are easily accessed through the game, comprising of World Wonders, Cities, Nature, Animals and Food (because everyone on Instagram loves to upload snaps of their meals!) plus the option of searching via hashtags.

Once the images are collated, it's down to the player to match corresponding pictures together. Match the burger with the burger, the panda with the panda, and so forth.

Three different modes of difficulty are available with Easy offering a mere 12 cards, Medium has 20 cards and Hard mode throwing in one extra obstacle: images that move around the screen. A scoring system keeps track of everything for the online leaderboards via GameCenter integration.

It's simple but kind of fun. Up to two players can compete at once for extra reason to play. Instagram functionality allows for the option of browsing images and the user who uploaded them, all within this app so it's a fun way of discovering new photos. On the iPhone, images are a little small to see clearly but that's to be expected given the screen space on offer. A zoom function would have rectified this, however.

Ultimately, it is just a fancy game of pairs but a decent enough distraction mixed with photo discovery app for $0.99. At its full price of $1.99, I'm less certain about recommending it, even despite the Universal app nature but it is an interesting mix of genres.

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