Good for a 1.0 release, shows promise for 1.1... – ASD Roulette 2 Review

It's pretty clear this is a 1.0 release, of which I was fully aware when I paid my US$0.99 for this. As such, I'm not unhappy with my purchase, as there is clearly a good platform to build a much stronger game upon. Here are some things to know, and hopefully for the developers to address (possibly in a 1.1 release). *** The only 'Setting' in the game is to turn the audio On or Off. No other app-level controls are presented. *** The programmers treat their synth version of the song 'Birdland' as equally important as in-game sounds, so you have no choice but to listen to this played quite loudly along with the sounds of the ball & wheel, or turn it all off and play the game in total silence. This doesn't seem really appropriate for a casino game (sitting in complete silence). *** Even if you choose to turn off the in-game music/sounds, the setting is not recalled the next time the game is launched. So you have to keep going back to Settings and turning this off, over and over. *** The screen layout is nice, but there is no option to pinch & zoom in on the table. This means that your chip placement is entirely dependent on the precision of your touch. Given how small the screen is (relatively speaking), and the very small placement differences between a split bet and a corner bet, it is very easy to misplace your bet. *** Unless I completely missed it, there is no way to remove an individual bet or remove all bets before the 'no more bets' point. Given the possibility (probability?) of mis-placing a bet, this seems like a huge oversight. Looking at the screen, I don't know if pulling down individual bets is practical, but a button or hotspot to pull down all bets seems like a simple and reasonable accomodation. *** This developer is not from a native-English-speaking country, so (in the US App Store) this is an English-language port of their original game (I believe the developers are Russian). This means that the help information was also ported into English - and unfortunately, it is entirely focused on the game of roulette and not at all on the mechanics/interface of their app. While this is useful for a first-time player, eventually everyone would benefit from more directed help info on the app itself. The developers might also want to consider passing their materials over to third-party translators for review, to make sure their meaning/intent is clearly communicated. All of this may sound like a really negative review, but the overall interface of the app is strong, and the gameplay model is quite good. With a few key tweaks - split the music and game sounds into separate controls, preserve game settings after the game is closed, have a way to cancel bets, and possibly look at allowing pinch & zoom on the board for more careful bet placement - this could be *the* killer roulette app for the iPhone.
Review by Rosenkavalier on ASD Roulette 2.