Others say...

"kinda boring"
Hoyle made a big mistake by putting this game on a DVD Rom. The people buying it, older people mostly, probably don't have a DVD Rom drive and will be angry they can't run the game.

Overall I found the games kinda dismal and disappointing, even though there was a lot of them. High ZZZZ factor.


"Older version just fine!"
If you own an older version, I would recommend you stay with what you have. The graphics have been improved but the sound effects in the new version, specifically Triple Yacht are annoying.

"Very Good Value. Good for Mac"
I've never bought Hoyle software before, but this package offers mucho bang for the buck, given that most downloadable shareware games are $20 per game. There are several addictive games in here, and they run flawlessly on my Mac Pro as well as my G4.

I have only 3 complaints in order of increasing importance:

1. The graphics are quite low-res and lack the beauty of many of the new games for Mac that adopt the elegant graphical style of the OS.
2. The rules for all the games are in a single pdf file, so if you click on rules, you have to wait for a pdf reader to load and then search a large document to find your game.
3. There's little progression in games as you play longer and better. There are high scores in a menu, but each game is basically the same thing over and over, so you never get a sense of progressing through higher levels. Some games have more difficult levels to choose from, but if you select a certain level and play for an hour, you get no sense in terms of points or levels reached that you've accomplished anything.

But if you want a large variety of mindless games for your Mac, there is no better deal than this.

"CAUTION! product info is not clear!"
This is a DVD, not a CD. If you don't have a DVD drive, you can't use it!

"Feels like a beta"
The game may claim to work with OS X, but that's stretching the definition of compatible. If you have multiple users with their own account, each user must register the product separately, and cannot see the other scoreboards.

In just an hour or so of play, the chess product was revealed to be buggy, especially about end game rules. It declared a draw due to insufficient material when the human player had a queen, a rook, a knight, and a pawn or two. (There were also legal moves for the computer player). The mahjongg tiles product was trying to do matches against buried tiles.

Don't expect even a passable chess opponent on the normal difficulty setting. As an unrated chess player, I should find the normal mode at least a passable game, instead of beating it so readily as to be boring.

I haven't even had the time to look at the other games. We wanted a couple of the popular board games, a decent mahjongg solitaire game, and maybe one or two more. Instead, we got what might eventually be a usable product, but certainly isn't one yet.

The scoreboard was more primitive than what I'd find on the freebie mahjongg games that come with some Linux desktops.

The patch that is listed on their website is a Windows .exe, no mention made of a Mac patch. If you want a Mac puzzle/board game, don't select with this product unless you are truly desperate, or have tried many other options and they are even worse.