Kindle Apps Blog

Not all Kindle applications work on the newest Kindle 4 model without a keyboard ($79 with special offers and $99 without). If you are purchased apps in the past for your Kindle 2 or Kindle 3, these apps will show up in the “Archived Items”. But when you will try to download them you will get a message telling you “Item Not Available – This item is not available for this device type”.

Amazon has foreseen that trying to use apps designed for physical keyboard on a device that doesn’t have it will not be enjoyable. So they hand-picked 20 applications that don’t rely on keyboard and would do just fine with 5-way controller.

If you just purchased Kindle 4 or planning to and are wondering which apps will run on your device, here’s a list of 20 (out of 145) Kindle app titles that do well without a keyboard:

• Triple Town (A Puzzle Strategy Game for Kindle)
• Match Genius (A Memory Puzzle Game)
• Brain Bump Literature (A Trivia Game for Book Lovers)
• Tic Tac Toe (A Classic Game for Kindle)
• Fast Food Calories – Calorie Counter (A Reference Tool for Kindle)
• Ultimate Movie Quiz (A Trivia Game for Kindle)
• Ultimate Sci-Fi Quiz (A Trivia Game for Kindle)
• Peg Solitaire (A Puzzle Game for Kindle)
• Rockin Reversi (A Classic Game for Kindle)
• Ultimate Nature Quiz (A Trivia Game for Kindle)
• Reversi Deluxe (A Classic Game for Kindle)
• Blocked – Rescue the Block! (A Game for Kindle)
• Ultimate Music Quiz (A Trivia Game for Kindle)
• Pirate Stash (A Free Game for Kindle)
• Kids’ Classic Card Games (Kids Card Games for Kindle)
• Ultimate Math Skills Quiz (A Math Game for Kindle)
• Ultimate Shakespeare Quiz (A Shakespeare Trivia Quiz)
• Link Four (A Game for Kindle)
• Jewels (A Game for Kindle)
• Jewel Quest Solitaire (A Solitaire Game for Kindle)

I’ll keep updating this list periodically and will update app reviews themselves with list of Kindle platforms that app supports.

Brain Bump is one of my favorite Kindle games so far. The trivia was pretty hard at times, but I recognized a lot of books and poems that I read as part of my English major in college.

The navigation is pretty simple, so you can just jump right into answering trivia questions. Use the 5-way toggle button on your Kindle to select the answers. Once you do that, the game moves right along to the next question.

I didn’t even notice this until I saw it in the product description, but there is a link in each question to the books that the question is referring to. You can take this opportunity to refresh your memory on the classics or explore new literature that you haven’t heard of. Best of all, a lot of the Kindle editions of the classics are free or really inexpensive.

If you get multiple questions right in a row, you go on a “brain streak.” This means that you get a lot more points: double, quadruple. If you miss a question and get knocked out of the streak, you don’t get any points. This is where the name “Brain Bump” comes from. For getting one question right, you get 15 points.

I found that even if I didn’t have a clue what the answer was, I just went with my gut answer. Usually it was right, believe it or not. I am ashamed to admit that I cheated on some and googled the answers to some that were really out there. It gave me a chance to learn more about the book or poem that the question was referring to.

I hope Fanmillion will add more trivia questions periodically. There are over 1000 in Brain Bump, but you can run through all of them pretty quickly. The questions also tend to get a little repetitive after awhile because some lead into others as you move along.

As a literature game, Brain Bump fits nicely into the purposes of the Kindle as a reading device.

Joel Waalkens

“While the average difficulty of the questions is fairly low, it certainly did maintain my interest for a few hours. I would be pleased if in some manner additional questions could be injected into the product as an update of some kind. A good variety of books but, as other reviewers have stated, a bit heavy on J.R.R. Tolkein’s works.”

Brain Bump Literature is now compatible with the latest generation keyboardless Kindle.