Gomoku is a popular strategy based board game which originated in Japan and massively spread throughout the world in 19th and 20th century. The game can be safely regarded as the bigger version of Tic-Tac-Toe with a lot more strategy making and longer duration for each session. The traditional game used to be played with black and white colored pieces with the player owning the black ones making the first move. With the increase in the usage of computer as a platform for playing games, almost every popular game has come to us as computer applications, and Gomoku v.1.4 is another example of this concept.

Gomoku by Falco Software Company is a freeware game based on the lines of popular turn based strategy game known as Gomoku. The game has a basic 2D interface and does not involve much visual effects. The background of the interface is abstract green colored base and the game board, which is 18x28, is black in color consisting of various square shaped grids. The pieces available to both the players consist of noughts and crosses and the user competes against challenging strategies of AI in order to win the game. Each player has the target of putting his five pieces in a horizontal or vertical row together without any spaces or other player’s piece in between, in order to win the game. The player has to be very cautious of all the patterns on the screen, and has to keep an eye for detail in order to catch any winning opportunities and look for the player’s strategy.

To conclude with, Gomoku v.1.4 is a game which is simple on rules and interface, but can be a good mind bending exercise when you need to pep up your brains. But added visual and audio effects could have made it a bit more interesting. Hence, it receives a score of three-and-a-half rating points on the scale of five.