Casual gaming is generating a lot of buzz in the games industry these days. Lots of money is being funneled into developers by those who would prefer to match simple colored tiles for ten minutes at a time rather than slog through a hundred-hour epic with millions of dollars invested in production. The latest entry into the crowded Nintendo DS puzzle space is EA's Pogo Island, a game that makes the most of its ties to the Pogo.com casual gaming site frequented by what appears to be half of the internet-going planet.

Pogo Island allows you to bring five of the network's more popular casual games with you on the go. Poppit! is a balloon popping game that anyone can jump right into, although you're quite likely to have a game just like it already on your mobile phone. Word Whomp is a personal favorite, and one that will appeal to fans of Scrabble and Bookworm, challenging you to create as many words as possible out of a six letter word combination. Tri Peaks is a solitaire variant where you must try and clear three pyramids of cards. Phlinx is a Puzzle Bobble variant, where you use a cannon to destroy multi-colored gems by freeing them from the top of the screen. Lastly, Squelchies is a fast-paced puzzle game where you move columns in order to match different colors of fish before they make their way to the bottom of the screen.

While one could spend time explaining how each game is played in great detail, it wouldn't cost you anything to go to the Pogo.com site and check out flash versions of these games for yourself. What is worth stating is that the handheld versions of each of these games perform admirably on the small screens. You'll have some trouble with the precision aiming required in a game like Phlinx during car rides or on public transit, but you can't go wrong with something like Word Whomp when you have some time to waste. One issue I had was that the Word Whomp dictionary was very limited. Many words that would clearly be legal in Scrabble weren't recognized, so it's important to come into this game looking for the most simple or obvious words using the allotted letters.

While you can turn on the DS and hop straight into a mini-game, you can also play the game's adventure mode, which plays out like a simple board game. You'll spin a wheel before every round to see how many steps you move across the board, and you'll play a variety of micro-game challenges in addition to the main games. These challenges include hammering nails on the screen, sorting nuts and bolts, and sewing patches onto a tattered sail. They're generally little more than tests of your ability to quickly tap your stylus when prompted by the game. The main appeal here will be that with every game you play, you'll have a chance to earn tokens. You can play hot-seat style multiplayer versions of all the standard games with a single cart on one DS, or you can play Word Whomp cooperatively or against friends if you have multiple game carts.

Picking up a copy of Pogo Island will appeal most to active users of EA's casual games service. The tokens that you earn can easily be transferred to your Pogo.com account (and it's simple enough to create one for free using an AOL Instant Messenger nickname, for instance) which can then be used to enter regular drawings for cash prizes. While players evidently win tidy sums of money very regularly, I wouldn't wager that your odds are any better here than in playing your state lottery, considering how large the player base seems to be. If you're a gambler and need something to wean yourself off of the online poker sites, then you could do far worse than playing with the relatively benign token system at Pogo.com. On the other hand, if you're a gamer looking for a compelling puzzle diversion, then you could do far better.