Find The Mafia!: math puzzle app game for iphone, ipad

Adam Nagy recently contacted me about his new puzzle game app called Find The Mafia!

His note to me:

'The uniqueness of it is that it is based on a graph theory problem 'maximum clique problem', and maybe because of it its rules are extremely simple and elegant. (Yet it can be very challenging on higher levels.)'

Here is the website of the game (with video): http://experiware.com/ftm.html'

 

I wasn't sure exactly how it worked. I set the Mafia Size to 3 and then realized that I was essentially looking for a triangle - that is, the 3 people who all knew each other. Other people might know 1 or 2 of them but not all 3.

 

Look at the first diagram, can you see how the 4 people know each other and their lines equal/correspond to  the rectangle with diagonals?

Look at the second diagram. There are 16 people and 6 of them are 'made men'. I've tapped on 4 people. Their connections are highlighted in blue. See the red line? Those 2 people do not know each other. As you can see finding the 6 mafia men is very difficult.

In terms of originality, Find The Mafia! seems pretty unique. In terms of playing this game, I think it needs more pizzazz. More graphics would help. There was a game I reviewed not too long ago called Nun Attack. I didn't like that game, but I loved the title and images of nuns with guns and eye patches. That's what I think this game needs. Something outrageous.

Attention math teachers: show this game to your students!

One more thing: I highly recommend the Mario Puzo novel The Godfather.