iPad, PC/Mac • When Commands & Colors: The Great War was released earlier this year for PC/Mac, HexWar assured us that it would only be a matter of time before we could play the Commands & Colors title on our tablets. True to their word, yesterday The Great War was unleashed on the App Store.
iPad • Rome: Total War arrived on iPad way back in November with much fanfare. Here was a massive PC experience–albeit a 12 year-old PC experience–on a touchscreen device you could play on the couch. It had everything the PC version had including the thousands of little fake people killing each other left and right. More importantly, they managed to create a UI for touchscreens that actually worked. One of the big questions when it was released revolved around the expansions. Would they be included or come later? At the time, Feral Interactive was mum on the subject, but today they announced that the first expansion, Barbarian Invasion, will be coming to iPad.
iPad, PC/Mac • After my torrid love affair with Hearthstone cooled, I kind of figured I was done with the whole CCG thing. After all, a big part of Hearthstone’s appeal was the setting, which I’d spent time in since the 90’s, and the polish that only a billion dollar developer can provide. 2016 surprised me, however, with not one, but two, new CCGs due for mobile that piqued my interest. The first is Duelyst, created by board game designer Eric Lang, and the second is Faeria. Both offer a CCG experience that incorporates a board and tiny little critters you can move around, but Faeria has one advantage over Duelyst, it’s been released for iPad.
iPad, PC/Mac • A fairly big week for releases (both Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Dungeon Rushers are already scheduled) just got bigger with the upcoming release of Gamious‘ oil tycoon simulation, Turmoil, which is due on February 23.
iPad, Android • Titan HD was the first game I ever decided to review for Pocket Tactics more than year after its initial release. Its tabletop version was famously deep, challenging, and counter-intuitive, and is still played at conventions more than thirty years after its introduction into a hobby famously obsessed with the Cult of the New. More importantly, it’s also surging in popularity among users of our own forum, drawn not only to its classic gameplay but to an app which has been lovingly supported by developer Kristopher Giesing for almost as long as there have been tablets capable of holding it. I managed to track down Kristopher and grill him about one of my favorite iPad apps.
Last week saw Richard Borg’s latest Commands & Colors title, The Great War, make its way to Steam for PC/Mac. We had rumors from GMT Games that more Commands & Colors titles, specifically Ancients and Napoleonics, were on the way but had little evidence to back up those claims. That ended yesterday when GMT released their January update. Not only are both Ancients and Napoleonics on the way, both of them should be in our hands by the end of 2017.
If a gaming website were to have some type of “Best of” at the end of the year (spoiler, we’re doing it the week between Xmas and New Years), I think you’d find at least one writer putting in a vote for Twilight Struggle. If not the best app of 2016, it’s near the top and yesterday we learned that it’s going to get better before 2016 ends. Playdek announced that not only is the game making its long-awaited debut on Android, but it’s bringing with it an expansion pack and more. Oh, and it all happens next Monday.
Carrier Battles of Guadalcanal is the best war game on the App Store that involves carrier battles in the Pacific that have Guadalcanal in their title. I joke, but it’s actually a pretty amazing little war game with a ton of depth and character which belies its one-man development team. It’s also updated with new content so regularly that when a new update hits, it’s barely news. Last week the latest update arrived and it’s a doozy.