Stately Play

Category: News

I’m playing Terraforming Mars on my laptop and you’re not. Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!

April 16, 2018 David Neumann 7

PC, iOS, Android • If you’re one of those folks who live in a perpetually sunny clime and think Seasonal Affective Disorder is something conjured up by the weirdos in flyover country to explain why people on Fargo ain’t that bad, let me introduce you to weather in Wisconsin. Last Tuesday–April 10th if you don’t have a calendar–I was wearing shorts and short sleeves while working outside in mid-60 (Fahrenheit) degree temps. Like all warm and sunny days that occur after months of being perpetually chilled–even while indoors, mind you–it felt like a miracle. Yesterday–April 15th–I spent a couple hours outside, only this time I was shoveling the heaviest, wettest snow there is. Any heavier or wetter and it would have been classified as slush. It snowed, literally, all day with the sky a dark gray and the temperature never exceeding 30. It’s enough to make you want to pour a hot bath and leap in while holding a toaster. The worst part isn’t my frozen toes or numb fingers (we had, stupidly, socked all the boots and gloves away in the attic assuming that Spring was finally here), but the fact that I couldn’t spend the day in front of my laptop. On Friday, Asmodee gave me the keys to Terraforming Mars and I was dying to take it out for a spin. Luckily, I got my chance this morning (yes, it’s still snowing outside, but I’ve given up).

Tannhäuser Great – Tempest Citadel Out Tomorrow

April 16, 2018 Alex Connolly 0

PC • Every once in a while, I’m bum-rushed by a seriously polydactyl concept, one that presses all the buttons. Tempest Citadel is this month’s most fabulous of ambushes. Science fantasy. Offworld expedition. ALIENS meets Milton. Dante’s Bespin. Aartform Games, the tiny outfit behind Spice Road, is dropping Tempest Citadel in a few hours on Steam, and it looks very, very intriguing.

BattleTech heading to PC/Mac on April 24

April 12, 2018 David Neumann 2

PC/Mac • It was my first year at Gen Con, four or five years ago, when we meandered over to the Harebrained Schemes booth to cover their miniatures/app-based game, Golem Arcana. While we touched on that, they were far more interested in showing us something that was only in the planning stages at that point: a return to digital of the classic miniatures game, BattleTech. We watched it grow year after year with our annual Gen Con visits only to hear last year that it had been picked up by Paradox, the company that can do no wrong. [Dave has been angling for a Paradox sponsorship for awhile now (unsuccessfully). He’s still completely unbiased. :insert rolling-eye emoji here: -ed.] Yesterday, thanks to the hard work of our citizen journalists, we learned that it’s time to start flexing your mech-driving finger–not a real thing but I’m not smart enough to come up with a better visual–because BattleTech is coming to PC/Mac on April 24.

Avernum 3: Ruined World heads for the ruined world of the App Store next week

April 12, 2018 David Neumann 0

iPad, PC/Mac • Are you despondent because your favorite genre of game, RPG, is criminally underrepresented on the App Store? Have you destroyed Irenicus on your iPad more times than you think it’s healthy to admit, mainly because the Baldur’s Gate series is the only “deep and thoughtful” RPG for your tablet? Are you angry because Divinity: Original Sin 2 still isn’t available for Mac and you Kickstarted it unaware that it was PC-only even though the first game was both PC and Mac? [ignore that last one, Dave is just bitter -ed.] Wake up, because there’s another set of RPG titles available for your iPad and they’re every bit as deep and wonderful as those 90’s classics. They’re the Spiderweb Software games and, as reported by Touch Arcade, the next one is raiding the App Store on April 18.

Warhammer Quest 2 (finally) arrives for Android

April 12, 2018 David Neumann 1

iOS Universal, Android • While rumor had it that the sequel to 2013’s much praised Warhammer Quest would be arriving for Android on Wednesday, April 11, that ended up being a big, filthy LIE. Instead, early this morning (not April 11, btw), Warhammer Quest 2 from Perchang made its way to the Google Play store. Okay, so it was like an hour late. Whatever.

Wings of Galactica? Ares Games bringing BSG battles to your tabletop

April 11, 2018 David Neumann 4

Tabletop • Many years ago the folks at Ares Games created a miniatures game so easy that even non-miniature gamers, like me, could figure them out and play them. Even better, they sold the games with pre-painted miniatures and all the stuff you needed to play. No searching for a tape measure or blistering your fingers prying plastic off sprues. Even, even, better the theme was World War I and II air combat. Of course, I’m talking about Wings of War (now Wings of Glory) and, for a short time, I was hooked. This was followed up by Sails of Glory which takes the basic premise and moves it onto the high seas. All was well and good and then Fantasy Flight used a system that was…similar…in their blockbuster hit X-Wing and then followed that up with capital ship combat in Armada. Who wants to shoot shells when you can fire laser cannons and make pew-pew sounds as you play? Don’t count Ares out yet, however, as they just announced their own sci-fi miniatures combat game, Battlestar Galactica-Starship Battles.

Battle Fleet: Ground Assault bringing turn-based tank action to Steam on May 1st

April 10, 2018 David Neumann 1

PC/Mac • Back in 2014 Mythical City Games released a turn-based military sim onto Steam and mobile called Battle Fleet 2. Some guy named Owen reviewed it back then and summed everything up with three stars, whatever that means. I could go and read the thing but, let’s face it, Owen’s writing is way over my head. An Owen metaphor, “A gruesome struggle of life and death becomes a badminton match played with high explosive shuttlecocks.” My metaphor, “A gruesome struggle of life and death becomes raccoons eating garbage on a Saturday night in my driveway while listening to the Original Broadway Cast recording of Cats.” See? He’s just way better at this than I’ll ever be. Anyway, Mythical City is back with Battle Fleet 2’s sequel that, due to a change in theme, isn’t simply Battle Fleet 3. That’s right, instead of steering mighty warships we’re driving nimble juggernauts of destruction: tanks. Welcome to Battle Fleet: Ground Assault.

Michael Brough revisits Imbroglio, adds Phlogiston expansion

April 10, 2018 David Neumann 0

iOS Universal • I have kids in two different school systems, one in public high school and the others in a private elementary school. Although the schools are merely two blocks apart and many, many families in the area have children at both schools, we learned that they rarely manage to sync their schedules and, as such, their spring breaks never coincide. This led to the past two weeks when I was traveling and then home with children, both of which really cut into my writing time here at Stately Play. Today, the house is empty and I couldn’t be happier. Not only does that mean I can actually sit and write again, but it also means I’m back to not wearing pants. Freedom. None of this has anything to do with the topic of this post, however, which revolves around one of the true maestros of the App Store, Michael Brough. His dungeon-crawler/puzzler/roguelike Imbroglio has just expanded with Phlogiston.

Terra Mystica expands with Fire & Ice

April 5, 2018 David Neumann 0

iOS, Android, PC/Mac/Linux • So, I woke up this morning and loaded up Terra Mystica on my laptop trying to finish a game I had started last week. As I believe I mentioned earlier this year, wrapping my head around Digidiced‘s excellent port of TM was on my to-do list in 2018. Upon starting the game, however, I was hit with a notification that the Fire & Ice expansion had arrived. One new game menu later and I was all set to lead Tyrion and Dany against evil bitch Cersei and her Gregor-stein only to find that this isn’t a Song of Ice and Fire expansion, but something completely different. Fire & Ice is still pretty cool, but I have to admit I’m a little bummed.

Civilization VI for iPad heads Down Under

April 5, 2018 David Neumann 6

iPad, PC/Mac/Linux • The only things I know about Australia I learned from Monty Python, Flight of the Concords, and Alex Connolly. In other words, everyone there is named Bruce and teaches philosophy, they like to mock New Zealanders’ accent, and [redacted due to NDA]. Obviously, this is a well-rounded and comprehensive litany of everything Australia has to offer, but Civ VI is here to fill in all the empty spaces (even if it seems there aren’t any). I can’t think of a better teacher of real-world history than Civilization (how else would I have learned that Teddy Roosevelt founded America and will colonize space in 2023?) and now that Australia has become available in the iPad version of Civ VI, I can’t wait to learn more about Vegemite and Bloomin’ Onions.

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