iOS Universal, Android • After posting yesterday’s mammoth strategy guide for Czech Games‘ awesome port of Through the Ages, I was asked by several people to go over one of the game’s most frustrating mechanisms, Corruption. Let’s do this!
iOS, Android, PC/Mac • Last night an update arrived for our beloved, yet seemingly beleaguered, Pathfinder Adventures. The update brought more content, which is good, but also completely changed prices for IAP in the mobile version, which is good news too, I think? I don’t know, the future of Pathfinder has seemed foggy since Obsidian wrapped up the Rise of the Runelords campaign, and changing their pricing and whatnot at this point seems like a bad sign that, maybe, Pathfinder isn’t doing as good as Obsidian or their new overlord, Asmodee, had hoped. Or maybe I’m full of crap. It’s happened in the past, and I definitely have no insight into what’s going on in the darkened back rooms of Obsidian. With that in mind, let’s focus on what we do know about, the latest Pathfinder Adventures update.
iOS Universal, Android • I’m pretty sure I’ve stated my incompetence when it comes to winning games of Vlaada Chvátil’s masterpiece, Through the Ages. Now that it’s out on the App Store, many of you have been witness to said incompetence. For those who have yet to see it, t’s truly a wonder to behold. While I may suck at TtA, I have played the game, hundreds of times, actually. While my win percentage doesn’t back up that claim, I attribute my woeful performance far more to my adult ADD and less to understanding how the game operates. I cannot resist building a Wonder, even if everything in my current “strategy” screams against it. I like shiny things. While Through the Ages can seem complex, the rules are actually rather simple. The complexity comes from trying to juggle all of TtA’s parts so they work together. Let’s take a look at how this thing ticks.
iOS Universal, Android, PC/Mac/Linux • The past couple of weeks have been tough ones for me, but this hardship has been completely of my own devising. Instead of going to sleep at a remotely decent time, I’ve been staying up well past 2am nearly every night playing War of the Chosen, the new expansion for XCOM 2. While we’re unlikely to ever see the XCOM sequel on our tablets, there is good news in mobile-land for XCOM fans: XCOM: Enemy Within was just updated to comply with iOS 11’s 64-bit requirement.
iOS, Android, Kindle • You don’t need to be Fred Allen to know that mobile Real Time Strategy games are seldom well-done. Sadly a phone or tablet doesn’t have the requisite number of easily accessible input devices to allow for standard RTS play. Not that people haven’t tried to reproduce the Command and Conquer or Starcraft experience, but the results have been less than spectacular. RTS games that have succeeded on mobile–Rymdkapsel, Autumn Dynasty, and Alien Tribe 2 come to mind–do so by either reworking the concept of an RTS or creating new control schemes to simplify what’s possible with a keyboard and mouse. While these are all good games, none manage to create the same tension that desktop RTS titles are famous for. And so, into this peculiar gaming niche comes Iron Marines from Ironhide Game Studio. Is it the grail RTS we’ve been waiting for?
iOS, Android, PC/Mac/Linux • Art is cheap, at least when it comes to mobile games. You know this is true because even the most crap-filled freemium abomination is filled to the bevel with the most precisely crafted artwork. Pretty pixels are the aluminum siding of mobile gaming. Consequently, a good game is often not even particularly about the visuals but about the way the developer creates a tension between the tactical options available to the player and the desired game outcome. That and timers. We must always have timers. The reason this is important is that one of the latest titles to make its way to mobile, Minos Strategos by Brett Lowey of Militia fame, is not a particularly ground-breaking game in terms of visuals and also has some surprisingly poor UI choices. Combined, these make Minos Strategos troublesome at first but are, ultimately, a slight blemish on what is a very good abstract strategy game.
iOS Universal, Android • You know what doesn’t work on touchscreens? Real time strategy games. Getting one to work with less than accurate touchscreen controls is akin to putting that rubber band on those posts in a game of Operation, very few people can pull it off. A new title has just sauntered onto the App Store looking to buck the trend, however. It’s called Iron Marines and it looks like it might just succeed.
iOS Universal, Android, Consoles, Switch, PC/Mac • While I absolutely adored the PC/Mac version of Thimbleweed Park earlier this year, I’ll admit that I still haven’t fully solved the Twin Peaks-like murder mystery that lies in the game’s center. The game is big and sprawling and while it looks and feels like a 1990’s LucasArts point-and-click title, there’s much more here to unravel story-wise. I’ve kind of been waiting for the mobile version to launch so I can follow the exploits of Agents Ray and Reyes–who are in no way anything like Dana Scully or Fox Mulder–on my couch. The wait is nearly over! Thimbleweed Park is coming to iOS next week and Android in October.
iOS, Android, PC/Mac • It seems like we’ve been talking about a digital version of North Star Games‘ creature builder, Evolution, for longer than Darwin sailed on the Beagle. Well, guess what? It still isn’t ready for release and, in fact, is looking for a little extra help to push it along via a brand new Kickstarter campaign that started earlier today. We saw Evolution in action at Gen Con 2016 and it looked pretty darn polished then, so what the heck is going on?
iOS, Android, PC/Mac/Linux • Minos Strategos is an abstract digital board game that traces its roots to a physical board game from none other than Through the Ages designer, Vlaada Chvátil. The game is called Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends and is one of the very few Vlaada creations I haven’t played. That’s because it’s a two-player, head-to-head battle game which, in my home, are less likely than Monopoly to hit the table. Luckily, Minos Strategos has an AI to play against so I don’t have to rely on my kids and, better yet, it’s now on mobile, so I can play on my phone.