iOS Universal, Android • In our review of Card Thief earlier this year, our only major beef with the game was “trash loot”. Many of the chest would be mostly (or completely) filled with loot that did nothing. It was pure garbage and didn’t have any in-game value whatsoever. The first major update for Card Thief landed today with the biggest news being that Tinytouchtales solved the problem of trash loot.
iOS Universal, Android • We’re only a week away from Through the Ages–the reason I bought an iPad 2 six years ago–finally appearing on the App Store. In preparation, Czech Games Edition has just launched the first official trailer and, well, I’m not sure I need to say much more than that. See you all in-game next Thursday!
iOS Universal, Android, PC/Mac/Linux • I’ve been noticing a lot of people on social media decrying the end of summer and whining that autumn is nearly upon us. These people are morons. Autumn is the best goddamned season of the entire year and I’ll fight anyone who claims summer is all that. Can you wear flannel while eating chili in front of a roaring fire in summer? Hell no! Autumn wins. If I had a mic drop gif, this is where I’d put it. Handelabra is on my side, and are doing their darndest to make autumn even better. Starting last night, their Fall of the Variants event began and we can expect new, free Sentinels of the Multiverse goodness every week through December.
iOS Universal, Android, PC/Mac • If you’re not familiar with board game designer Ryan Laukat, you should be. He’s designed some real gems with themes ranging from battling ancient titans to conquering the stars. That’s not all. In fact, Ryan is a true renaissance man, he’s a board game publisher, designer, and artist all in one. Each game from Red Raven is a complete Ryan Laukat creation, which is kind of cool. As of yet, however, none of Red Raven’s games have gone digital. That ended this morning when Eight-Minute Empire landed on the App Store.
iOS, Android, PC/Mac/Linux • Does anyone here remember that first Armello trailer and how gaga Owen went over it? Okay, I’ll admit we all went a bit gaga over it. After all, it was a theatrical-quality trailer promising an original board game with all sorts of cool mechanisms that would be tough to pull off on a tabletop. On top of that you play as an anthropomorphic animal, making the furry inside each of us cry out in joy. The PC/Mac version of Armello released just over 2 years ago and, since then, talk of the promised iPad version has been virtually nonexistent. In fact, I was talking with Brad from 164 at Gen Con about Armello and if it would ever come to mobile and we both thought they were only focusing on the desktop and consoles. Guess we should have chatted at PAX instead because at that con Armello was being played on an iPhone.
iOS Universal, Android, PC/Mac • Way back in August we assured everyone that the 64-bit update to everyone’s favorite Playdek game involving questing with cubes, Lords of Waterdeep, would be released on August 23. For those of you without a working sundial, that means the new LoW was supposed to be here over a week ago. Making software is tough, things happen, bugs are found, and sometimes even Wizards of the Coast gets involved. All that is over now, though, as we can expect the new Lords of Waterdeep to arrive later today.
iOS Universal, Android, PC/Mac • It’s been a wacky few weeks for our friends at Nomad Games. At Gen Con we learned that their port of AEG‘s mix-em-up card game, Smash Up!, was being published by Asmodee. Then, earlier this week, Smash Up! soft launched in the Australian App Store which should mean a worldwide debut isn’t too far down the road. To top it all off, Nomad went back to their bread and butter, Talisman, and ordered up a very tasty new expansion: The Dragon.
iOS Universal, Android • Tin Man Games left their usual gamebook fare in the dust when they released Miss Fisher and the Deathly Maze earlier this year. Instead of reading pages of text and then picking where the story goes, Miss Fisher was a full-fledged adventure game with a rather awesome protagonist and a slew of other interesting characters wrapped around a compelling mystery. It’s good enough that I started bingeing the Australian series on Netflix and have been loving every minute of it. Over the weekend, Tin Man added Episode 2 to the mix and, in the process, made the first episode free-to-download.
iOS Universal, Android • Any other year and Tinytouchtales solitaire card heist game, Card Thief, would be the only game we’d be talking about. It has everything we love about mobile gaming in a nearly perfect package, with the added benefit of being incredibly complex and requiring something we seldom see in mobile titles: thought. Unfortunately, 2017 has already introduced a slew of possible GOTY contenders, pushing Card Thief back into the shadows (one of them is also a Tinytouchtales gem, Miracle Merchant). Arnold from Tinytouchtales doesn’t like being in the background and next week we’ll see Card Thief move back into the light (considering the game’s dark/light mechanism, this metaphor really isn’t working, is it?) when it receives its first major content update.
iOS Universal, Android • Tim Fowers‘ cooperative heist game, Burgle Bros., landed on the App Store in early August and we still haven’t gotten a review up. I have excuses; plenty of them, actually. Gen Con was in there, my kids are still way over-scheduled, and that damn Through the Ages beta come to mind. Now, Gen Con is over, my kids are in school, and Darkest Dungeon has managed to curb my TtA habit by at least 3%, so things are looking up. We’ll be getting more reviews up and, hopefully, actually close to each game’s release date. It’s almost like we’re trying to be a real site. Almost. Anyway, back to Burgle Bros. Less than 3 weeks after arriving on our devices, the app has received a massive update that includes new variants, new rules, and ways to play that just aren’t possible on the tabletop. Here’s a review for you: it’s expansion-rific!