Stately Play

Tag: Asmodee

Review: Jaipur

June 7, 2017 Kelsey Rinella 7

iOS, Android • Jaipur on tabletop has long been highly regarded as a fairly light and quick, but still satisfying, economic game. The translation is everything we could hope for from an Asmodee digital title. Asmodee’s online service could improve in numerous ways (most notably by allowing asynchronous games), but they tend to choose games which support relatively large player bases so it is, at least, usually possible to find opponents. Solo play includes a generous campaign with a variety of tweaks to the formula, and, of the three AI opponents, only the easiest seems like a pushover.

Carcassonne getting an Asmodee update

June 6, 2017 David Neumann 0

Android, PC • Last week the somewhat surprising news broke that Asmodee and Obsidian had joined forces, and that Asmodee would now be publishing Pathfinder Adventures for PC and mobile. The Asmodee surprises keep coming with this week revealing that they’re tackling one of the most beloved digital games out there: Carcassonne.

Asmodee Digital has lost their minds, Onirim is still free

May 31, 2017 David Neumann 4

iOS Universal, Android • Being of an unstable mind myself, I usually try to not diagnose the mental health of others on the internet. Regardless of how off-the-rails their comment or post might be, you’re only getting a small sliver of the person behind the keyboard. That said, I think we might need to send help to Asmodee Digital and make sure they’re okay. Over the weekend, they put their hit card game, Onirim, on sale and, for some reason, it’s still on sale. Oh, and when I say “on sale” I mean free.

The Little Game That Could, Onirim, gets bigger

May 25, 2017 David Neumann 6

iOS Universal, Android • Onirim is a truly fantastic port of a physical card game but, let’s admit, it has some hills to climb. One is that it’s solitaire only, which immediately makes it feel like more of a time waster than a serious strategic affair. Next, it has to compete with the likes of Race for the Galaxy which just happened to release around the same time and might be the greatest card game you can play on mobile right now. Lastly, Asmodee only released the Onirim base game with no expansions which, I’ve heard, really make the game shine. Two of those aren’t Onirim’s fault, but that last one is. Luckily, Asmodee is listening and the first expansion for Onirim arrived today. Better yet, it’s free.

Review: Onirim

April 11, 2017 Kelsey Rinella 8

iOS, Android • Onirim is a highly-regarded, fast-playing solo card game by Shadi Torbey and Z-Man Games, and is now a highly-regarded, even faster-playing ideal phone game by Asmodee Digital. Perhaps the easiest single-sentence summary for Stately Play readers is this: Card Crawl is more like Onirim than Card Thief, and this stands as a strong compliment to all three games. Card Crawl gave about as much satisfaction as a turn-based game could offer in such a brief playing time, and Onirim gives us decisions with a similar tactical feel and memory element. Card Thief has much in common with Card Crawl, but Tinytouchtales innovated with it enough that a third game could be more similar to their first outing without being redundant. In other words, Onirim fills the same niche as Card Crawl while still being sufficiently distinct to justify itself.

Asmodee won’t stop, releases Onirim today

April 6, 2017 David Neumann 11

iOS Universal, Android • At the end of last November, Asmodee Digital started their deluge of board game ports with Colt Express and haven’t let up yet. In fact, if my counting is correct, Onirim will be their sixth release in just over four months. One constant of the Asmodee releases has been their failure to adhere to the tenets of our multiplayer manifesto, creating multiplayer experiences that have been less than stellar. Onirim manages to dodge that bullet by being a completely solitaire experience and it just happens to be available right now for iOS and Android.

White Wolf’s World of Darkness comes alive via interactive fiction

February 20, 2017 David Neumann 0

iOS Universal, Android, PC/Mac • It’s about time I came clean. I know this will come as a shock to many of you, so you might want to prepare yourself. Ready? Here we go: Back when I was in college, I was a huge nerd. There, I said it. Take as much time as you need to let that soak in. Now, when I say “nerd”, I’m not talking about the kind that spent their time in the library on Thursday nights rather than at house parties, I’m talking about the kind that stayed in and played role-playing games with friends on Thursday nights instead of going to house parties. A lot of Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition was played in many dorm common areas, let me tell you. We even, for a short time, dabbled in something called Vampire: The Masquerade which was White Wolf’s more freeform answer to D&D’s mathiness and was all the rage thanks to Anne Rice and the lingering effect of a young Kiefer Sutherland in leather. Well, Vampire: The Masquerade is back and it’s on your phone.

Review: Potion Explosion

February 1, 2017 Kelsey Rinella 2

iOS Universal, Android • The retreat from Game Center has opened a hole in the iOS board game development world. With Apple’s commitment to asynchronous multiplayer looking uncertain and the value of a unified multiplayer solution high, publishers of popular board games are likely to seek partnerships with developers who have proven multiplayer systems. That’s going to be very interesting to observe over the next few years. Potion Explosion is a Horrible Games/Cool Mini Or Not product in the tabletop world, but Asmodee Digital and Studio Clangore have brought it to mobile devices, which means you can use an existing account for any Days of Wonder or Asmodee title. That’s a pretty impressive catalog–just in my own iTunes library, I have Ticket To Ride, Small World (2, he added, rolling his eyes), the recently improved Colt Express, Pandemic, and Splendor.

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