PC/Mac – Stately Play

Dire Wolf delivers Yellow & Yangtze to mobile, Steam

December 12, 2019 David Neumann 0

iOS, Android, PC/Mac Earlier this year Dire Wolf Digital surprised us with a lengthy list of board games they’re going to be bringing to digital over the next few years. The announcement was followed by the release of Raiders of the North Sea which is one of the best board game apps of 2019. Since July it’s been quiet on the Dire Wolf front, however, with nary a word about the progress on titles like Root or, my most anticipated, Mage Knight. Today, however, Dire Wolf is back in the spotlight with the second release from their burgeoning portfolio: Reiner Knizia’s Yellow & Yangtze.

Return of the Obra Dinn sails onto Switch this October

October 3, 2019 David Neumann 1

PC/Mac, Switch, PS4, Xbox One of the most unique gaming experiences I’ve ever had came from the prodigious mind of one Lukas Pope. Of course, I’m talking about the horror-simulation Papers, Please which I played way back in 2014 when it arrived on iOS. Completely unique and terrifying in how it roped you into hurting others to save yourself as you worked in the slowly grinding gears of an dystopian bureaucracy. It seems fitting that the next game that gripped me as much as that title also came from Lukas Pope in the form of Return of the Obra Dinn. An incredible mystery game that managed to be unlike anything before or since. If you’ve been waiting to play Obra Dinn for some reason, your time has come. On October 18 we can expect it on Switch, Xbox, and PS4.

Bad North heading to the small screen

October 3, 2019 David Neumann 1

iOS, Android, PC/Mac, Xbox The viking-themed real-time roguelite, Bad North, has been around for a bit now, having released on Switch way back in August of 2018. I’ve purchased the game on both Switch and PC and have yet to play it. I don’t know why. It looks amazing (hence the multiple purchases) but it just hasn’t been able to push aside whatever other game I’ve been sinking my time into. (This isn’t Bad North’s fault. Those other games are Slay the Spire and Factorio, so…) Now, however, I feel confident that I’ll finally give this gem the time it deserves because it can now fit in my pocket. Bad North arrives on iOS/Android on October 15.

Leaders & Wonders expansion has arrived in Through the Ages

September 12, 2019 David Neumann 31

iOS, Android, PC/Mac While I’ve been on a bit of a Through the Ages hiatus for the past few months (mainly because I realized I would never, ever beat JS619 again), it still reigns as the greatest board game port I’ve ever played. Not only is the base game Vlaada Chvatil’s magnum opus and nearly perfect, but CGE managed to add enough polish and shine to the app that, digitally, it’s even better. The base game has been around since 2006 in cardboard form and there’s never been an expansion. It really doesn’t need it. That said, today we get an expansion and I couldn’t be more excited.

Evolution coming to Switch

September 10, 2019 David Neumann 2

iOS, Android, PC/Mac, Switch If you’re starting to feel that all the cool news is coming from the direction of Nintendo’s Little Console That Could, you wouldn’t be wrong. It seems that all the cool releases are landing on Switch with other mobile being an afterthought. For example, Dead Cells has been on Switch forever but just arrived on iOS a couple of weeks ago. Divinity: Original Sin 2 arrived on Switch last week and we’ll never see anything like that on our touchscreens. Thus, it’s good to hear about a game that was originally on iOS head the other way and come to Switch. Unless you skipped the title, you’re aware I’m talking about everyone’s favorite Darwin simulator, Evolution.

Asmodee heads back to the Talisman well for Talisman: Origins

May 17, 2019 David Neumann 1

iOS, Android, PC/Mac It’s been a busy week+ for the folks at Asmodee Digital. It started with the reveal of the first four classes of the upcoming Gloomhaven port and continued with the, now closed, opening of the Terraforming Mars mobile beta. The thing is, we’ve known about both of those titles and their digital ports for months now. What we didn’t know anything about (and, neither, does Asmodee as there’s no mention of it anywhere on their site) was a game that actually released yesterday, Talisman: Origins. Yes, it’s more Talisman, but not quite in the way you’re thinking.

Mystic Vale headed to mobile on June 6th

April 16, 2019 David Neumann 15

iOS, Android, PC/Mac Mystic Vale, the transparent card-building board game from Nomad Games and AEG, arrived for PC/Mac back in January and has been raking in rave reviews over on Steam. Due to my ongoing gaming malaise, I haven’t yet given it a go instead opting to wait for the mobile version. Today we learned that we won’t have to wait much longer to do just that. Mystic Vale is headed to iOS and Android on June 6th.

Rev-ewe: Baba Is You

March 15, 2019 Tanner Hendrickson 1

PC/Mac/Linux, Switch There’s been a noticeable uptick in quality spatial puzzle games in the past five years. Games like Stephen’s Sausage Roll, Snakebird, Jelly no Puzzle, and A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build all take the classic Sokoban formula of moving/changing objects to their designated zones/states and put in their own little wrinkles, exploring the possibility spaces created by these tweaks to the formula. I like to call them “SokoButs”, as in “Sokobon, but…” because it’s fun to create microgenres and nobody has claimed this one yet. Feel free to use it, because I sure will. I attribute this recent boom at least partially to the release of PuzzleScript, a free toolset for designing SokoButs, in 2013. PuzzleScript streamlines the game design process via a simple markup for defining the rules that govern a SokoBut’s core systems. Baba Is You is a new SokoBut from Arvi Teikari, and its “but…” is huge: each puzzle’s rules are physical objects within the puzzle. By pushing around nouns, verbs, and adjectives, you rewrite the logic of the game in real time. Basically, it’s PuzzleScript: The Game. Baba Is You is an entirely new kind of logic puzzle, and it’s the best puzzle game I’ve played in a very long time.

Galaxy Trucker sets course for a new star system

March 7, 2019 David Neumann 3

iOS, Android, PC/Mac It’s no secret that we here at Stately Play feel that Czech Games Edition can do no wrong. First of all, they have Vlaada Chvatil designing games for them, which puts them one step away from God. Secondly, they created Galaxy Trucker back in 2014 and it reshaped how we thought about digital versions of board games. Not only did they include a lengthy, somewhat open-world campaign, but they also created entirely new rules so we could play the way digital board games were meant to be played: asynchronously. Five years later there still aren’t many apps that match it (and one of the ones that did is also from CGE: Through the Ages), and so it’s time for Galaxy Trucker to spread its wings (made of crepe paper and duct tape, I’m sure). Today it’s made the move to the big screen and released for PC/Mac on Steam.

AFTERBURN – Furious Angels follow-up on intercept

November 26, 2018 Alex Connolly 14

I’m not really a shmup guy. I mean, I dig so much about the genre, but my atrophied synaptic responses would make Bell 101 owners think they were living in the fast lane. That is, until I played Morfeo’s Furious Angels. A mouse-based frisson of physics-heavy turning, burning and gunning. A papercraft aesthetic, accommodating responsiveness and simple controls coalesced to form one of 2017’s top games. Play it if you haven’t. A convert’s testament. Turns out, we’re getting a follow-up, and deliciously soon.