Category: Mobile Game Releases

Doing something a little different today, simply because a piece of news dropped we can’t really ignore (and because reasons I can’t really write this up separately). I have dabbled with doing upcoming releases and similar such things in Weekender, but it’s not been consistent so far.

Apologise for the rather lack-lustre week again – we’re on track to have some decent reviews and goodies for you next week though, so hopefully that’ll make up for it.

Meanwhile, in the world of mobile gamining…

New Announcements

Microsoft just announced their own take on Pokemon GO in the form of Minecraft Earth. This AR mobile game will allow you to drop your Minecraft creations into the real world for everyone to see. It’s going to be stand-alone experience, meaning you will need to build everything within the app itself, using resources you source from in-game nodes in much the same way you visit Pokestops.

There’s also reference to something called ‘Adventures’, which are quick scenarios where you can interact with Minecraft creatures or enemies, which can be done solo or with friends. Not much else to say at this point, other than to leave you with a promotional trailer (I feel like we’ve been her before-ED).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYKxBKj29dI?controls=0]

Oh there’s also a beta you can sign up for, if you want.

Out Now

Steam Link (iOS & Android)

Well now, isn’t THIS is a surprise. It’s been a year since Apple blocked Valve’s attempt to release their SteamLink app on the app store, citing “business conflicts”. Us Android users have been sitting here smugly enjoying our ability to stream Steam to our phones… maybe. I don’t know I haven’t actually used it yet. Been on my to-do list…

Anyway, our smugness is now at an end because Steam Link has finally appeared on the App store. I’m not sure what’s prompted this change of heart, or whether there’s any difference between the version, but it might be high time we look at this probably now that all mobile gamers can make use of it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mraRO_BNQG4?controls=0]

Talisman: Origins (iOS & Android)

Nomad Games have released a new stand-alone Talisman experience. This new adaptation focuses on the solo experience and uses the completed Revisied 4^th Edition Rules. It features 20 quests spread across 4 campaigns, with over 100 challenges and a new interactive tutorial. There are twelve characters you can control, and it seems like you can play as both good and bad.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG5cDOMDm5g?controls=0]

Please note that at the time of writing, a bug on the App Store is preventing the iOS version from showing up when you try to search for the game. Nomad and Asmodee are working on a solution but it seems the problem is on Apple’s end.

Updates

Talisman: Digital Edition (iOS & Android)

Origins isn’t the only thing Nomad have been working on – the Ancient Beats DLC is also now available for Talisman: Digital Edition.

Please note that the same issues that’s effecting Origins on iOS is also affecting Ancient Beats on the app store.

Sales

There’s quite a few sales this week that attracted our attention:

• On iOS, Overhaul Games have discounted their entire catalogue down to $1.99, which includes games like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and more (not on Android, sadly).
• To celebrate the release of Origins and a new DLC, Nomad has discounted Talisman: Digital Edition on iOS & Android.
• Kingdom: New Lands Is also discounted on iOS & Android.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse was given a minor update at the start of the week, and is now discounted on iOS & Android.
• And last but certainly not least, iOS readers can pick up Jade Empire for $2.99.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

By Joe Robinson 15 May 2019

By Joe Robinson 14 May 2019

Co-opting a board game motif is small-budget strategy video game design 101. What’s Chess but a strategy game, right? But Chess makes the most of the few pieces, and limited spaces it has. Every piece has a unique movement pattern, and when mixed together, the tactical possibilities are truly enormous. Shattered Plane, the fantasy war game by Eremite Games, is more like Checkers. Units are effectively homogeneous, all playing by similar rules, putting more weight on the player’s every move.

If it wanted to just be Checkers, it may have succeeded.

It’s in its noble attempts to spice up the formula that Shattered Plane loses me. Which is ironic, because my first handful of missions had me wishing there was more to it than what was in front of me. Nodes that represent towns or temples or monuments spawn troops for your team. These troops can be combined together in a single space to up their hitting power, to a max of 99. Everyone moves at the same two space pace, so each turn tends to be a slow trek towards an objective node, or a special unit that must be eliminated. You only have a limited amount of moves per turn, though. So even if you have seven units on the board, you might not be able to move all of them before you pass to the next player.

Together, these simple rules actually make for an easy to grasp game that can be a soft challenge at times. The move limit per turn really makes you think about grander strategy just as often as you might ponder the moment-to-moment tactics. When it’s at its best, I’m struggling to make decisive advances on important targets on one side of the map, while trying to keep important landmarks under control on the opposite side. Great war games can get you thinking on all fronts, and this has flashes of that.

The flash is temporary, of course. Many of Shattered Plane’s other features get in its way. For example, the second state per unit besides troop number it morale. Morale goes up as that unit wins battles or is nearby when an ally attacks someone. They lose it when they lose battles or when their numbers grow. It’s supposed to act like a sort of luck modifier, where higher morale might find your unit doing better in combat then you thought. If unit size is close, morale becomes a difference maker.

The problem arises when morale seems to be doing way more heaving lifting in a combat exchange than you’d think. There were several occasions where my troop totals were significantly higher than an enemy’s, who had higher morale than mine. When my guys got crushed in battle, I was left scratching my head. If there was some sort of transparency surrounding the relationship between morale and battle, that would be one thing. If you’re going to add visible numbers to a game where numbers matter, you have to spell out how they matter more explicitly

Each army is part of a faction that worships a patron that gives them a special ability. These abilities add a little spice to your arsenal, and can change the state of play drastically. Playing through the campaign will get you acquainted with them, and it will also teach you that some are just absolutely more useful than others. This unbalance is also felt pretty heavily in the campaign. The difference between struggling and dominance on two maps with similar objectives is having a ability that lowers the morale of all the enemies, or having the one that adds troops to all your bases. The former is shrug worthy, while the latter is clearly powerful. The AI will introduce some, like one that can obliterate a unit outright, no matter the size or morale. That never feels like anything more than cheating.

There is a Ranked and a Quick Play mode, but these are more score attack leaderboards than multiplayer modes. It’s also where Shattered Plane feels most like a puzzle game. You must select a board, and take control of it from AI opponents in a few moves as you can. It lacks the environmental elements from the campaign mode (the very few that existed), so the boards themselves can feel pretty bland and basic, but it’s a more intense way to play the game.

Shattered Plane doesn’t do anything wrong, necessarily. It’s art is passable and sometimes really cool. It’s story is forgettable but not terribly offensive. The combat gets in its own way by doing too much, yet at the same time, not enough. There’s some enjoyment to be had with this simple strategy game, but it’s inconsistent and won’t last very long.

So I noticed the other day that lately we’ve been pretty much only doing reviews, guide refreshes and then The Weekender lately – sorry about that. Trying to keep up with the game releases can sometimes take up a lot of manpower and budget, and I’m trying to take more care as to what features and guides we roll-out. I still believe in things like our ‘Best Games’ guides, but we’re at the point now where the usual suspects are covered.

Plus, reviews are still incredibly popular and our reviews indices get a lot of attention year-round, so we can’t neglect the library no matter how many rogue-like card games that aren’t Slay the Spire release. But still, if you have anything specific you want us to take a look at, I’m always open to suggestions!

Meanwhile, in the world of mobile gaming…

Out Now

Shards of Infinity (iOS & Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

The headliner for this week is the digital adaptation of Shards of Infinity. This is a new deck-building card-game that’s the spiritual successor to Ascension. It’s not Playdek who’s brought this game to mobile though, but Temple Gate Games.

We’re working on a dedicated review for the mobile version, but if you want some initial impressions on how it plays PT-regular Matt Thrower actually did a write up for our sister website Strategy Gamer based on the game’s Early Access period on Steam.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLaXJ9ebQQM?controls=0]

Morels: Foray (iOS & Android) (Base Game Review)

Morels (also known as Fungi in the table-top world) was a fun and friendly two-player card game where you had to try and score the most victory points by cooking up the best meal possible with ingredients found on the forest floor. Despite being a competent digital experience, it had limited replay value… until now!

Foray is an expansion that can be purchased via IAP that adds 13 new types of cards that include items, weather and characters:

Weather cards (Rainstorm and Forest Fire) can decimate existing forests or spring up new ones, Items (Map, Shiitake Log) grant power with proper timing, Events (Farmers Market, Eureka!) enable big plays, Characters (Thief, Farm Girl, Eccentric, Chef, Morchella) allow you to interact with the forest and your opponent(s) in new ways, and new mushrooms (Lion’s Mane, Panther Cap) expand your foraging options in the ever beckoning forest.

Hopefully this breathes a new lease of life into the game!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8T0bb_kspI?controls=0]

The Quest – Hero of Lukomorye 4 (iOS & Android)

We quite enjoyed The Quest when we reviewed it, although we haven’t been that great at keeping up with the expansions released since then. There have been 11 stand-alone adventures released for the game since, including three titled ‘Heroes of Lukomoreye’.

Like the others, the fourth Hero of Lukomorye adventure can be played as stand-alone experience of unlocked for your main The Quest app.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH30tM_zdfI?controls=0]

Updates

Kingdom Rush: Vengeance (iOS & Android) (Review)

Ironhide have released the Frozen Nightmare update for Kingdom Rush: Vengeance. A new enemy in the form of the Ice Queen has appeared, with all new snow-covered maps and a new army that must be defeated. I’d tell you more, but I can’t find a change-log to save my life so you’ll just have to find it out for yourselves.

Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion (iOS Universal) (Review)

Feral Interactive have pulled off some great ports of Rome: Total War’s various iterations. The Barbarian Invasion expansion was ported to iPads in 2017 and now, two years later, its finally gone Universal. At no extra cost the game has been updated and players can download the game on their phone, with cloud sync on saves.

Further to that, Feral announced that the android version will be available in June.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v0hQG6AvYQ?controls=0]

Sales

Looking at the games currently on sale, seems like only iOS users get anything half-decent on the cheap this week:

• Holy Potatoes! We’re in Space? (Review)
• Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! (Review)
• Baldur’s Gate 2: Enhanced Edition (Review)

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

A colony ship crash-lands on a hostile planet, leaving the crew struggling against the odds to survive. With the passing of time, the chance of rescue diminishes so the colonists disperse and establish their own factions. Generations of survivors have eked out a living, but there is a limit to the barren planet’s resources and tensions between the competing factions are high.

Nomads of the Fallen Star is a sci-fi adventure in which you take on the role of the leader of a motley bunch of scavengers on a quest for fame and fortune. Initially, there are only two members in your team, a grizzled veteran who goes by the name of Varon and a young woman called Iona, who has a talent for chemistry. This unlikely duo must traverse the land, trading between the numerous settlements and completing missions whilst unravelling the background story as they go. As their reputation grows, they will be able to purchase better equipment and recruit new members.

From the onset, it is obvious that Nomads is a port of a PC game. Indeed, it has the look and feel of a PC game from the previous millennium. The font is tiny, the icons minuscule and the character portraits blurry and non-distinct. However, let us not be too harsh, this is the work of a solo developer and the PC version has attained plenty of positive feedback. Unfortunately, even if you are prepared to overlook the rather off-putting presentation, Nomads of the Fallen Star’s ropeyuser-interface isn’t so easy to excuse.

You will spend a lot of time watching the various factions, militia and caravans trundling slowly across the landscape. On one level, it is easy to admire the machinations that are whirling away in the background creating the sense of a real living world. However, when you just want to get from A to B it quickly becomes immensely frustrating. You have to scroll the map using a little virtual joystick that is nestled at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Release the joystick and the screen flips back to centre on your party. It is a system that feels both clunky and irritating. When you are used to navigating maps by tapping and dragging, it feels positively archaic. Furthermore, you have to constantly switch between input modes to either confirm orders or find out additional information. There are other problems too, such as an exit button that doesn’t appear to do anything and an abort mission button that is all too easy to accidentally press. Overall, it feels like an interface that has been shoehorned into a touchscreen device instead of being designed from the ground up.

Combat is a little macabre as you manoeuvre your units, represented by disembodied heads, around a rudimentary grid. You can then use your action points to initiate numerous attacks. The tiny icons aren’t really distinct enough so the first few battles are even more confusing than they need to be. It is especially tough at the start of the game when you only have two team members and limited equipment. Because the game is so open-ended you can find yourself involved in some hopelessly one-sided battles, and with no option to quit you are forced to see things through to the bitter end. You can pep up your team by taking some performance-enhancing drugs, but the lack of terrain features means that the best tactic is usually to wait around on the left of the screen until the reckless enemies charge into range.

If you are a true sadist then you can play with the permadeath option turned on. However, this game is so tough that any sane souls will probably select the option where death only returns your adventurers to the last settlement that they visited. When you start playing it seems like everything is stacked against you; shortages of food and water, strict mission deadlines and overpowering opponents all serve to frustrate. To be fair the game does give advice, but you have to really pay attention and read everything carefully otherwise you may miss some crucial hints. The vast amount of information that is thrown at the player can feel overwhelming and you soon realise the need to narrow your focus to a few specific goals. Unfortunately, there isn’t an option to make additional saved game files. This seems odd given the open-ended nature of the game, which encourages exploration and experimentation.

This all sounds very negative, but in spite of these concerns Nomads of the Fallen Star still has some really neat ideas. The combination of trading and squad-based combat works well and the music is wonderful, flowing from the beautifully eerie to the pulse-poundingly rousing. In some ways, Nomads is a tremendous achievement, not since Genesis has such a massive living world been created by a single pair of hands, although I’m betting that it took considerably longer than seven days to complete. The butterfly effect has been incorporated into the game with much thought and skill. For instance, a caravan carrying ale is ambushed on route to a local mine.

The miners go on strike, causing supplies of ore to dwindle. In the meantime, metal prices soar and supplies of weapons and armour are hit. The local militia grow ill-equipped and unhappy.  Law and order begins to fall apart and raiders take the opportunity to fill their pockets with ill-gotten gains. To make matters worse disillusioned militiamen desert and join raiding groups. Yet, the number of caravans risking journeys has fallen, forcing the raiders to attack the outposts themselves. All because a few miners had dry throats and you didn’t get the crucial supplies through in time.

It is a shame that the dodgy interface and unforgiving introduction are likely to deter all but the most resolute of gamers.  Nomads of the Fallen Star tells an interesting story set in a dynamic open-world of warring factions and economic hardships. There is so much to discover, like crafting, trading, scavenging, developing your faction and characters. After the initial hurdles, the game opens up and you can begin to appreciate the ambitious scope.

If you find the concept intriguing and you have the patience to take on the tough challenge then I strongly recommend that you give the PC version a try. Playing on a larger screen with mouse control rectifies many of the game’s frustrations, leaving you free to explore the planet without having to constantly wrestle with the interface. If you insist on playing it on mobile, then tablet is probably the best way forward – the interface issues get exacerbated by smaller screens.

Roguelikes and card battlers have been having a ‘moment’ for years now. Early classics like Hoplite and Dream Quest were ground-breaking in their canny mix of challenge and simplicity. Anything halfway decent becomes common, and these sort of games were something truly special. Lose sight of the lineage, forget the forefathers, though, and you’ll be pleasantly shocked by the quality of recent roguelikes.

Chief among these is the recently-released Dimension of Dreams, standing apart like a very good fusion of the aforementioned games. It takes some familiar mechanics while totally inventing its own card pool and class system, and while the progression is slow and the difficulty perhaps slightly over-tuned, it is great and by all signs will only get better.

Don’t let the 3D art style fool you; this game’s action unfolds within turn-based battles interspersed with overland travel on a 2D grid. Three levels filled with shops, mystery events, treasure chests and monsters. After every battle, you gain experience, gold and most crucially, the chance to add a new card to your deck. That’s the big picture, macro-level strategy of managing health and coins as long-term resources, but the game’s chief challenge lay within those battles. Each turn, the player draws two (or sometimes more) cards and has a few actions to spend playing those cards. There are four color-coded categories of cards: red for offense, blue for defense, green for utility and purple for status effects.

The game’s combos and effects largely revolve around these colorful card types. For now the game has three classes, roughly corresponding to that holy trinity of warrior, rogue and mage. (With the ‘mage’ being more of a ‘holy cleric’ sort). As an example, the rogue-type Demon Samurai has plenty of dodge, critical and poison-based keyword effects.

If all this sounds curiously parallel to Slay the Spire, that is quite accurate and, moreover, quite deliberate. But the variety and detail of both class mechanics and enemy traits are unique to this game and reminiscent of Dream Quest’s utter ex nihilo creativity. In lieu of attributes or spells, player characters have equipment and relics, the former selected from a fixed pool of options every third level, the latter purchased from shops or awarded after boss battles. The synergy between these relics and the deck’s own archetypes becomes a delicate chance for the player to apply their wits. So it possesses the requisite opportunity for a first-rate mind to distinguish itself.

The game’s not a dreamy playpen, though, and has plenty of practical constraints to limit theoretical min-maxing. This tension is necessary because roguelikes are also about building the most elegant, efficient machine out of whatever scraps are available. On this front, the game is a wee bit scanty with its options, I’d say, a little bit beyond the norm of what’s ‘fair’ to make the average run winnable through wise decisions alone. There are so many different viable deck archetypes, but only a few of them thrive in the early stages of the game where it is most crucial to build momentum. So there’s a bit of false richness here, insofar as things like a Parry-based warrior archetype simply isn’t going to cut it at max difficulty, barring some exceptional events.

One more criticism is about those same ‘events’ and the unusually high-variance nature of the level-up rewards. When landing on an event space, a short vignette of text spells out a situation then presents the player with two possible reactions. Some of them are totally binary outcomes, with one ‘right’ choice giving a pure reward and the other pure punishment. This is titillating storytelling but bad gameplay, to present an opaque risk with zero information and no trade-off decisions. And the quality of these boons also varies wildly, from trivial passive boosts to a free level-up. Oh, and upon levelling up, your character can very rarely gain extra draws or energy, which are x10 more effective and useful than, say, three extra max HP. So the game’s not as finely tuned as it should be in these edge cases. Best fix would be to tell the player possible odds upfront for random events and lessen either the swingy wide-ranging level-up options or somehow make them more uniform.

The criticism above sounds harsh & dire, but these deficiencies only stand out because the rest of the game is so nice and polished. There are ten levels of difficulty, with each one throwing a new monkey wrench into things. The scaling here is pretty much ideal; so far, the best I’ve managed is the eighth. (The scalable challenge mode is also pretty much a direct call back to Slay the Spire). There are already three classes to start, with another three in the pipeline and two others coming later down the road. The game is only a dollar because these other classes are locked behind either ‘loot boxes’ or instant payment unlocks.

Fortunately even the ‘box’-based reward system is tastefully implemented. Each class has exactly 50 boxes available for purchase for in-game currency earned after each run, and each box will contain one of those 50 things to reveal. So what is random is the order in which things become available for the player, but everything is guaranteed to become available after the whole lot is purchased. Because the game is excruciatingly difficult right now, this might still mean a 10-hour crusade to unlock the next class without shelling out more cash, but any roguelike worth its salt ought to make 10-hours (5 runs or so) melt away in light of the player’s focus and enjoyment. Flow-state, basically.

Honestly, aside from the wonky difficulty in early stages, the wacky random events & level-ups and rather generic 3D models (which make the game a battery-chugger), the game is a treasure, and one that’s only bound to improve with further balance tweaks and content. Needs a few bugfixes, too. It’s neither wholly derivative nor original but remains a roguelike to watch and try if you’ve the slightest interest, and for this price it’s a steal.

Here is the current list of IAPS for the game:

• Hero: Samurai $2.99
• Pre-order Mage Heroes $5.99
• Hero: Paladin $2.99
• Demon Samurai Key Pack $3.99
• Gladiator Key Pack $3.99
• Gladiator Dream Pack $19.99
• Paladin Key Pack $3.99
• Paladin Dream Pack $19.99
• Demon Samurai Dream Pack $19.99
• Revival Coin x6 $2.99

Studio des Ténèbres made Frost, a deckbuilding solitaire survival card game that was very well-received, especially on this site. That’s why I was excited to look at their latest: Mini Gal4xy. In addition to its clever interpolation of “4X” into the title, the core idea of a simplified space 4X game for mobile is a great one. With isolated star systems there’s no need for a complicated map, and sci-fi fluff gives you lots of flexibility in terms of making techs and units that work well but make sense in the universe. What’s more, the game appears really polished, with a great Saturday-morning cartoon look. Unfortunately, a lot of the other parts don’t show nearly as much polish.

In my first game, the decision points I was presented with in the parts of the game I was able to play were pretty dull. Unlock certain technologies and you can unlock certain exploitation slots on planets that let you get more resources. The planets are randomly generated and connected and the tech tree is procedurally generated too, not consistent from game to game. Since everything is random, it’s simply a matter of pattern recognition. The nearest planets require such and such tech unlocks. Those techs are behind these other techs. Save your resources, colonize those planets, rinse, repeat. If you somehow end up with a pile of the wrong resource, just swap it at 3:1 with any other resource. Playing a whole turn takes seconds because there are so few decisions to make. 

It’s a game of optimizing your response to a procedurally-generated puzzle. What’s more, there’s no AI to speak of. You get to choose the “barbarians” (in Civ terms) that you’ll steamroll over to unlock new planets, but you don’t actually fight any other empires. Instead, the name of the game is maximizing your point totals through careful development. Score high enough, and you can unlock new techs, rules, and alien races for your next go round.

With such a significant reliance on random chance, you get situations that feel unfair pretty frequently, and even your greatest accomplishments can feel unearned when the map was laid out in your favor. In one game, the procedural map locked me into a corner where the only planet I could colonize was locked behind a technology at the end of the tree, and the tech to colonize from my ships wasn’t much closer. Cue turn after turn of slowly accumulating science points one by one. Obviously, that game was one of my lower-scoring ones.

Luckily, Mini Gal4xy starts to become more interesting once you’ve unlocked a few more technologies and a few more alien races. The races, in particular, take a page from the playbooks of Cosmic Encounter and Endless Legend by being dramatically different in their abilities and play styles. The Nomads don’t have a home base and their ships are built unarmed but with colonizing capabilities. The Fermulons start without a ship but can explore neighboring planets by building an Observatory. It’s an interesting challenge figuring out how to adapt to the limitations and take advantage of the strengths of each race, especially when they seem to break what you understand to be the basic rules of the game.

Understanding the basic rules was another problem, though. Despite the simplified gameplay, a lot of things are not explained and I often had questions that the game’s icons could not answer. There’s a tutorial, but it doesn’t explain that the dots above each planet will light up when you can afford an improvement there, or why enemy ships sometimes attack your ships in system and sometimes wait for you to make the first move.

With improvements to the interface and more carefully-crafted procedural generation, Mini Gal4xy would definitely be worth your time just for the fun of figuring out how to make the limitations of each race bend to your favor. Unfortunately the game takes a third strike from persistent and occasionally game-breaking bugs.

Mini Gal4xy has a hard time with changes of focus, often being dumped from memory and reloading after the app has been closed for only a short time.  Beyond that, sometimes just fighting a battle or ordering a ship to move will freeze the game, requiring a forced app closure. When I first started playing, these crashes would also erase my save game, rendering the game functionally unplayable, but a recent patch has corrected this particular bug (while significantly delaying the completion of this review!) Entering battles is still risky, not because my ships are outgunned or my enemies tenacious, but because battles still frequently cause freezes. Force quitting from these freezes sets you back to the beginning of your turn. This is particularly annoying when the only way forward is to fight, and that is literally impossible.

There’s good ideas here. The basic systems are solid enough to handle alien races with dramatically different starting points, and a score-attack mini space 4X game is a great concept for mobile. This one’s just not quite ready to launch.

It’s been a bit of a slower week this week but hopefully you’ve all found something to your liking – not as many reviews as I’d like but everyone is working on something, so the pipeline will keep spitting out new entries for the index and we’re working on a couple of new features as well.

I especially like updating the Upcoming Mobile Games feature, as it allows me to go back through the various bits of news we don’t always get to cover, and get hyped for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, in mobile gaming…

Out Now

SpellForce: Heroes & Magic (iOS & Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

This game released last week but we forgot to give it a mention – the SpellForce series can chart its origins to the wild days of 2003, where it’s spent most of 15 years across 8 releases masquerading as a real-time strategy/RPG. Now the series is making its mobile debuts with SpellForce: Heroes & Magic, and it’s ditched the standard flow of time to offers a turn-based strategy experience instead.

It’s leaving the story and lore of the SpellForce universe largely untouched, and offers both a free play or a 13-mission adventure mode. There are three playable races, six neutral factions, and you have to build up your kingdom, explore the surroundings and defeat your enemies in turn-based hex combat.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0RZ2k8HKCY?controls=0]

SpellSwords Cards: Origins (iOS & Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

This one ticks multiple PT Bingo boxes this week – it’s got ‘Spell’ in it, like our top entry, and is a roguelike deck-builder RPG with card mechanics and procedural generation. One of it’s unique hooks is reported to be ‘Card Fusion’, so you can finally summon that Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon that you’ve been dreaming of all these years.

On a serious note, this game is yet another newcomer in what’s becoming a rapidly over-crowded genre. The aesthetic is certainly cool, but it depends whether the gameplay can back it up – we’ll bring you our thoughts as soon as we can.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exse2lLogB8?controls=0]

Lunar Rescue Mission (iOS & Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

On PC I’ve been a fan of games like Space Engineers and Kerbal Space Program for years. I don’t quite have the fortitude (or the math) to play them as much as I’d want to, but I’m glad they exist and they are fun to drop into every now and then.

Lunar Rescue Mission is no KSP, but it boasts realistic phsyics and several different vehicles that require mastering as you travel across sectors trying to rescue stranded colonists. Quite keen to get a review done for this one as it’s different and something you often see, plus it’s not even that expensive. It’s been in beta on Android since at least 2017, but now its released fully on both platforms.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw8JMcg16-0?controls=0]

Updates

Tropico (iOS Universal) (Review)

And last but certainly not least, Tropico’s iOS port is now available on iPhone, as well as iPad, making it a universal app. Just go to wait for that android version now…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg2zKSkRjTk?controls=0]

Star Traders: Frontiers (iOS & Android) (Review)

Now that Carriers are well and truly out the door the Trese brother’s unrelenting pace of updates is back on track. Update #146 adds two new female faces, adds a new prototype Bounty Hunter story mission and a whole bunch of QoL fixes. The full change-log can be seen on steam.

Evolution: The Video Game (iOS & Android) (Review)

Evolution has had a few updates since it released, but the most recent one allows Premium users to play for free with any friends or family that are only using the ‘free’ version of the game.

Sales

Asmodee Digital Spring Sale

Asmodee Digital are having a Spring Sale on both iOS & Android, with the following games going for up to 60% off:

• Carcasonne (Android)
• Mysterium
• Agricola
• Agricola 2P
• Isle of Skye
• Pandemic
• Pathfinder Adventures
• Twilight Struggle

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (iOS & Android)

It’s May 4^th tomorrow, but plenty of places are getting in early with their Star Wars celebrations – everyone’s favourite Bioware RPG is currently half-price on both mobile platforms, just in case you STILL haven’t picked it up yet.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

Zombies are a bit like Heinz, in that they come in a variety of different types (and generally go well with jacket potatoes-ED). There are the classic slow-moving shamblers made famous by George A Romero. The fast-moving ones from the 28 Days series of films, and the mutated abominations of Resident Evil fame. There’s also sometimes toxic ones and fat ones, who, I guess, have no self-control when it comes to eating brains.

Inside the Zombicide physical box is an impressive total of 70 miniatures, which represent the spectrum of zombiekind in addition to the unfortunate survivors themselves. It is enough to put the fear of God into any self-respecting gamer, especially if you plan on painting them all. Thankfully, we digital gamers do not have to concern ourselves with such issues, leaving us free to concentrate on the business in hand, namely hacking our way through wave after wave of the restless undead.

Zombicide: Tactics & Shotguns isn’t a direct conversion of the boardgame. It has evolved from the multiplayer cooperative set-up into a campaign-driven single-player experience. The basics, however, remain the same; a group of survivors travel across the devastated city completing objectives and polishing off a few zombies along the way. The game explains the basics by handing the player control of Doug, an SMG touting ex-office worker. Doug is hungry; unfortunately, the only food worth foraging appears to be canned dog food. The zombie apocalypse means that beggars can’t be choosers but at least Doug will be sure of a lovely glossy coat and a healthy wet nose.

On each turn, every survivor will have three action points to spend. It takes a single action point to move to an adjacent space or room. If zombies hem you in then your movement options will be further limited. Other actions include picking up a new weapon or breaking down a locked door but be prepared for the possibility of a nasty surprise. Combat also requires the expenditure of action points. The survivor’s abilities, alongside the characteristics of the weapon, will determine the range, the number of attacks, accuracy and amount of damage inflicted. Another thing to bear in mind is the amount of noise that the weapon makes. The sound of a shotgun blast is obviously going to alert any nearby zombies and get them heading in your direction.

Most zombies will only have a single action point, which means that any survivors will only come under attack if they end their turn in a space occupied by the enemy. Be careful though because the fast zombies have extra action points and the survivors’ health points are strictly limited. The big difference between melee and ranged combat is that in close combat the survivor gets to select individual targets. Ranged combat usually results in the survivor, firing into an area without a specific target in mind. The problem is that each miss has a chance of hitting any unfortunate survivors that may also be in the same space. Every time that you defeat an enemy you will be awarded additional tins of pet food and the danger level increases. This means that more or tougher zombies are likely to spawn into play. It also means that your survivors may be able to trigger their skills, this may make them more effective in combat, allow them to travel further or permit them to heal wounded team members.

It’s a nice simple system that works really well and still requires some thought. Zombies may be stupid and predictable but they definitely have numbers on their side. You will want to try and keep your party together and stay on the move, otherwise you face being overwhelmed by hoards of the undead. The threat of friendly fire and the range of different enemies add some much needed variety. It is just a pity that the sound-alerting mechanic isn’t used to its full potential. There isn’t that much point in sneaking around when a few blasts from a shotgun gets the job done. Indeed, alerting enemies often makes things easier by drawing more cannon fodder into your sights. The line of sight system is instinctive, although when battling a mass of zombies, targeting an individual enemy can be rather hit or miss.

At the end of each level, cans of dog food can be used to upgrade the survivors or their weapons. As they advance, their abilities improve and they may learn new skills. Get to level five and you will have the option to equip a weapon in each hand. This is especially fun when you kit out a pair of the same weapon as you can use both simultaneously. The site of a dual machete-wielding roller-skating waitress is sure to strike fear into the unbeating heart of any self-respecting zombie.

The survivors themselves fall into one of four classes, each with their own preferred weapons and unique skills. Butchers inflict minor damage but hit a lot of targets; in contrast, assassins cause a lot of damage to only a few targets. Hunters have great long-range accuracy; finally, scouts are fearsome wielders of melee weapons. Some fellow survivors soon join Doug in his quest and there is also the option to use cash to purchase new members for your team. Although by no means essential, it is going to cost over double the price of the game itself to acquire them all which feels like a bit of a cynical cash grab.

The day-glo comic book graphics and raucous guitar-led backing track do a grand job of evoking 1980’s horror films. There are eight different zones, each of which has five stages. This means that in spite of the low difficulty curve, getting through to the end is still going to take a considerable amount of effort. It is a pity that a lot of environments just reuse the same graphics. It reinforces the repetitiveness of the missions, which usually require the player to reach specific points on the map or destroy a set number of zombies. Another minor niggle is the monotonous comments that the characters make; Yes, Doug, I know you need new shoes; you’ve told me one hundred times already.

The developers get a thumbs-up for producing a game that isn’t just a straight conversion of the board game. They have instead created a solo campaign that is a much better fit for mobile platforms. It is just a shame that the constraints of the board game appear to have prevented them from going even further by way of adding a little more variety to proceedings.