Category: Mobile Game Releases

The developers of Reigns & Reigns: Her Majesty could be bringing us a Game of Thrones-inspired sequel/spin-off/license game in the near future.

Our eagle eyed brethren over at Pocket Gamer spotted a tweet from the official Reigns account yesterday afternoon that was nothing but an image – a map of Westeros (as imagined by the TV Show), rendered in the familiar art style of Nerial’s innovative narrative game.

pic.twitter.com/Ibk7tWyAr1

— Reigns (@reignsgame) August 21, 2018

There’s really nothing else to say without needless speculation, although PG noted we’re approaching the 1 year anniversary of Reigns: Her Majesty’s release date.

What do you guys think? Would you get behind a Games of Thrones skinned reigns? Do we think this is officially licensed or perhaps just inspired? Answers on a post-card!

Mobile puzzle games are a dime a dozen. Many take the path of least resistance, despite the genre being one of the most open to innovation and new concepts. That’s why One More Button stands out despite its simplicity. It takes familiar mechanics and turns them on their head to make for a fun, easy-to-understand, and challenging

One More Button is the sequel to the mobile title No More Buttons, a hand-drawn platform-based puzzler with an intriguing control scheme. It’s more of the same interesting design, and could nearly be called the same game, just an extension of the original. With that said, it’s a great twist on typical ‘move this there, now stand here’ formulate that all-too-often permeates on-the-go puzzlers.

The premise is extremely simple. You play a small yellow creature with one eye looking to reach a level’s end goal. There’s only one problem: There are small bright yellow blocks in your way with lots of different arrows on them. They represent the directions your character can move in. The game doesn’t make this explicitly clear at the beginning, so before you start tapping around trying to figure things out, it can be a bit confusing if you didn’t play the first title.

You’ll notice that there’s no on-screen controls to move your character, and you can’t just tap where you want it to go. That’s because there aren’t any traditional controls. Each maze-like level instead finds you tapping on those yellow blocks with arrows on them, because those are also the controls. Pressing on one of the blocks with a right arrow will move your character right, and so on. It’s an interesting deconstruction of puzzle controls that tie up the very way you control the game as part of each stage as a whole, and it’s a refreshing change of pace because of it.

The goal of each level is obviously to reach the exit the end, marked with a block with a lock on it. This is achieved by pushing around the arrows themselves onto special areas on the map with the outline of where the buttons should go or figuring out how to push the blocks away and into areas where they aren’t blocking your path. It’s quite simple to get accustomed to early on as you’re getting your bearings, but then the game throws quite a few curveballs into the mix to keep you on your toes.

Once you’ve become adept at clearing out paths with its rather unorthodox control scheme, it’s time to tackle special unlockable areas and blocks that require you to flip them around, as you won’t be able to slide them on their designated spaces if they’re pointing in the wrong direction. Luckily, tapping on a button offers precise moves, if a bit frustrating since you’re always going to be searching where the other directional controls are with each puzzle setup. But this setup completely deconstructs the way typical mobile games approach control, which is the most admirable part of the whole thing, and something you’ll come to appreciate as you play.

If you make a mistake, unfortunately, you’ll have to simply restart the entire level. There is no undo button for your last move, so if you find that you’ve pushed a block all the way it can go to the bottom of the screen accidentally, it’s stuck there. It’s prudent to try and remember the moves you’ve made because of this, which can be a bit frustrating in later levels. There’s no real strategic reason to exclude a ‘rewind’ step, so it’s strange that the only option is to erase all progress.

While there are also plenty of levels and mazes to solve, each level isn’t very large, and only takes a few minutes to complete. This isn’t so much a negative, but a hope for longer, more complex mazes in any future content instalments or sequels. Since you’ll have to restart levels several times using the ‘undo’ feature, you’ll be spending plenty of time in each one, anyway.

One More Button is a fun experiment in changing the way players approach and think about puzzle games as well as the way they’re controlled. It’s not absolutely perfect in its execution and could use a bit polish for any future iterations, but it’s a fun diversion for a few minutes at a time while waiting at the doctor’s office or on your commute.

You’ve probably got an image of something like Holedown in your brain already. That brick-breaker sort of layout, with numbered blocks ominously floating above an empty void. Little white orbs get rapid fired out from a point at the lower edge, and ricochet madly off of the blocks. The blocks don’t break on contact, though. Instead, every tap of a ball subtracts a number, and when that number reaches zero, the block is finally slain.

If this sounds familiar, it means advertising works. On mobile versions of social media sites, you’ve probably seen a sponsored video of this colorful menagerie, punctuated with a “click here” or “download now” option. You may have even taken the plunge down the rabbit hole and sunk some time into it. You wouldn’t be alone, Ketchapp’s Ballz was quite the free-to-play success in 2017.

There’s an amusing irony here. Ketchapp is a developer infamous for cloning the number puzzle game Threes! and releasing a free to play version of it called 2048 before Threes! could officially launch. This is among the best known examples of a trend in mobile games that isn’t going away. But where games are often cut out at the knees by imitators who create free to play copies with dubiously low production value and stuffed to the brim with ads, Martin Jonasson turns the formula around. In every single way, Holedown is the best version of this alt-brick breaker sub-genre.

Part of this is the concept. As some nameless, identity-less space explorer, you must drift to cosmic entities and mine them for their riches. From asteroids, to a sun, to an endless black hole, you must drill until you reach the core. Your tools are a clip full of smiley balls, that are rapid fired into the rocks below. The colorful rocks at the blocks you much break, which get increasingly harder to do as the numbers stretch into ridiculous amounts.

Each turn, the blocks inch towards you, slowly encroaching on your safe zone. If it crosses that red line at the top, your drilling vessel crashes, and you lose. Literally turning Ballz on its head is its own form of poetry but adding a crawling death wall mechanic really brings a sense of urgency to every shot. Blocks come in various, Tetris-like shapes and sizes, and they’re oriented randomly as they move to crush you, so every run through the six unique stages is different.

You may surprise yourself with how much critical thinking you do during any given round of Holedown. At first, it becomes simply a game of ‘kill the closest block to you.’ But as the numbers get bigger, you have to get cleverer. You start aiming for foundation blocks, that if you zap will cause everything on top of them to collapse, as well. There are blocks that can never mover, and must be drilled the hard way, they start becoming priority. Target blocks start being shoved behind big buffer blocks, so you have to weigh your options. Do you just blast through this as fast as possible, upgrading your ball threshold with collectable crystals to get more bang for each buck? Or do you try to work the angles and start pinging balls off of the rounded edges of near blocks in hopes that you can bounce your way to the target.

Once the wave of disgust hits you after you watch a string of balls haphazardly only hit your target once, and not the three or four times you’ve planned for, you come to realise that Holedown has drilled its way into your soul. It’s such a satisfying layer cake of simple, yet effective design choices. It only asks for such little space, input, and attention from you, and maximizes every moment of it. That’s what good mobile games are all about.

Another big factor is the look. It has a colorful, modernist simplicity that you can expect from the creator of twofold, inc. and rymdkapsel.  There’s a little alien worm thing in the bottom right cheering you on for some reason. It’s awkward and ultimately just for show, but it’s got good energy, so no one is really upset.

There are a few hitches in the system that can make some play experiences inconsistent. For example, the big green line that you aim with draws reliable path to where the first ball in your string will hit. With it, you can start to use some rudimentary geometry to figure out what sorts of bounces you’ll get after the initial one. As you begin to line the aiming string up close to some bricks, things may not be as they suggest. On more than one occasion, the line told me it would pass narrowly by a block, and instead would clip it, ruining the shot.

Also, as the procedural generation of the rising blocks adds a sense of uniqueness to each game, it can get carried away. Sometimes, a level will spawn with a block that has an immense number on it, with no other blocks nearby. You’ll sometimes be left to wonder “how was I ever supposed to solve this?” This is especially true on later planets, where the biggest of blocks can be insane.

These are ultimately blips in a system that is impeccably well put together. Holedown is enjoying its time in the greater gaming spotlight, a rare achievement for a mobile game. It’s simple gameplay has an inescapable gravity. It’s charm beguiles you, and soon every train ride, bathroom trip, or lunch break has just enough time in it for block breaking. Don’t let the modest price tag scare you away from the ‘it’ mobile game of the summer.

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. We’ve got a few new games and content updates, including a great action option. This week’s sales feature a host of RPG options as well as a Civ VI price drop.

We’ve had a bunch of great content pop up on the website this week; refreshes of a couple of  key guides mark the start of a new season of updates. We‘ve got new ones in the pipelines, but we’re going to get more regular with updating older stuff as well. A good week for reviews too – from King and Assassins to Football Manager Touch 2018. We’ve also been trying to keep on top of important news, like Rome: Total War’s iPhone release date.

Out Now

Barbearian (iOS Universal) (Review)

The highlight of the week is action-RPG Barbearian. Combat is frenetic and features huge hits against massive hordes of enemies, loads of fun and effective special weapons, and challenging tactical choices. Check out my five-star review for more info on the game.

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Mars Power Industries (iOS Universal) – Full Review Coming Soon!

Mars Power Industries is a minimalist puzzle game, which means there’s no high scores, no time limits, no stars…just you and the puzzle. You goal is to build powers stations in a Martian colony such that power is supplied to all buildings. As you play a mystery is revealed through the game’s imagery. It’s a very chill game and would work nicely for more laid-back gaming sessions. 

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The Draugr (iOS Universal) – Full review coming soon!

The Draugr is a tabletop card game where reanimated dead with magical powers invade and seek to corrupt the town of Stjørdal with their foul influence. You play as a revenant hunter who has come to protect the town and slay the Draugr. To win you have to slay four of the six Draugr.

The game is played out over two phases. In the first phase the Draugr spread their corruption and in the second the hunter tracks and attempts to destroy them. The game plays pretty well and I like the simple yet attractive graphics. It does work much better if you understand the game going in. The rules are referenceable but there isn’t much of a tutorial.

Updates

Pocket Run Pool (iOS Universal) (Review)

Zach Gage’s take on pool games, Pocket Run Pool, just got a nice content update. Two new payout tables and five new betting conditions have been added, which increases the options nicely. Pocket Run Pool is free with in-app-purchases to unlock certain features. It’s well worth a look.

Mini Metro (iOS Universal and Android) (Review)

Mini Metro is a great simulation/puzzle game where you must build a train system for a well-known metropolitan area and handle increasingly savage congestion. Several new features have been added since launch and now a new one is available: Challenge Mode. In it you pick an achievement challenge and attempt to build your metro under some additional constraints.

Sales

A Noble Circle (iOS Universal: $Free)

Amirali Rajan’s minimalist RPG/adventure A Noble Circle is surprisingly deep for a two-dimensional game. It’s also full of surprises and thought-provoking story. Oh, and its free right now, so there’s zero reason not to grab it!

Beholder (iOS Universal and Android: $1.99) (Android: Free)

If you’re ready to make some tough choices in a grim, dystopian future now’s your chance. Beholder, a game where you run an apartment building and must spy on and rat out your unpatriotic neighbors, is on sale for $1.99 (normally $5).

Jade Empire (Android) (iOS Universal: $4.99)

Aspyr Media has a nice sale going with its mobile RPG catalog. We’ll kick it off with Jade Empire, currently half off. It’s inspired by the myths and legends of ancient China and full of places to explore and plots to uncover.

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (iOS Universal and Android: $4.99)

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a little dated at this point but has long been enshrined as one of the best RPGs of all time. It’s also half off and worthy of inclusion in your mobile-game collection if you’re into Star Wars, RPGs, or nostalgia.

Civilization VI (Full game IAP) (iPad: $23.99)

The big-hitter of Aspyr’s lineup is also on sale. Normally $60, you can unlock the full Civ VI experience for your iPad for $24. The in-app content packs, normally $5 to $9, are also on sale for $2 to $3.  If you enjoy Civilization and want it on your iPad, this is a great deal, as the mobile port is really quite good.

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

By Michael Coffer 16 Aug 2018

August is a difficult time for football fans, what with the endless gossip pages to scrutinise, those deadline day live blogs to agonisingly refresh and the countless hours it takes to craft the perfect fantasy squad.

It’s also when many supporters come down with a strange disease known as wannabemanageritis. The main symptom is the trance-like involuntary repeating of the words ‘I could do better than {insert the surname of their club’s manager here}’ over and over again. It’s coupled with lots of tutting, and the condition can persist for nine months or so if left untreated.

The most effective cure is to switch on a PC and fire up Football Manager, the behemoth sports sim that gives players the chance to sit in the virtual hot-seat and run the club of their choice, proving they really are a Guardiola-like tactical genius or a wheeler-dealer of Redknapp proportions.

But this remedy proves too complex and overwhelming for some people, with an injection of full-strength FM known to have the side-effect of making heads explode, but fortunately there is a slightly softer alternative which comes in tablet form for both iOS and Android.

Cue Football Manager Touch, which offers the same accuracy and depth minus some of the time-consuming micro-management that has resulted in the main game becoming so bloated and life-consuming. There have been yearly versions of it since 2015, when it was initially known as Football Manager Classic in reference to how it harks back to the good old days of the series (and Championship Manager before it) when the focus was on tactics and transfers.

Don’t be fooled though – being retro-inspired doesn’t make FM Touch simplistic. Far from it. If you do want something basic (and overly easy in my opinion) you need to try the third member of the squad, Football Manager Mobile, which is much more stripped back and faster to play.

No, FM Touch is still very much a monster of a game which, despite the instant result function that lets you see the scores without sitting through long matches, still has the power to suck up many hours of your life.

How far from being a lightweight casual game it is becomes immediately apparent after you complete the set-up phase of choosing which leagues you’ll have in the game and which club you’ll take charge of from the vast array of real-world options (you even get to, slightly bizarrely, decide what your Manager ‘character’ will look like).

As you get comfortable behind your desk, figuratively speaking, you begin to explore some of the dozens, may hundreds, of pages of information contained within the game and you start to grasp the scale of the task ahead of you. Getting familiar with your playing squad and identifying improvements can turn into several hours’ work, with each player being rated on 36 separate attributes.

It should go without saying given how long-established this style of sports sim is, but it’s worth noting at this point that, in line with the main Football Manager game, FM Touch is based around spreadsheets and stats. The only action, so to speak, is watching a 3D representation of your team’s matches. The rest of the time the game is very much static, filled with menus, lists and charts. If that sounds ‘boring’ to you then 1) What are you doing here? and 2) You need to play a different type of footy game.

If you’re prepared to take a leap of faith and use your imagination to bring it alive and give it personality, this version is every bit as immersive and utterly absorbing as Football Manager has always been. There is never a shortage of things to do and decisions to make as you go through the day-to-day running of your club, dealing with contract negotiations, coach reports, training schedules and much more. You can delegate some duties to your virtual assistants but being a make-believe manager is still a big role – more involved and complex than many real-life jobs.

A lot of your time is taken up with those two Ts – tactics and transfers. Winning matches doesn’t just happen by magic, unless you’re very lucky. It takes meticulous planning and analysing as you pick the best formation for your squad, then pick the best player for each position, then give those players detailed instructions for how you want them to play both individually and as a unit. FM Touch’s tactical options are extremely deep, giving you near-infinite possibilities for how to set your team up.

While small improvements to the game’s interface and navigation have been made in this edition which help to marginally enhance the overall experience, some of the screens are still slightly fiddly to use. You have to tap on some small precise areas to pull up the information you want without ending up on a page or pulling up a menu you didn’t want. Despite minor and occasional niggles like these, it’s still a tactician’s dream to have so much freedom to devise that perfect strategy – and of course it continues into the matches when you have to call upon all your shrewdness to achieve victory by switching formations, changing playing styles and making substitutions as needed.

Getting into the transfers area of the game is like diving down a rabbit hole from which you may never escape. It’s easy to lose all sense of time as you set your filters, send your scouts out and scope out the ideal additions to your squad from the game’s massive database. There’s a real buzz to be had from identifying the perfect target, having a bid accepted and then getting through tense talks before coming to a successful conclusion. A nice addition this time is getting a score out of 100 from your scouts on how suitable a signing each player might be, which makes it just that little bit easier to decide who to go for.

FM Touch is a magnificent game in many ways. One of the best things about it is being able to tuck into such a meaty slice of Football Manager anytime, anywhere whether on the daily commute or relaxing in the armchair of an evening. As a huge footy fan and long-time player of Championship/Football Manager, playing such a challenging and satisfying game is one of the very best things you can do on an iPad, or other tablet. So, why then, does this not deserve full marks?

Where the boys stop giving 110 per cent and where I feel as sick as a parrot at the end of the day Brian, is in how this version of Football Manager hasn’t changed much since its arrival in 2015. Now, like Ronaldo and Messi over the past few seasons, it’s had no equals so perhaps hasn’t needed to advance very far – but it means the complaints I had after the first edition still remain. The 3D match engine looks and works better, the tactics are a bit deeper, the game has more polish but there are still a couple of big omissions which I think stop this from going from Premier League regular to global superstar.

First is the near complete lack of any press or media work during the management journey. Sports Interactive boasts that FM Touch allows players to speed through seasons without “the pre-match build up and media fuss” – true, this makes the game quicker to play but it also sucks a lot of fun out of it. Crafting a media image and then using it to your advantage is a big part of a modern football manager’s job, like it or not, and its absence here makes the game feel less authentic.

The other key thing missing is human interaction. There are very few ways to communicate with players and staff at your club, or with rival managers and players. There are no team talks, no cosy chats, no taunts. This, combined with the lack of press conferences and interviews, makes the whole thing a little too passive – like it’s all about the numbers and not the people. It’s like being locked away in your office with no contact with the outside world.

Adding these two wishes into the game would fatten up FM Touch and take away some of the reason for is existing in the first place separate to the main FM game, but they really need to be represented in some way when FM Touch 2019 comes along in November. Leaving them out yet again would be something of an own goal.

It’s another unchallenged trophy-winning season for Sports Interactive’s mini beast but I’m hoping for something just a bit more next time to stop this series getting stale. 

Just over a year ago I wrote up a post of mobile games reminiscent of Diablo in some form or fashion. While the games I chose are all fun in their own right and share characteristics with Blizzard’s hall-of-fame RPG series, none quite matched the exciting combat pacing of Diablo III on a PC. Turns out I was just thirteen months early. Barbearian is a real-time game that features frenetic combat full of huge hits against vast hordes of enemies. The constant motion, explosive hits, and overwhelming odds of it reminds me of running around Diablo III maps looking for more to kill. 

In Barbearian you are a bear-clad barbarian. Thus, you know, the puntastic title of the game. You didn’t start out that way, the barbarian part anyway. Abducted and brought to a strange world, you were forced to battle for your life and berserker-mode is just how you roll. The game isn’t just a quest for a survival, but one to unwrap the mysteries of a group of weirdos known as the Arbitrators and to find the way back home.

Any hope of a return home lay through the challenges arrayed before you. The game consists of a series of portal-connected worlds. Most portals lead to worlds full of people, creatures, and things dedicated to your death. Your job is to smash your way through these haters and take out all of the bosses on each of the three levels, thus defeating the world. Once you take out all of the bosses on one level a portal opens and will, ready or not, eventually suck you through to the next level. As you destroy foes, trees, walls, and really anything food and gems will drop which are the currency of the game. There are buildings back in non-combat worlds where you can buy access to special weapons which will then drop as loot in game.

Each level also has a peasant and fellow abductee that you can rescue. Those you rescue become part of your warband and you can buy them a kit to be knights or archers and they can be brought into battle to help with the carnage. They die easily, but luckily you can also buy revival magic to bring them back from the dead. You recharge these revivals by destroying enemy critters, which you were going to do anyway, and it’s easy to respawn a good portion of your warband over and over while in the enemy world.

Combat is the biggest part of the game, and it is fast, fun, and fierce. You start out with an axe attack and a charge attack the recharges after a few seconds. You’ll quickly find yourself looking for the biggest bang for your charge and slamming into dozens if not hundreds of foes, sending them flying lifelessly in all directions. Once you purchase the new weapons—machine guns, boom sticks, and many more—you’ll start finding them as you fight as well. In addition to these there are special temporary power ups that do things like make you invincible, faster, or give you a temporary ball-and-chain-type thing that swirls around you mowing down anything around you.

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Not only is combat great but Barbearian‘s levels are hand-crafted, attractive, and fully destructible. You can run around and bash down every tree and Kool-Aid Man your way through fences and walls if you want (and I want) and doing so yields extra fruit for your trouble. There’s a lot of great attention-to-detail aspects of the game that go a long way toward enhancing the feel of the game as well. Charging into a huge pile of enemies and sending their corpses scattering in every direction is a visceral delight and the kick-back from the machine gun that proves, even in a video game, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction are two of my favorite examples.

Barbearian is a challenging game, most people should expect to need a couple to a few tries on each portal, but it is far more forgiving than a lot of real-time games. You don’t need crazy-fast reflexes to beat a level or some precise order of moves and attacks to beat bosses. You will need to get good at wheeling around avoiding the masses arrayed against you, firing off various weapons as you go, and charging through tightly gathered mobs when the time is right. Certainly, anybody with experience kiting in other real-time games will feel right at home.

The biggest challenge factor in the game is health attrition. Your mighty bear has only one way to regain health: one shrine placed on each level where you pay to get back to full health. This creates some tense levels where you’re at a sliver of health and really need to get to the next shrine, which may be on the next level! The single chance to heal per level works well with the portals that open when you’ve killed the last boss, because you’re going through that thing whether you’ve healed or found the abductee on that level. You can run for it, and charging helps, but you feel the pull of the portal like a dog straining at the leash. It’s a cool effect and adds an interesting timing challenge to the game. Do you take a sub-optimal heal when you’re at half health or do you bet you can get back to the shrine without killing the last boss?

What if the game feels too difficult, or too easy for that matter? Barbearian has you covered in the form of three difficulty sliders. You can adjust the game speed, damage taken, and loot value both up and down. Using those sliders, you can micromanage the difficulty of the game and tune it to where it’s the most fun for you. I really love when games give that level of control to the player over their own experience.

Another very cool option in the game is the ability to customize its controls. There are default layouts for both small and large screens as well as a fully customizable layout where you decide exactly where all the buttons go. It’s a very smart plan that accounts for different screen sizes, hand sizes, ways people hold or prop up their devices, and even gaming posture. Oh, it also features controller support for you mobile-game-controller enthusiasts. Display wise, I think Barbearian is perfect for an iPad. It plays well on my iPhone 6S Plus, but I definitely prefer the bigger screen as it’s much easier to destroy all the things without your fingers getting in the way. 

If you’re a fan of real-time combat games Barbearian is easy to recommend as it is certainly one of the better mobile titles in the genre. It looks great, is loaded with smashy goodness and visceral feel, and is a ton of fun to play. It offers plenty of challenge without nearing the rage-quit-and-never-look-at-the-game-again reaction some similar games seem to elicit. The ability to micromanage the difficulty and completely control the UI layout is just icing on the cake.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! Feral Interactive have just announced that the release date for the iPhone port of Rome: Total War.

The iOS specialist developer originally brought us Rome: Total War on iPad in November 2016, and then preceded to port both the Barbarian Invasion and Alexander expansions as separate apps in 2017. We first heard about the iPhone version of Rome: Total War back in October last year, but the iPhone version will finally be releasing ten months later on August 23rd, 2018. That’s next week!

This is not a separate app – Rome: Total War is now essentially going ‘universal’ on iOS, so you’ll be able to play the same saves on both devices, and if you already own the game you’ll be able to install the iPhone version for free. Here’s a new trailer showcasing the iPhone UI to get you excited:

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Remember, you will need an  iPhone 5S or later, iOS 11, and 4GB of free space to install the game on your iPhone. We reported on the full list of requirements and compatible devices at the start of the month.

Rome: Total War is currently available on iPad for $9.99/£9.99/€10.99.

On returning from a hunting trip the king finds his people revolting. Revolting in the social unrest sense of the word to the point that they are threatening to riot over tax increases. Although it is probably true to say that they were also revolting in the physical sense since they only bathed once a year and got by on a diet of cabbages and turnips, which play havoc with the digestive system. The king, refusing to heed the warnings of his advisers, decides to put on a show of strength by gathering his most trusted knights and marching back to his castle through the town square. The crowds are incensed and gather in the square to protest. Just who are those sinister grey hooded figures that lurk amongst their numbers? 

King and Assassins is an asymmetric two-player game in which one player will take on the role of the king and his knights, whilst the other plays as the citizens. Amongst the citizens lurk three hired assassins and in order to win, the people must either commit regicide or at least prevent the king from reaching his castle before the game ends. The king wins by reaching the safety of his castle, or by putting down the rebellion by eliminating all of the assassins. 

The king’s retinue starts the game in one of the two lower corners of the town square, whilst the citizens will be spread across the square on various specified spaces.  Before battle commences, the player controlling the citizens must secretly select three people to be their undercover assassins. These hired killers are the only citizens capable of slaying the king and his bodyguards.

At the beginning of each round, a randomly selected round card is drawn. This card will determine how many action points the king, assassins and citizens will be able to spend during the round. Some cards will also have a shackle icon, which means that on this turn the knights will be able to carry out the bonus action of capturing a citizen.

An overindulgence of the high life means that the king is not in the best physical condition; he has a meagre supply of action points, which can only be used to move slowly from space to space. His knights are much more athletic; they can climb onto the roofs of nearby buildings, shove back any unfortunate citizens unlucky enough to get in their way, kill a revealed assassin or possibly use shackles to capture and remove a citizen from the board. The citizens can use action points to move individuals, who can also scale buildings and drop back down to the ground. They can also choose to reveal an assassin.  Once uncovered, an assassin can eliminate a nearby knight, or if close enough, even attack the king. A first attack on the king will only wound him, but a second attack will finish him off.

The rules are simple to understand, as there is no need to remember the abilities of a mass of different unit types or special powers. The tutorial does a great job of teaching you to play using either side, although the addition of an in-game rules reference screen would have been appreciated. Graphics are bright and breezy, although things do get a little messy when units are partially obscured by buildings. Helpfully, the screen can be rotated and zoomed to ensure the optimum view of the action. The interface also works smoothly, although I did feel like selecting and moving a unit takes one more tap than is strictly necessary. Options are a bit sparse; you can play a practice game against the rather poor AI, which really only serves as a means of becoming familiar with the rules. You can try to find an online match, although opponents can be difficult to find. These matches take place in real-time, with each player having a total of twenty-five minutes to complete all of their moves. The final option is to partake in a pass and play contest. Games can be played using one of two different board layouts. The most significant difference being that one layout has an extra exit, making it easier for the king to escape.

Asymmetric board games have their own particular design challenges. Opposing sides need to feel significantly different and offer their own challenges but must also remain balanced. Furthermore, the different factions need to be equally as fun to play. I do not think that King and Assassins entirely succeeds here. The player in control of the king seems to have less strategic options, which means that turns feel rather repetitive. The knights bully the citizens out of the way and ensure that the king is guarded as he slowly makes his way to the castle but there is no real subtlety or bluffing involved. The citizens, with their covert assassins, offer a much more interesting challenge. Sneaking around, using standard citizens as red herrings and deciding when to actually pounce by revealing their hidden killers feels much more satisfying and involved.

The level of luck does sometimes sit a bit awkwardly with the game’s abstract mechanics. It is perfectly possible to get lucky and end the game within a couple of turns. The player controlling the king has no idea when the shackles are going to turn up, which means that capturing a hidden assassin often feels more a case of good fortune rather than good judgement. One thing that the game does have in its favour is a palpable feeling of tension and escalation. The king has so few action points that he cannot afford to dawdle, whilst the citizens must choose the right time to reveal their assassins, who will then immediately become vulnerable to attack.

Much like it’s straightforward, no-nonsense title, King and Assassins is an uncomplicated, quick playing board game conversion. Actually, it is a good job that the game does play quickly, as the app doesn’t save games that are in progress. It could have been a very dry abstract game of moving pieces around a board, but the theme does make sense and works rather well. There is a strong Assassins Creed vibe and the game’s background was obviously inspired by that popular series of games. Overall, it is a neat game that works well on mobile formats but unfortunately feels a little under-cooked.

2018 is well underway. Over half-way, in fact, and there’s still plenty more awesome titles expected to arrive between now and December 31st. Below is an up-to-date list of all of the best new mobile games due out before the end of the year. Some of these are more wishful than others, so don’t be surprised if you see some games turn up on 2019’s list as well. Let us know if you spot any others!

Bad North (RTS)

Bad North is a real-time tactics game where you’ll defend your kingdom from waves of Viking invaders. Between fights for the very survival of your realm you’ll have to gather precious resources and negotiate the aid of your nobles and commoners to stay in the fight. The game looks beautiful, is clearly a potential game-of-the-year contender and is one of the games I’m most looking forward to this year. There’s no firm release date but Bad North is coming to mobile (and we may have to consider knocking it off this list), but it’s due out on PC via Discord’s new game store later this year.

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Command and Conquer: Rivals (RTS)

Fans were stunned, awed and a little concerned when Rivals showed its face as the next entry of the classic series. Right now details are a little scarce, aside from the promise to see some familiar faces and engage in whirlwind base-building and battle. The visuals are already incredibly polished, and while its nerve-wracking seeing a legacy series carried forward, this game has the potential to be a killer distillation of the iconic C&C experience.

Dungeon Warfare 2 (Tower Defence)

Dungeon Warfare is my pick for the best tower-defense game on mobile. If you haven’t tried it and enjoy the genre, you really ought to remedy that, if for no other reason than to get ready for the sequel. Dungeon Warfare 2 has been in development for some time and will be released to Steam this year. Hopefully, we’ll see a mobile release as well as was the case with the first Dungeon Warfare. Dungeon Warfare 2 will include over 60 maps, 12 unit types, 6 traps, and 3 different skill trees.

Donut County (Puzzle)

If Seinfeld is a show about nothing, Donut County is a game about nothing. The ‘hero’ is literally a hole lurking and swimming across the surface of L.A., land of fantastic donuts and pending seismic disaster. The ‘whole’ game ‘circles’ around swallowing various objects, growing larger and holey-er and solving puzzles by interacting with the environment. The novelty of its central mechanic (here as elsewhere described as a Katamari Damacy in reverse) is strong. Its irreverent, off-the-cuff tone as delivered by a raccoon narrator and soft-poly aesthetic point to a wonderful game.

Epic Card Game (Card Game)

White Wizard Games has become a competitive-card-game behemoth. So much so that they only have to hint at a Kickstarter and it is instantly fully backed. Well, not quite, but pretty close. Their digital version of Epic Card Game has been in alpha testing for a few months and is on track for a 2018 release to both iOS and Android. Like their previous titles, Epic is a buy once and have all the cards you need for sealed, draft, and constructed for up to four players. There are even preconstructed decks to start with and modify.

Nowhere Prophet (Card Game/Roguelike)

Nowhere Prophet one is a doozy and a little secretive. The dark horse of this race, if you will. In the game, post-apocalyptic leaders trek across a scabrous landscape to gather supporters and supplies, occasionally clashing with foes or environmental dangers. This card game has grid-based combat as well procedurally generated encounters. It’s a card-battler roguelike, essentially, with a unique setting and what seems to be a robust battle system. It’s due to hit steam in Q3 this year, although no word on when the mobile versions are due out.

Evolution (Boardgame)

Evolution is a bit of a strange beast. It isn’t quite directly competitive but at time the kinds of nature and ecosystems it simulates can be punishing and downright hostile. Eating the last scrap of food or eating your opponents, it certainly embodies survival of the fittest. If the devblog is any indication, the digital version should be as lovely and clearly presented as the original. They’ve taken their time perfecting the interface, and now Evolution is ready for its next form, to be released next month.

Heaven’s Vault (Interactive Fiction)

Inkle (of 80 Days interactive fiction fame) has been teasing their mechanically ambitious Heaven’s Vault for some time now. An archeologist-slash-xenolinguist explores the dusty remains of an alien civilization on an unknown planet, with a vivid backdrop of sienna sand and celestial blue. There’s some pretty nifty procedural tricks behind the code-breaking and translation, and while its approach to storytelling is a little less handcrafted, it has the potential to have even more surprises and replayability than the globe-trotting 80 Days.

Lord of the Rings Living Card Game (Card Game)

Fantasy Flight Interactive is working on a Lord of the Rings living-card game. It is coming to Early Access on Steam sometime in Q3 with a full release to follow later this year. Lord of the Rings: The Living Card Game will be free-to-play with in-app purchases of non-random packs to add more cards with which to play. Mobile releases haven’t been officially announced, but there are Apple and Android logos in the video reveal, so we know they are coming. 2018 may be a longshot though.

Night in the Woods (Interactive Fiction)

In Night in the Woods, an anxious young critter comes home to a town, down in the dumps and feeling like a fresh failure. Sometimes just relating to others who care about you is an effort, or your childhood town strange as much as comforting. Oh, and there’s something dark and sinister afoot in the woods. Animal characters with human struggles, empathetic storylines and moving dialogue combine to create one of the best indie games of the past few years. It’s conversation-based gameplay and touch-and-go interactions.

Monster Slayers (Card Game)

It’s a deck builder. It’s a roguelike. It’s one of the best games of 2017. Monster Slayers is heavily influenced by Dream Quest and, for my money, is a better game. It’s coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PS Vita this spring and the developer has confirmed mobile is on the docket. Whether we can get our hands on it yet in 2018 is TBD.

EVE: War of Ascension (MMO)

The game that launched a million spreadsheets, space-based MMO Eve Online, is getting a mobile spinoff. Formerly known as ‘Project Aurora’, Ascension will be based in the same universe as EVE but will not be integrated into the existing game. CCP have partnered up with Kongregate to publish the game, and you can glean some insights as to how the project will be made here. While it’s supposed to have the same open world, player-driven gameplay as the PC game, it’s being specifically designed for a wider audience. It is expected to release to both iOS and Android later this year, although it has already soft-launched in the Phillipines.

Scythe (Boardgame/Strategy)

Slowly but surely all of the most-popular tabletop games are making their way to digital, and Scythe is on that list. The game is set in the alternate-history 1920+ universe where mechs and other mechanicals exist side-by-side with agrarian society. Each player acts as a leader of a faction seeking to bring it to glory and success. Asmodee Digital is at the helm of this port, and a mobile port is expected sometime this year. It’s already in Steam’s Early Access program.

Terraforming Mars (Boardgame/Strategy)

Yet another Asmodee digital title on its way is Terraforming Mars, and it should be a big one. Set 500 years in the future the game is all about the race to colonize Mars and out greed your fellow space-faring corporations. The tabletop game is perhaps the most popular board game still without a digital variant, but not for long. Transforming Mars is coming to iOS, Android, and Steam sometime this year, and will probably hit Steam Early Access first.

Void Tyrant (Card Game/RPG)

Do you dig Solitairica and other cool card/RPG/roguelike hybrids? If so, Void Tyrant is one worth watching for later this year. In Void Tyrant you pick a hero from a number of classes and head out to explore a chaotic galaxy. The graphics look good and combat has an interesting twist where either you or your opponent gets to do damage based on a Black Jack style showdown with special skills and items to monkey with the results. Void Tyrant is coming in Q4 for iOS and Android. It’ll be free-to-play by the developer cites “no annoying timers” so hopefully the monetization will be player friendly.

Seen anything else you’re excited for on the horizon? We’ll be keeping this list updated as the year progresses, so make sure you check back every couple of months!