Category: Mobile Game Releases

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. This week’s bounty is the best SimCity-like game on mobile, two very good puzzlers, and updates to some of the better games out there. Not to be outdone, our sales section features Handelabra’s entire catalog (on iOS) and a few of the best games from the last couple years.

Out Now

Pocket City (iOS Universal and Android [Free]) – full review coming soon!

City builders on mobile tend to be bad. Shallow simulations bogged down by awful monetization schemes have been the norm. Pocket City, the newly released and much anticipated builder, is not one of those. The game is attractive, entertaining, and fully premium. Gameplay is a lot like SimCity. You build a city from scratch and must balance residential, commercial, and industrial zones to prompt continued growth. As the city grows, so do the wants and needs of its residents from police and a fire department, to schools and hospitals, to parks and other entertainment amenities.

Pocket City couples its tutorial with a series of quests that lead you through the normal arc of city development. Quests provide a bonus upon completion and can be ignored if you want to focus on something else. The game also has some nice menu options including cloud saves, the ability to download ‘public’ cities to play, both screen mode options, five different screen resolution modes, and a slew of battery saver options. It isn’t a perfect game, I wish it pushed back a little more as it feels a little bit easy, but Pocket City is the closest you can get to SimCity on a mobile device and is well worth playing for fans of the genre.

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The Sequence [2] (iOS Universal)

The Sequence [2] is a new puzzle game and the sequel to 2015’s The Sequence. The game is all about building an assembly line to move units from an origin hex to a destination hex. It reminds me a lot of Zachtronics’ PC games, Opus Magnum in particular, and after a slow-starting tutorial becomes very engaging and increasingly challenging with new mechanics and bigger game boards. It’s not on Android yet, but the original game is, so perhaps it’s coming soon.

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One More Button (iOS Universal and Android) – full review coming soon!

I’ve got not one but two entertaining new puzzle games to mention. One More Button takes a clever and unique take on the genre by making the movement buttons part of the game itself. You must move them out of your way, place them in specific spots to remove an obstacle, and really plan out your order of operations. Really, my only complaint is a lack of undo button as I’ve had to restart a complicated set of moves more than a couple times due to an accidental button push. This quibble aside, it really is a good puzzle game.

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Dresden Files Co-op Card Game—Expansion 4 (iOS Universal and Android)

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files exists in an alternate world where vampires, werewolves, spirits, and the Fae are all real. The books are packed full of the adventures of Harry Dresden taking on the forces of evil, and dangerously neutral, with the help of a large cast of friends, associates, and frenemies. There’s also a tabletop card and dice game brought to digital life by Hidden Achievement. Dresden Files Co-op Card Game has gotten a steady stream of updates since release and now, expansion 4 “Dead on Your Feet?” is out and adds Jared Kincaid and Mortimer Lindquist decks and book decks for both Changes and Ghost Story. It’s available via in-app purchase for $3.99.

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One Deck Dungeon: Forest of Shadows Expansion (iPad and Android)

One Deck Dungeon is among my favorite games of 2018 and you can find out why in my five-star review. Handelabra Games did an excellent job of transitioning the game to digital and continues to do a great job pouring new content into it. The Forest of Shadows expansion is a great example. It adds 5 new heroes, 5 dungeons, and 44 encounter cards to the game. The dungeons range from the relatively easy Mudlands, featuring a Mud Golem boss, to the Smoldering Lands, home of a Fire Giant.  The new heroes are Alchemist, Druid, Hunter, Slayer, and Warden and really up the opportunity to optimize your team. The Forest of Shadows expansion is available via in-app purchase for $9.99. The base game is on sale for $7.99 as well.

Star Realms United Assault Expansion (iOS Universal and Android)

The latest and greatest Star Realms expansion is out and available for your gaming pleasure. The third of four expansions in the “United” series will set you back $1.99 and get you twelve new cards. You can check out a lot more about it in our recent news post earlier in the week.

Sales

Handelabra Games Sales (iOS Universal and Android)

Handelabra Games are three for three in bringing great tabletop games to digital life. All three of said games are currently on sale in the App Store (only one is on sale on Android as of this writing).

• Sentinels of the Multiverse – $4.99 on iOS
• Bottom of the 9th – $2.99 on iOS and Android
• One Deck Dungeon – $7.99 on iOS

The Game: Play as Long as You Can (iOS Universal and Android): $.99 on iOS (Review)

Tabletop card game The Game‘s digital version is a one-player affair and is a lot of fun. It’s just a buck on iOS (and normally $1.99 on Android) and worth picking up for fans of solo card games.

Motorsport Manager Mobile 2 (iOS Universal  and Android) $1.99 (Review)

Get your race on with one of the better racing sims on mobile. Motorsport Manager Mobile 2 puts you in control of every aspect of a racing team. You recruit, hire, and train drivers, mechanics, and engineers. You improve your headquarters and supplier networks. You build and upgrade your cars and, last but not least, you manage how your drivers run each race from what tires to use, to how aggressively they drive, to when to fit in the pit stops. I don’t know much about racing, but I do know that there aren’t many better sports simulation games on mobile.  

Age of Rivals (iOS Universal and Android): $1.99 (Review)

Fantastic card-drafting, civilization-building game Age of Rivals is another of the best of 2017 and on sale for half off.

To the Moon (iOS and Android): $1.99 on iOS (Review)

A heartwarming role-playing game is a bit of a rarity, but that’s what you get in To the Moon. It’s the tale of two doctors who travel through an old man’s memories to make his deathbed wish come true. It’s an emotional story, with great music and atmosphere to match, along with deep and powerful characters. It’s not perfect, the controls leave a little to be desired, but it will leave an impression on you.

D&D Lords of Waterdeep (iOS Universal  and Android): $3.99 (Review)

Dungeons & Dragons based board game D&D Lords of Waterdeep is available for a solid discount on both the App and Google Play stores. You play as a masked Lord of the city and must out wrangle your opponents to recruit adventurers to complete quests and thus increase your political power.

Steamworld Heist (iOS Universal): $4.99 (Review)

Speaking of best games, Steamworld Heist was near the top of a crowded field of great games in 2016 and earned four well-deserved stars from JP. It’s also half off right now.

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

If you know anything about Baseball, you’re in luck. MLB Manager 18 has no tips, no tutorials, no hints at the rules of the sport or the nuances within the stats. Whereas so many management sims allow a little wiggle room for new players who may only take a partial interest in the sport, this game effectively shutters itself off from any kind of enquiry. In fact, even those who have an extensive knowledge of the American pastime might find themselves completely lost among a hundred menus which offer no solace or guiding nudges about what specific command does what action. It’s a mess.

MLB18 opens with the usual fare of naming your coach, selecting the team you’d like to head up from the American or National leagues. Before even seeing a playing field or batting cage, the game prompts ask whether to simulate the real world of Baseball. Maybe you’d like to tick boxes which really mean very little until the game gets into the flow of things? MLB18 has you covered by asking about pitchers and batters with no shade of why they’re asking.

Once these frustrating opening screens have passed by, we’re met with the most uninspiring handful of menus. Still, there’s no sign of any tutorial so absently tapping at certain boxes in the hope of either starting a season or changing the line-up of the team relies solely on either luck or parsing the information until you stumble into the correct menu option and there’s a list of names that mean very little. Do we tap and hold? Do we tap? Can we rename anybody to make the game more personal? Mess around and find out, because the developer clearly doesn’t want to tell us.

I chose to use the Philadelphia Phillies, for myriad reasons and wanted to dive straight into a game, hoping to have some sway on how my team performs. I entered a game, forgiving the lack of direction thus far and tapped ‘Swing’. My hopes of any kind of interesting interaction were thwarted as I watched a wall of text fall down the screen in a pseudo commentary voice. The pitch of the ball was described as arcing through the air, my batter did his thing and we made it to first base. The static Baseball diamond on my screen changed the colours of a few names to state that the Phillies had grabbed the first base and the game prompted me, asking if I wanted to steal second base.

Why not? Maybe there’s a mini game hidden away that allows me to test the infield players as I heroically dash from first base to second as the pitcher unleashes his ball. Nope. More text, we didn’t steal the base and my batter struck out. Before I even considered trying to swap out players, I decided to simulate a couple of innings, in the hope that maybe the game would show some form of animation of players movements, balls flying out to home runs or sliding into home. Sadly, a few names blinked red rather than black and the menu appeared from before, only now I was 0-3.

Of course, most management games are brimming with menus and stats. That’s mostly why we flock to them, because it’s in the minutiae where we find joy. It seems no matter where I turned, every menu is bland, leading into another soulless list where drop down menus languish, unexplained or even brushed over by the game itself. I know a decent amount about Baseball, I like to watch a bit of Spring training, I catch games where I can, and I stumbled around lists that made no sense to me. Despite knowledge, a game needs some form of guidance. Building a routine of which option furthers play or the calendar, maybe highlights a few of the star players to add into the starting line-up. If I wanted to roam endless boxes of information I don’t really understand, I’d open Microsoft Excel.

I can’t imagine that even the most expert Baseball fan will find much joy here. There’s no option to swing a bat, or throw a pitch, which could have easily been implemented. MLB18 takes everything that makes Baseball an interesting sport and removes it. There’s no passion for the game, or even any hint that there’s a genuinely fun sport within the simulator.

After a time I started changing the strategy of my team – increasing their aggression on running bases, telling my pitcher how to hold base runners, I asked my players to steal bases wherever they could. I found a screen that told me that my personality was “charitable” and that I was “delighted” with the performance of the team. I started rotating players around, choosing different starting pitchers. Not one thing made any noticeable difference. I might as well have just simulated every game using the default settings, because nothing I changed really mattered. The game rolled some imaginary dice or randomly generated a few numbers, translated that into ‘boy howdy’ Baseball commentary and declared my batter swung and missed. STRIKE!

I’d like to say that MLB Manager 18 has a redeeming feature, but it doesn’t. It’s the most lifeless, boring game I’ve played in a long time. Maybe someone who reads every little detail about the sport will find something to love. You have to be an absolute die-hard fan of Baseball and have the patience of a saint to really get anything from MLB18. As someone who supports a team, watches games, plays other Baseball games on mobile and console I wanted to still be guided around and told about the intricacies of this management sim. Instead, I felt like I was scooped up from Little League practice and told to bat in the World Series.

Last we heard, Feral Interactive’s iPhone port of Rome: Total War was due before the end of summer. School summer holidays last until the start of September here in the UK, around mid-September in the US, so they have just over a month before they’re officially going to be late.

While there’s still no word on an exact release date, Feral have just sent out a tweet detailing what requirements your phone will need in order to be able to play the game.

So anything from an iPhone 5S up should be fine, and like most modern mobile games you’ll need iOS 11. Here’s a larger version of the image, just in case:

Rome: Total War for iPhone will be available from the App Store for $9.99/£9.99/€10.99. Users who have already purchased the game for iPad will be able to download it onto their iPhone at no extra cost, and transfer their save file.

Are you looking forward to finally being able to play Rome: Total War on your iPhone? Let us know in the comments!

Before we delve into the Nightmarium, I should make it clear that this is a game that uses the Tabletopia game system. This means that all you are getting is a digital rendition of the game’s components, leaving the players themselves to interpret and enforce the rules. Furthermore, do not expect any AI opponents or online matches, as the only option is to play face to face with a player count of two to four.

Nightmarium is a small, easy to learn card game that only had a limited print run. Consequently, this digital version will be the only chance that many of us will have to play the game. The background story concerns the masters of the Order of Dreamers who have been studying the landscape of dreams for centuries. Even after all this time, one small, dark corner of the dream world subconscious remains off-limits. That place, as you may have guessed, is the Nightmarium, home to night terrors, bogeymen and monsters under the bed. Finally, the researchers have mastered the art of subduing these terrors and moulding them into creatures. The problem is that these creatures are hostile and volatile, often, fighting among themselves, simply disintegrating or escaping to run amok. Yet, despite their nature, these unstable creations do have a use since they offer the only means of reaching the Crystal of Panic.

As a player, you will take on the role of a dream researcher and compete against your opponents to be the first one to assemble five creatures.  The night terrors are made up of 108 individual cards, which are split into legs, torsos and heads. You can work on creating your five creatures simultaneously, but each has to be assembled in a strict order beginning with legs. Most cards can only be used for one body part, but some special cards can be used for two, or even three parts. Each night terror is loyal with one of four colour-coded legions of Horror – Necronauts, Insektoids, Homunculi, or Chimeridae. A creature can be made up from any mix of Night Terrors, but creating creatures from cards of the same legion will give you a distinct advantage.

At the start of the game each player is dealt a hand of five Night Terror cards and on a turn, they get to perform two actions. The most basic action is to draw a card.  A variation of this is to discard as many cards as you like and draw half that number back. There is also the option to play a card from your hand to start or continue constructing a creature. Creatures have to be built from the bottom up; starting with legs, followed by the torso and finishing with the head. As soon as a creature is complete any special abilities that are marked on the individual body parts will activate. These are applied in strict order, starting with the head and working downwards. If a special ability cannot be performed, then it and any other outstanding abilities are cancelled. If you have ensured that the creature is made from terrors of the same legion, then every opponent must discard one card of that legion from their hand. If they have no such card, then they face the larger penalty of having to discard two cards.

Special abilities are worth investigating a little closer as they form the core of the game and ensure that there is more to Nightmarium than a simple primary school matching game. The Weeper ability lets you draw two new cards, whilst the Mocker lets you play an extra card from your hand. The Herald skill is one of the strongest: it offers a combination of the previous two skills, allowing you to draw two cards and immediately use them to construct your creatures. The other skills are more interactive – the Executioner allows you to remove the head from an opponent’s creature and add it to your hand, the Scavenger ability lets you remove an opponent’s incomplete creature. Finally, the Devourer ability lets you discard the top card of any of your own creatures. Identifying how these skills complement each other is at the heart of the game. For instance, a completed creature with both Executioner and Scavenger abilities could first claim the head from an opponent’s creature, thus making it incomplete. Then the Scavenger skill can be used to send the unfortunate soul back to the discard pile.

Nightmarium is a straightforward game that can be learnt in five minutes and only takes about twenty minutes to play. The theme is refreshingly original, with the lovely creature illustrations adding to the game’s overall charm. However, there are frustratingly high levels of luck involved, which makes for a game best suited for families rather than seasoned gamers. In terms of actual gameplay, there is nothing here that hasn’t been seen many times before. However, Nightmarium’s rather ruthless player interaction and neat card combo opportunities make for a decent if unspectacular game.

The simple rules and few moving parts mean that Nightmarium is a good choice for conversion to the Tabletopia system. Although, having to keep your cards hidden from the other players does mean that turns need to be taken in secret, so only one person can view the screen at any one time. Whenever I play I cannot help but feel that the game would be infinitely more enjoyable to play in its physical format; snatching an actual physical card from a rival is so much more satisfying. Tabletopia is an innovative way of playing tabletop games, but the fiddly interface, no-frills presentation and, most tellingly, lack of rules implementation means that it will only ever appeal to a limited market. The rest of us will happily stick with physical copies or enjoy the impressive range of fully featured board game apps that have added advantages like AI opponents and competitive online matches.

Teeny Titans – Teen Titans GO! is a mouthful of a title, a great game, and one of the most successful premium games on the App Store. Grumpyface Games and the Cartoon Network are back two years after its release to bring us the next installment in the collect-and-battle franchise. A sequel always invites comparison to its predecessor. Is there enough new hotness to make it feel like a different game but not so much that it loses what fans loved about the original?

Teen Titans GO! Figure walks down the middle of that line like a tight-rope specialist. In the game we’re back in Jump City, but the figure-battling craze has cooled off and the game looks to be in trouble. Powerful forces are looking to shut the game down for good and the culprit seems to be…the Justice League? As a last gasp, new figures were just released which jump-starts interest in Jump City and puts the teen heroes on a path to save their favorite game.

The main quest line follows the fate of this game within a game and features a couple major DC heroes, Batman and Superman, along with a lot of other familiar faces. Naturally, there is also a whole host of new side missions to accept and new neighborhoods to explore. The city looks familiar but is rearranged and while many of the assets from the first game are reused, most of the content is new and is packed with the same tongue-in-cheek approach to collect-them-all games and the hero genre.

Now quests are great, but the figure battles remain the highlight of the game. Grumpyface Games didn’t try to fix what wasn’t broken here, and thankfully so. You can battle pretty much any character in the game and take part in figure-battling tournaments as well. Battles are still fast-paced, a lot of fun, and full of enough tactical bite to satisfy strategy gamers. You pick a trio of figures to go into battle against one to three opponents in a real-time showdown. Your goal is to defeat the other team by reducing each figure’s health to zero before they can do the same to you. Each side has a battle bar that builds up charge over time and each figure has three powers that fall somewhere on that bar. Powers deal damage, heal your team, and provide a variety of other support effects and the longer you must wait the more powerful they tend to be. This sets up some nice tension and key decisions: Do you pew-pew-pew with fast lower-damage attacks or do you save up your charge for one massive-damage hit?

Balancing your team of figures remains a strategic challenge. The game has six classes, and each has an advantage, and disadvantage, against one other class. When you have advantage your attacks do more damage, so making sure you go in with an advantageous crew is key. Figuring out an assortment of figures that work well in different trios and leveling them up remains a central part of the game and is definitely my favorite part of Teen Titans GO Figure.

So, what’s new in battle? Quite a bit. First, there’s a slate of new figures available, including fast-hitter Black Lightning, who quickly became one of my primary damage dealers. I had been worried I’d end up running with the same crew as in the first game, but this was not the case. Between all the new figures and getting some really good guys much earlier, hello Killer Moth, I ended up with a considerably different team of regulars to power through the game.

Teen Titans GO Figure not only has new figures, but also new powers, such as a blast of super-cold air that freezes your opponent’s battle bar and causes it to crack and fall to pieces, losing all progress made. It’s effective and adds a great tactical element to the game as you look to time it perfectly to maximize your opponent’s woe. There are also new tofu effects that are a lot of fun. Tofu are blocks that drop during combat and when you click on them you gain a bonus power that you can activate at will. Existing tofu did things like provide a damage bonus, regain health, and remove enemy effects. New tofu let you speed up your battle bar progress, create a shield, and freeze and break your opponent’s battle bar among other things.

Yet another big change to the figure-battling portion of the game is the introduction of accessories. Accessories are items you can add to a battle that provide a bonus. You must charge them by attacking and grabbing batteries that randomly drop like tofu and once ready, you can activate them and unleash more pain on your foe. Just a couple examples are a Lil’ Penguin that continually freezes your opponent’s battle bar, a Titan Coin that increases your team’s hit points, and Cyborg’s Waffle Shooter that fires waffles that temporarily block one of your opponent’s powers. Both sides get access to accessories and figuring out how best to use and play around them introduces yet another aspect to the game’s already compelling combat system.

Figure customization has also gotten some intriguing new features. The original game featured mod chips, which provided a nice bonus to a specific figure, as well as the ability to enhance each of the figure’s three powers to make them more effective. Teen Titans GO Figure includes both of these but has also introduced figure painting and power-order customization. Each figure has several different color-scheme outfits you can unlock with repaint tokens. At level 10 you can also customize the order of a figure’s three powers as well.

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Teen Titans GO Figure remains a premium game, but unlike its predecessor includes in-app purchases that include the ability to buy rare figures, extra repaint tokens, and eggs filled with a random assortment of figures, accessories, and repaint tokens. I’ve played through most of the game and I can attest that you don’t need to buy any IAPs and there’s no pay wall of any kind. All of what you can buy is relatively easily obtainable in the game. The IAPs might be really tempting for collectors and completionists who are impatient to collect them all but are easily ignorable for anybody else.

If you played Teeny Titans and are ready for more great figure-battling action, or enjoy the genre in general, Teen Titans GO Figure is an easy recommendation to make. The game is a great blend of old awesomeness and new hotness and does feel like a new experience, one that I am enjoying just as much the second time around.

Nick’s been excited about Pocket City for ages and won’t stop bugging me about it. “Joe, when’s Pocket City out?” “Joe, do you know how awesome Pocket City is going to be?” “Joe, can you please pay me my invoice, I can’t afford food this week.” GAWD.

Well, finally I can be left in peace: we reported at the end of June that Pocket City was available to pre-order on iOS and had a release date of July 31^st. Well, turns out iTunes was right; the city builder is indeed out today, and you can pick it up right now via the App Store or Google Play.

In case you haven’t heard of it before Pocket City is premium city-building game that re-imagines the classic genre with some surprise twists of its own. Here’s the feature list from the Google Play Store page:

• Build a unique city by creating zones and special buildings
• Trigger fun events like block parties, or disasters like tornadoes
• Complete quests to earn XP and money
• Unlock advanced buildings by levelling up
• Unlock new land with different terrain types
• Succeed by optimizing your cash flow, traffic, happiness, and more
• Enjoy a dynamic city with citizens, vehicles, animals and animated buildings
• Upload your city to the cloud to transfer to another device, or share with a friend
• Intuitive, touch-based city building
• Playable offline
• Play in portrait mode or landscape mode
• NO microtransactions

We’ve already got review code, so we’ll be bringing you more coverage ASAP. Nick will have some impressions for you in The Weekender on Friday, and I’ll make sure we get a full review up ASAP next week.

By Joe Robinson 30 Jul 2018

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. We’ve got some great new gaming options, including two completely free and very fun titles. There’s also a smattering of sales including a rare sale on one of the best mobile games ever.

Out Now

Mind Cards (iPhone)

Mind Cards is a new solo card game in the same vein as TinyTouchtales classic hit Card Crawl. In it you must work your way through a 21-card deck in order to win. Some cards are monsters you must fight, and they deal damage which reduces your life. Some are potions that heal lost life. Some cards are food and replenish another of the game’s finite resources. You use food with every card you play. Some cards are gems which allow you to deal out cards to all open spaces. You can do this without gems, but it will cost life instead. Finally, there are special attack cards that hit monsters without taking damage. The goal of the game is to use every card without losing all of your life and it’s a fair bit harder than it sounds. As you play you earn gold and can unlock more special cards for use in future games. Mind Cards is completely free with no ads or IAPs, so if solo card games are at all your thing, there’s no reason not to check it out!

The Horus Heresy: Legions (iOS Universal and Android)

There’s a new CCG on the block, The Horus Heresy: Legions is Warhammer 40K’s entrance into the crowded market. Can they take a bite out of Hearthstone and others? It’s hard to know for sure and certainly time will tell, but the easy answer is probably not. The Horus Heresy: Legions features pretty-standard gameplay for the genre. You pick a legion which dictates card choices. You take on opponents and try to reduce their life to nil for the win. The only innovation I see is a guild system, which has the potential to be cool. I’ve always wondered why CCGs didn’t implement guilds as a way to keep players invested. Having a play group to test and play with is huge. It’s free with the usual IAPs, so easy enough to check out if you dig the IP or want a new CCG to play around with.

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Amethlion (iOS Universal and Android)

Amethlion is an explore/craft/survive game with an open world full of quests, dungeons, and mysteries. The graphics and music are a bit basic, even for the genre, but there’s a lot to explore, build, and you know, kill. Oh, and you can get pets. There’s a big update with new items, quests, and areas of the world to explore coming next Tuesday on iOS. The update is already live on Android. It’s not perfect but the developer seems receptive to feedback and the game is just a couple bucks.

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Nishan Shaman (iOS Universal)

Nishan Shaman is a rhythm game where you control Nishan’s spirit travels into the void on a quest. She protects herself from the dangerous in that place through a spiritual shield maintained through drumming, which you control. As creatures hit her shield you drum them into nothingness, protecting her as she continues her journey. It’s simple yet quite engaging. I was immediately nodding along with the music and smiling broadly as I drummed the monsters away. Nishan Shaman has a cool mythology and cultural elements, a great story, and beautiful graphics and music. Oh, and it is completely free. You should download it right now.

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Battleheart 2 (iOS Universal and Android) (Review)

Ok, so I may have been a little harsh a couple weeks ago when Battleheart 2 came out for iOS. I wasn’t, and still am not, a big fan of how little the game progressed in the seven years between the original and sequel. I may have discounted how good of a game it still is, for what it is. It’s out now on Android and I’ve played about 10 hours in the intervening two weeks. A good chunk of that was the co-operative multiplayer, which while unintuitive to set up, does work pretty well and is a fun addition to the game. You and a friend just pick the same room name and it connects you. Battleheart 2 is quite the grind fest, there’s no story to speak of, and it’s certainly not getting any awards for innovation, but, if you enjoy real-time action and slowly improving a party of adventurers you could do a lot worse.

Sales

Dungelot Shattered Lands (iOS Universal and Android): Free on iOS (Review)

One of the world’s better roguelike games, Dungelot: Shattered Lands features fun and challenging gameplay and a lot of persistent benefits to gain as you play to make the next run even better. It’s free on iOS and you should get it if you don’t already own it. 

Punch Club (iOS Universal and Android): $.99 on iOS

Tinybuild, the makers of the aforementioned, have their popular boxing sim on sale as well for just a buck on iOS. 

Crashlands (iOS Universal and Android): $3.99 on iOS (Review)

Now we’re talking people. Crashlands might be my favorite mobile game. It’s certainly my favorite explore/craft/survive game on mobile. If you love that genre as much as I do and haven’t tried it out now’s the time, it’s very rarely on sale, and $4 is a steal for this one. 

Kingdom: New Lands (iOS Universal and Android): $4.99 (Review)

Have you played the side-scrolling, genre-mashing Kingdom: New Lands? It’s part tower-defense, part city builder, part simulation, part puzzle, and all kinds of challenging. It’s also on sale for $5, half off.

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

A cursory glance at the promotional screenshots and you could be forgiven for dismissing Isle of Skye as simply a Carcassonne clone with a Scottish setting. Thankfully, although it shares the same tile-laying mechanic, Isle of Skye has many clever ideas of its own. So much so that the board game has won a host of awards, including the prestigious 2016 Kennerspiel des Jahres.

As clan chieftain, you expand your territory and strengthen your clan in the hope of being crowned King of the Isle of Skye. You do this by purchasing and placing landscape tiles. These tiles feature a mix of highlands, water and mountain areas and must be placed so that the different landscape types match. There are also roads to consider. These do not need to be placed so that they link to other roads, but to earn the maximum income, it is advantageous to have a connected road network. Tiles also feature a range of other point scoring opportunities, including livestock, ships and various types of buildings Finally, a small number of tiles contain scrolls that award bonus points at the end of the game for fulfilling certain requirements.

The first significant difference from Carcassonne is that each player works on building his or her own individual landscape. You may think that this would lead to a rather solitary gaming experience, with little interaction between competing players. Happily though, the brilliantly designed auction system ensures that the game feels both competitive and involving. Before we go to auction, however, we need some cash. Players earn a basic five coins per turn; additional income is earned from tiles that feature whisky barrels as long as they are connected to your castle by road.  There is also a catch-up mechanism that rewards extra coins to players who have fewer points.

With coins burning holes in our sporrans it is time to get trading. At the beginning of each round, all players draw three tiles. They then have to secretly choose one tile to discard and decide how much they are willing to pay for each of the remaining two. Then, in turn order, each player has the opportunity to use any remaining coins to purchase a single tile from an opponent. This works brilliantly, as you have to carefully set prices with the aim of purchasing tiles for the best possible price. However, set these too low and your opponents will snaffle them up. Furthermore, you don’t want to tie up too many coins in trying to secure your own tiles because you may miss the opportunity to purchase a tasty tile from another player. It sounds simple but setting prices can lead to some agonising decisions. Sometimes, you will be tempted to hang on to a tile that is not particularly useful because you know that it will appeal to an opponent. You can then attach a high price and take a gamble that they will bite, but you run the risk of being forced to cough up for your own overpriced tile.

Isle of Skye introduces plenty of variety, with a choice of sixteen different scoring tiles. Only four of these are used in each game and their point scoring potential should form the crux of your overall strategy. Before the game commences these four tiles can be chosen by the players or determined randomly. Not all of these tiles will be scored every round, so certain types of landscape tiles are going to be more valuable at certain points in the game. There is an interesting variety of scoring tiles, which require different tactics to exploit. Some have a spatial element, such as forming squares of four tiles; others will require you to enclose areas of particular landscape types. Then there are those that require you to have the majority of particular items such as ships or coins. The result is a pleasing diversity of scoring opportunities that makes every game feel different.

This isn’t a difficult game to learn and the interactive tutorial will soon have you up and running. To improve your strategy there is the option to watch games that have been played between the highest ranked players. At the start of the game your five coins will not go far, but with some shrewd financial management, you should soon see your income escalating. This will also mean that the landscape tiles will in turn rocket in price, which means that you constantly have to be aware of market trends.

The graphics accurately represent the table-top original and the screen layout works relatively well. All of the required information is laid out along the screen edges, with the central area reserved for your ever-growing kingdom. There are a few times when the interface feels a little unresponsive, like when you are trying to set prices, or get an overview of each scoring tile. I am not convinced by the background, which gives the impression that you are playing on a stained tablecloth. Also, the sound is rather nondescript, although mercifully it does hold back on the bagpipes. Most seriously of all, there appears to be a major bug that causes the game to freeze when playing a pass and play game. I encountered no such problems when competing against just AI opponents. Unfortunately, even at the highest difficulty level the AI does not put up too much of a challenge. In the auction, placing a value on a tile is dependent on so many different variables that creating an AI to challenge experienced players is tough. You are going to want to find some online human opponents to really get the most from this game. Thankfully, setting up an asynchronous online game is easy enough. This mode works especially well, as turns play quickly, and a single game doesn’t drag on too long.

If you enjoyed Carcassonne and are looking for something with more strategy and depth, then Isle of Skye is definitely worth considering even if the app itself isn’t as polished as other leading board game adaptations.

Note: By the time of publication, a recent update has ensured that the interface is much more responsive, sadly the issue with pass and play games freezing hasn’t been resolved.

Despite the fact that the original pick-up-and-play role-playing game Battleheart made its debut seven years ago, it’s hardly lost a lick of its charm. Unfortunately, follow-up Battleheart Legacy was bereft of much of the charm and pull of the first game, leaving players to tinker with Battleheart until Mika Mobile finally released a true sequel in Battleheart 2. Now that it’s available for iOS devices with an Android release to follow soon enough, it’s proven itself another formidable casual twist on classic RPG tropes that’s easy enough for even newcomers to enjoy.

Though the world of Battleheart 2 is rife with classic RPG classes such as mages and knights, it’s curiously bereft of any deep narrative. For that matter, it’s a fairly light application, launching quickly and offering a tutorial or a way for veterans to jump right into battle. The tutorial is the only way ahead of being thrust straight into battle to glean any sort of plot thread information, with a female ally relating that the “fair land” of Battleheart is “once again in turmoil.”

This sequel follows the assassination of the king that ruled over the realm from five years ago, which caused a bit of a shakeup in the kingdom. King Marcus apparently died without an heir, so the Capital has simply remained without a ruler the entire time. There are a dozen various noble houses currently vying to wear his crown, and while they’re all preoccupied with that, monsters and other creatures have invaded the countryside. While the useless Royal Guard sits by and does nothing, it’s up to you and a band of brave heroes to save the day and eliminate the advancing threats.

With that explained, it’s off to the races, so to speak. Battleheart 2‘s minimalistic menu lets you run off into battle, adjust your party, select gear and talents assigned to each character, or go online to enjoy some multiplayer matches. Available missions can be selected in any order from the map screen at your leisure. You can even choose to tackle a formidable boss fight whenever you think you can handle it instead of going in numerical order. Your first order of business, however, should be assembling four adventurers out of the dozen or so unlocked at the game’s start. You can choose from an interesting assortment, each with about a paragraph of unique backstory.

You can select a powerful Knight, a Cleric with the gift of healing, the Berserker with physical attack prowess, and even magicians like the Frost Mage, with various elemental magic that can deal devastating blows to the enemy at long range. Assembling a formidable party is what will ensure continued victories as you play through the game’s scattered missions, as you’ll need a healer or an equivalent, no doubt, and appropriate party members to provide for you in any situation. Foregoing any sort of healer isn’t a great idea, as you’ll soon find that all four party members are knocked out within a shockingly short amount of time. It’s up to you to continually change out targets that need healing, however, because party members often won’t simply swap over to the next fighter in dire need of a health boost.

It’s all part of the very important strategy you’ll need to employ as you take to the battlefield and control all four of your adventurers simultaneously. Using the game’s touch controls, you’ll complete a series of bite-sized battles where you fight off various waves of enemies. To control a character, you’ll simply tap on the one you want to control and drag it to an enemy or ally. You can also simply drag them to an empty spot on the map, and the character will head there in a hurry. Targeting allies with healing magic and buffs is simple, and the nature of the game means your actions will simply be repeated ad infinitum until the battle is over, or until you change something.

It’s a no-frills and intuitive system, though unfortunately sometimes your assignments don’t seem to take. For the most part, however, it’s painless to direct your characters. It can get a little frustrating when several enemies are clumped up onscreen and tangled up with allies, which can call for some strategic movement around the battlefield. Otherwise, since the game’s in 2D, it’s easy to change up the path of a character and get them to a more manoeuvrable space quickly. The situations in which you can’t, however, will often result in a few deaths that could easily have been prevented. Adding some sort of way to select characters beyond tapping on them would help make this less of an issue in the future, perhaps.

Each character also has abilities beyond their simplistic melee and primary attacks or buffs, and you can unlock additional skills as the game progresses. When you find the perfect combination of characters for your party, you’ll want to stick with them because of this system. Unfortunately, this leaves little reason to explore the other characters available at the onset when you find four heroes that work best for you, making for an adventure that will eventually devolve into a bit of banality.

There’s a good amount of automation happening in Battleheart 2, but there’s still plenty for you to orchestrate, meaning it’s not a game that wholly plays itself, like several others on the market. While it’s largely unchanged from the first game, it still delivers enough satisfying combat and great-looking environments to be worth buying into, especially if you’re jonesing for more of the same formula.

With that said, it’s the perfect way to kill some time while on your commute to work, waiting at the doctor’s office, or any time you want to jump into an RPG-flavored world without the lengthy introductions, lore setup, or being forced into character roles you don’t want at the onset. For RPG combat on your terms, Battleheart 2 delivers in spades.