New game releases.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall is Now Available on Steam!
Age of Wonders: Planetfall is the new strategy game from Triumph Studios, creators of the critically acclaimed Age of Wonders series, bringing all the exciting tactical turn-based combat and in-depth empire building of its predecessors to space in an all-new, sci-fi setting.
Mobile devices and computers become more and more like each other every day, but desktops and consoles are still considered the superior platforms for serious gameplay. Their ability to push more pixels, accept more control inputs, and deliver complex strategies remain unequalled. Yet, sometimes, a game that was once a “real gamerz” exclusive crosses over to mobile devices. So which cross-platform games are actually better on mobile?
Board and card games do very well on mobile for obvious reasons: a simulation of moving cards and tokens around a tabletop definitely feels better when you’re using your hands. So consider most of the games on our Best Board and Card games lists to be honorary members of this one. Adventure games likewise often control extremely well with touch controls, but the difference is small enough that it’s hard to say they are really ‘better’ on mobile. Beyond that, here are a some cross-platform gems that actually have superior mobile versions.
SteamWorld Heist is a unique tactics game played on 2D platforms with guns that you can manually aim. It’s got a wide variety of enemies, weapons, and interesting multi-level maps with lots of cover. What’s more, Heist gives the player the ability to nudge their shots ever so slightly to ricochet off one or a dozen surfaces, pinging across the iron spaceships to nip the hat right off that annoying royal guardsman’s head. While mouse control is fine for this, the game really shines as you slowly roll your finger into the perfect position. Missions can take only twenty minutes in some cases, making Heist a perfect mobile game.
FTL was one of the earliest indie darlings to make the jump to mobile devices, and quickly became the obsession of many a pocket gamer. The game’s frantic gameplay has you putting out multiple fires (some of them literal) on a spaceship with limited tools. Tapping on your tablet far exceeds mouseclicking as a control scheme in this situation. What’s more, the ‘episodic’ structure of the game, where you deal with crises in one star system at a time, is perfectly suited for short bursts of play. At the same time, its rogueish world map makes it a compelling long-player.
Console ports are a dime a dozen on the app store these days, but any review of a classic port is going to mention that a gamepad is basically required for a good experience. On the other hand, Final Fantasy XV got a great port with great mobile controls, but it still needed a lot stripped away to fit on mobile.
Final Fantasy Tactics is the one game that really became better in its mobile iteration, despite losing its multiplayer component. Touch controls are an obvious improvement over selecting your units and their actions through endless scrolling through menus and maps using a joystick. What’s more, the mobile version includes the enhanced script and cutscenes of the PSP port. For experiencing the epic story of a game considered one of the best of the PlayStation era, if not the best tactical RPG of all time, mobile is where its at for Final Fantasy Tactics.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btHkXlA8__I?controls=0]
Touchscreen-based games from the Nintendo DS are also worth checking out, including Square’s RPG The World Ends with You and Capcom’s ports of the Phoenix Wright games and forgotten gem Ghost Trick.
Tons of puzzle games have made the crossover to mobile, and a lot of them definitely benefit from having touch controls. One that truly stands out is Gorogora. This game sees the player manipulating a grid of illustrations, dragging pieces, uncovering details, and matching patterns in increasingly unexpected ways. Gorogora is like a jigsaw puzzle for the ubiquitous-computing age, and its highly tactile gameplay really benefits from a touchscreen. It just doesn’t feel the same to click and drag these beautiful paintings that beg to be touched.
Kingdom began as a Flash game, and its boiled-to-the-bone gameplay reflects that simplicity in its instantly-iconic visuals and super-simple controls. You simply swipe to move your monarch around, collecting and distributing coins to build an unimpeachable castle, and eventually escape the ever-multiplying monsters.
While its simple controls suit mobile, there’s one caveat: Kingdom relies on the player keeping the status of their kingdom in mind at all times. It deliberately doesn’t keep a count of how many people you’ve recruited or make an automap for you. That makes it the most accurate horseback-strategy simulator around, but it also makes it hard to pick up and play. It’s easy to forget what you were doing even moment to moment, and get overwhelmed by an attack you forgot was coming.
But, when you have the attention to devote to it, there’s nothing quite as engaging as Kingdom on mobile. The game’s day-to-night cycle is perfect at compelling you to finish just one more task before dark, and its procedural design makes every round unique. It’s the perfect game for a long commute or an rainy afternoon at the beach house. It will hold your attention for hours without requiring more than a few swipes a minute, and is easily played from bed.
What games do you think are better on mobile vs. other ports or versions? Let us know in the comments!
Humble are running another e-book/video bundle of interest to developers, this one is the Humble Book Bundle: Coding & App Development by Packt. It is a collection of books and training videos on a broad variety of application development topics from iOS and Android development, to Dart, React and Node.js. As always it is split into tiers, those tiers are:
1$ Tier
8$ Tier
15$ Tier
Buying a higher dollar tier will entitle you to all the lower priced tiers as well. When your purchase a Humble Bundle, you get to decide how your money is allocated, between Humble, the Publisher, charity and if you should choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GameFromScratch. The Bundle is available here. Check out the video below for more details on the contents of the bundle.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYRPxBJtNPk&w=853&h=480]
WWE 2K20 is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam.
2K invites players to Step Inside the squared circle with WWE 2K20, available October 22. Your favorite WWE Superstars, Legends, Hall of Famers and NXT’s best will join the festivities and celebrate the rebirth of the WWE 2K franchise!
Sketchfab, the online 3D model repository, just got several new features this year at SIGGRAPH. Major new features of Sketchfab include:
Unfortunately the Sketchfab Blender plugin (previously featured here) hasn’t been ported to Blender 2.80 yet. Learn more about the update and see the huge data set visualization in action in the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLjGVw67-2s&w=853&h=480]
05 Aug 2019
Total War studio Creative Assembly has announced a new long-term deal with Chinese publisher NetEase, which will bring more of the developer’s strategy games to China’s massive player base. The deal will also cover a new collectible card game, Total War: Elysium.
Total War: Elysium will be initially exclusive to China, but according to a FAQ posted to the official Total War site, Creative Assembly hopes to bring it to worldwide audiences before too long. The studio said it will be relying on NetEase’s extensive experience in CCGs, which are massively popular in China.
“Total War: Elysium is a new title and a new genre for us, and we want to give it the best possible chance for success,” the studio says. “China gives us a huge audience of CCG fans to learn from so we can eventually bring the game to the rest of the world in better shape than ever.”
When that will be remains to be seen, but in the meantime you can find more information about it at the official Total War: Elysium site. There’s not much there at the moment, but the site will likely (hopefully) be updated with more details in the near future.
Today’s Deal: Save up to 90% during the Digital Tribe Games Publisher Sale!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends August 9 at 10AM Pacific Time
This latest Weekender update is another short & sweet one as technically I’m not here, but there’s a couple of things we can run through that you may be interested in.
You already know about Raiders of the North Sea, which I’ve been playing as well and is excellent, but other notable releases this week include:
I actually wanted to try out the Gundam Battle game because it’s easy to do and I’ve always been a fan of the anime, but it says my phone isn’t compatible. I mean, that’s nonsense because I have a Google Pixel 3XL now, but I was surprised at how upset I was given how this is going to be a prime cut of gacha. Oh well.
Battle Chasers is a pretty decent tactical RPG that released back in 2017 on PC. We haven’t had a chance to try it out yet but it’s good to see that mobile is still getting these decent, premium-grade RPGs amidst a sea of free-to-play games. We’ll try and get a full review up and running as soon as we can.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckI5Iz5q53M?controls=0]
Nothing much to report here – Game Dev Tycoon got an update this week, although what it did I’m not so sure, and there’s been a release-patch for Raiders, as well as the usual round of Auto Chess-related game updates.
One thing I found out today while updating our list of best mobile war games was that Heroes of Normandie actually got a patch back in March, which fixed a few things like the Assault bug. Might be worth giving that another go if you haven’t played it recently.
In lieu of the normal sales bulletins, thought I’d share an interesting piece of news that’s come across our desk.
It seems Google are now actively testing their rival to Apple’s ‘Apple Arcade’ subscription program, named ‘Play Pass’. We’ve gotten most of our information (including the screenshot) from this Android Police article, but thought it was worth sharing here still.
Apparently, its existence was hinted at last year, but only recently has more concrete evidence surfaced that its being actively tested. New UI elements how that it’s currently being billed as costing $4.99 a month, and feature games won’t have ads, or in-app purchases. Considering IAPs can cover everything from genuine DLC expansion, to premium currency, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of games end up in the Play Pass. We’ll keep an eye on this one and let you know as more information comes to light.
Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
Autodesk have announced new Indie version of their popular 3DS Max and Maya DCC applications. These are full versions, not subset’s like Maya LT, their other indie focused offering. They do however come with some strings attached. The new version (3DS in this case) is described as follows:
Autodesk 3ds Max Indie is the same industry-standard product used by professional studios, at a price point accessible to those who are just starting out. If you are a recent graduate or freelancer with less than USD$100,000/year in revenue, you can get started now. Please note that this is a limited-time offer.
The revenue limit is not the only limitation:
- Your annual gross revenue from design work must be less than USD$100,000/year
- Only one license can be used per user or organization
- Offer is only eligible to those based in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK or the US
There is also one very big gotcha people should be aware of:
Note: In order to avoid an automatic renewal at the full subscription price of 3ds Max, you must turn off the automatic renewal once you subscribe to 3ds Max Indie. In order to turn off the automatic renewal setting, you must go to your Autodesk Account, and follow the instructions posted here. This offer is subject to certain restrictions.
So, if you do not turn off automatic rebilling, you could get hit for a VERY nasty surprise on your credit card in a years time, as you get charged for the full, non-indie version of Max or Maya!
It is a huge savings for those that qualify and it will be interesting to see if the deal expands to other markets or is offered beyond this year. Have Autodesk noticed a new market between students and full professionals, or are they facing pricing pressure for alternatives like Blender? Or perhaps it’s a bit of both?
You can learn more about the programs here (3DS Max) and here (Maya).
– The optional unit query panel has been removed. We started fixing a couple bugs with it and felt that the feature needed large design changes to be usable by a bigger portion of players, as less than 1% of players have used it after we added the option for it.
