Category: Game Releases

On paper, Graveyard Keeper sounds like a fun concept. It’s a management/simulation game of a medieval graveyard, with a sense of humor perfectly encapsulated in its wacky braying-donkey app icon. (I choose to believe this is intended to make fun of the endless screaming-angry-man icons found on Clash of Clans-clones.) Unfortunately, Graveyard Keeper will probably not win many new players to the genre thanks to its confusing tone and fixture on arcane busywork.

The first question for a mobile adaptation is: how are the controls? In menus, you get to tap and scroll through interface elements directly, but in the game world you use basic on-screen buttons and a static d-stick instead of swipe-anywhere controls. The d-stick is better than many, especially as it features an animated bounce back when released that visually reminds you to replace your thumb in the center.

It’s fiddly, though, and perhaps a little too sensitive, and I often found myself stuck on scenery or walking around objects I just wanted to approach. It seems to me a system where movement were locked to a grid might work better. There also seem to be a few too many buttons. The ‘work’ and ‘select’ actions could be combined into one control, since work is always held down for several seconds and select is always merely tapped. With a swipe for the rarely-used attack command, the devs could reduce the on-screen controls to a mere menu button.

Unlike similar management games like Stardew Valley, Graveyard Keeper doesn’t have daily tasks to give rhythm to march of time. Certain events, like meeting important characters that only happen on particular days, are about as far as it goes. Compounding this problem, the game uses a weird alchemical-symbol system to track its six-day week, making it impossible to hold in your mind when things need to get done. Is the bishop free on male-symbol day or on sun-day?

Instead, Graveyard Keeper‘s tasks are long multi-step processes that inevitably require a lot of time grinding for experience or materials and building one of seemingly dozens of crafting stations. I played for days and only buried one body, occupied as I was with making every part of every tool out of logs, rocks, and raw iron. Then there are tech trees for gardening, preaching, and writing books among others, three different kinds of skill points, and “faith” and “science” are resources in themselves. There’s a certain zen to it at times, but at other times it feels like a lot of busywork. That said, there’s a great deal of freedom and an awful lot to do, so if planning out long multi-stage tasks is your jam, you’ll love it.

Tonally, the game is strange. It wants to be both goofy and morbid and it works sometimes, especially when the game uses its medieval setting to satirize modern life. The funniest part to me was the unending bureaucracy of stamps and permissions required to get anything done in this supposedly-medieval town. A good joke, but also one that’s frustrating to deal with from a gameplay perspective. I can’t sell this bit of meat I took from a cadaver unless I bribe a thief for the right stamp? Are we just going to gloss over the cannibalism aspect of this situation first? Part of the problem is that NPCs don’t have strongly-defined personalities beyond one-note jokes. (The skull is a drunk. The donkey is a communist.)

There’s clearly a bit of Monty Python and the Holy Grail influence here, but the Pythons had the good sense to satirize the ignorance and bloodlust of a witch trial but then cut away before the actual execution. Not so in Graveyard Keeper, where your protagonist watches a burning without comment and is then tasked with putting up flyers for the next one. It’s darkness for its own sake, and rather off-putting.

Graveyard Keeper is a full-featured, PC-quality indie game, which is enough of a rarity on mobile to make it worth a glance. Fans of crafting will probably find a lot to like in Graveyard Keeper‘s incredibly baroque skills tree and endless tasks. It would be a good game for zoning out and listening to podcasts on a long plane trip. Players who are not on board the crafting bandwagon should probably try something like Stardew Valley.

What happens when you take a popular board game and strip away the multiplayer elements for a lore-rich experience? You get something like Talisman: Origins, which is Nomad Games’ latest take on the challenging tabletop adventure Talisman.

This new expedition into the Talisman board game universe has been tailored for solitaire and has been specifically designed to offer a similar experience for anyone who may not have the friends or interest in playing with others. And while it’s a great way to offer a crash course in Talisman history, it’s a bit bizarre to take away the multiplayer elements of a board game where it’s so ingrained in the DNA. While it contains several solid features that make for an entertaining affair, it all feels a bit directionless in the end.

The game is based off the Revised 4th Edition ruleset, and you can choose from 12 unique characters across your journey as you explore a vast expanse of lore. The 12 Talisman characters that you can take on for each campaign include the new Great Wizard character, which is exclusive to Talisman: Origins. He’s pretty cool, but with that in mind, if you prefer, you can also take on the role of the villain instead. It’s up to you. There are 7 total books with around 5 quests in them apiece to complete. Each quest is broken down into 5 to 7 challenges that you can take on once the original quest has been completed.

Essentially, these are mini campaigns that each recall a period of narrative throughout Talisman‘s history. Ever wonder how the legendary Crown of Command was summoned into being? You’ve got the chance to learn all about that (as well as the intriguing Lord of Darkness as well) as you power through each campaign book.

On the left side of the screen, you have several pieces of helpful information about your character: Strength, Life, Craft, Fate, and Gold as well as your Objects, Followers, Trophies, and Other cards he happens to have. You can also find your character’s alignment here, which tends to stay at Neutral if you commit fairly Neutral acts. This can change over the course of the game to Good or Evil as well.

The board itself, which can be a bit difficult to discern, is split into three different regions. Typically you’ll begin your journey in the Outer Region, which you can move in either direction around the board. Then you have the Middle Region and Inner Region, which will come into play as you roll the dice, make moves, and get further into your game.

To move, you roll the dice via quick tap on the right side of the screen. After you determine the amount of spaces you’ll move, you can tap on a space to move there immediately. The game will highlight spaces on the board that you can move to, which takes away some of the fun of tapping around and exploring for yourself.

If you’re not sure what will happen if you decide to go there, the game will help you out with a quick explanation at the bottom of the screen that helps to further explain. And if you don’t like your roll, you can always use something called a Fate Point to try it again, but you’re stuck with the consequences with the second try if you end up not liking that one, either. Luckily, you can earn Fate Points back at other areas on the board if you end up needing more later on.

Combat is interesting enough, but it plays out with random dice rolls in the background – and because it’s essentially AI working to take out your character, you never feel as if you’re particularly in any peril or have a reason to try your best to devastate the enemy. But in the end, you’re not really strategizing, even though you’re continually drawing cards to make a great hand and trying your best to overtake the AI. You’re just playing against a computer and hoping the game of RNG you keep playing turns up in your favor.

Even with the handholding of the game’s first helpful tutorial and subsequent help windows, I still found some of the rules a bit obtuse – and, dare I say it? – not all that fun. Beyond that, while I followed the rules to a T and ended up learning quite a bit more than I already knew about Talisman along the way, it simply isn’t as exciting without other players involved. I did appreciate the attempts at bringing additional bits and bobs of lore into the mobile sphere and the thought that went into putting together a solo version of the popular game, though.

When you have no opponents to play against, suddenly the stakes are nonexistent. You’re playing against yourself, and while it’s intriguing to see the game’s lore play out in the background, there isn’t much going on here to truly hold your attention. I frequently found myself zoning out through a few “decisive” battles, feeling well and completely exhausted  after finishing up some of the campaigns that felt like a little too much like work to be entertaining.

That’s where the issues with Talisman: Origins lie. Mechanically, it’s not a terrible game. It isn’t a low-quality title by any means. It doesn’t feature free-to-play trappings or ads. All told, there’s around 40+ hours of story content and quests to play through, with around 100 challenges you can complete throughout the narrative. It’s just boring, and it desperately needs the spice that’s added by playing with others, or at the very least an exciting AI. As it is, it’s a lot like eating plain old piping hot oatmeal when you wake up on a winter’s day. It’s hearty and it’ll warm you up, but it lacks the panache that adding fruit or cinnamon would bring.

If you’re intrigued by the Talisman board game universe and want to get on board, Talisman: Origins isn’t the worst way to jump in, but if you’re looking for a more engaging tour through the series, you might want to actually try a game with other people first.

There is no shortage of card-based games on iOS (or Android). From straight up trading card games, to games that use the randomness of card drawing in some aspect of its design, there’s just something universally satisfying about drawing from a deck and taking your chances. In many ways, Void Tyrant isn’t that much different than many of its contemporaries. But like the Uncharted series on PlayStation consoles, Void Tyrant is more concerned with perfecting well-worn design features than innovating them completely. 

A mysterious chaos pyramid has appeared at the edge of the solar system. It’s locked, its keys scattered across disparate planets, each granting both power and madness to their inhabitants. You must gather the keys, enter the deadly structure, and put an end to whatever is causing the malevolence. It’s a story that is both familiar, but resonant enough to climb onboard with quickly.

The “you” in this game is a character that gets randomly rolled at the start of each run. They are a mix of various races, classes, and passive attributes that make each character hold a specific sort of uniqueness each time. Sometimes, these variables can change some interactions with characters or environments you’ll encounter in your run. If you draw a race that can see in the dark, then wandering off of the beaten path into a spooky cave won’t be ominous for you.

The act of traversing these worlds in search of chaos keys is standard first person RPG fare. Every step takes you into a new encounter, which could be a monster, trap, or treasure. Every once in a while, you’ll have the option to turn left or right, but rarely do these paths branch farther than a single screen.

When you do stumble across a monster, that’s when the signature blackjack-style combat goes down. You and your enemy have a deck of 24 cards, each with a number of 1-6. While drawing, your goal is to get as close to 12 as possible without going over. The side who is closest wins, and gets an amount of attacks against their enemy equal to the difference between both numbers. Pretty simple stuff.

The many ways this basic concept gets modified is where combat really shines. Each combatant has another hand of cards full of spells and abilities. These either take effect when you win a round, or immediately. They can alter the count of your draw, add extra attacks if you win, put status ailments on your enemy, etc. Using all of these flairs strategically is when Void Tyrant feels most like an RPG. Analyzing your draw total, how many cards you’ve left to pull, and where a useful ability might fit into that equation is a rewarding exercise. The sort of risk taking aspect of playing around the draw is rewarding as well.

That said, combat can also feel arduous. Sometimes, you’ll find yourself in minutes long stalemates with enemies. Making the “right” decisions can put you in a holding pattern for what feels like an endless amount of turns. Especially against bosses, you could spend just as much time sticking and moving around the enemy as it did to get all the way to them.

That and the randomness of the game can truly feel unfair at times. More often than not, enemies that are supposed to be tough seem to always draw favorably, and you always seem to come up short. This isn’t to say that the numbers are being actively fudged, though. It’s more to draw a parallel to Void Tyrant’s casino counterpart. Just like you may feel like you’re caught in a bad card patch at a 21 table, you can feel that same bad energy against a big, icy, armored beetle.

Another pretty demoralizing thing can be playing the free to play version of this game. It’s heavily ad supported, which means almost everything will involve watching an ad to take part of. Getting bonuses from spirits – little npcs that grant you bonus currency, card packs, and extra lives – involves watching an ad first. Journeys on planets can be impeded every few steps by ads. It’s truly an annoying experience.

More than that, there are parts of the game that suddenly began to appear after I upgraded to the premium version. Side paths that used to just be a single treasure chest or monster encounter suddenly became doorways to whole new mini dungeons. I can’t confirm whether I passed a particular in-game threshold to open these up, or if it was a premium exclusive feature.

Many of the variants for your hero character is locked behind lots of grinding. Certain quests have to be completed before unlocking new classes or races. These quests can consist of killing a certain number of creatures or finding a number of a specific item. Many of these quests can only be done on specific planets, and can’t be done in one run. Also, you can’t just replay a specific planet without either cancelling your run prematurely, or finishing it to the end. You’ll play as a human knight for a large bulk of your early experience, which feels like a very narrow view of what this game has to offer.

If you can stick with it (and are willing to drop the approximately $5/£6 for the premium version) then Void Tyrant may very well be your next favorite iOS RPG. It’s clever, if not ground-breaking, take on the blackjack combat trope, as well as fun utilization of rogue-like mechanics, makes Tyrant a unique experience on the platform. It bogs itself down with the pacing of its free to play ads and the natural ebb and flow of card-based randomness. It also hides a big swath of its customizability behind arduous grinding. But if you have time to grind, Void Tyrant is worth the investment.