Category: Game Releases

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, in the world of mobile gaming…

Out Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sales

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

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

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