New game releases.
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Many people would agree that The Castles of Burgundy is board game maestro Stefan Felds’s finest achievement. It sounds simple enough; roll two dice and take two actions that are dependent on the numbers rolled. However, players will quickly discover that this modest premise hides a surprising amount of depth and a variety of different routes to victory.
CoB is a settlement building game in which the players acquire and place small hexagonal tiles onto their player boards. These boards are divided into regions of different colours. The blue areas, for instance, represent your overseas trade, whilst the light green spaces are for agricultural development. Players begin each round by rolling two dice; they then use the values of these dice to carry out two actions. A player can use a die to take a hexagonal tile from the correspondingly numbered depot. The newly acquired tile is then placed into their store, which can hold a maximum of three tiles. By spending an action a player can transfer a tile from their store to their settlement board. The space on the board has to be the same colour as the tile and must also show the same number as that of the die used to complete the action.
The tiles themselves have a range of different powers. When you place a blue ship tile you have the opportunity to take some trade goods and also move forward on the turn order track. Going first can give you a real advantage, as in every round each depot will only have a limited number of tiles available. The dark green castle tiles are very powerful; when they are placed on the board the player gets to immediately take a free action, grabbing or placing any tile without having to consider dice values. You place animals in light green areas. To maximise the point-scoring potential you will want to place animal tiles of the same type in the same area. The grey areas are reserved for silver mines. At the end of every round, each mine will produce silver. This resource is extremely useful as it allows you to purchase additional tiles from the black market without having to expend an action.
The other two colours of tiles offer more complicated options. The brown spaces are for buildings; there are several types, each with its own special ability. Build a warehouse and you can immediately sell some goods. Normally, to sell goods you need to use a die that matches the value printed on that particular type of good. Trading is a great way of earning both points and silver. Construct an inn and you get four workers, each of which will allow you to modify the value of a die by either plus or minus one. At a push, you can spend one of your precious action die to get workers, but in this instance, you will only gain two of them.
The yellow tiles represent knowledge and fall into two main types. Some will give you end-of-game scoring opportunities, such as awarding extra points for constructing a particular type of building. Others will allow you to bend the rules, modifying dice rolls and giving bonuses when you carry out specific actions. In a neat design feature, the yellow tiles that you own are also displayed along the edge of the board. This means that at a glance you can see your special abilities and end-of-game targets.
CoB has plenty of moving pieces and fitting all of this information onto a small screen must have presented the creators with a real challenge. Happily, it is one that the designers have managed to pull off with aplomb. It may not work as well on a phone, but on a tablet-sized screen, the game is very user-friendly. Presentation wise, the game has had a much-needed makeover. The board game was certainly never going to win any beauty contests, with its drab colours and sketchy illustrations. Now, things are nicer, with colourful structures pleasingly rotating into view, cows mooing, chickens clucking and sheep making disturbing strangled bleating sounds. It is very satisfying to watch your settlement spring into life, and although the buildings can be hard to differentiate (a criticism that could also be leveled at the board game), a simple tap and hold will quickly provide the information that you are looking for. At the start of each turn the settlement board springs from a giant iris aperture – it all has a mechanical Game of Thrones opening credits feel. I could have done without the mumbling guys popping up in the corner of the screen every time I take a move, though.
The playing options are going to be recognisable to anyone familiar with Digidiced’s previous releases. You can play a local game with a mix of human and AI controlled players. The AI is a little predictable, having a particular liking for silver mines, but it still manages to put up a decent challenge on the toughest of the three difficulty levels. Other options include fast or slow ranked asynchronous games, as well as the option to play casual online games against friends. It is reassuring that a couple of bugs which caused the game to freeze have quickly been identified and removed.
The Castles of Burgundy is a fairly involved tile-laying game; a two-player local game is going to take upwards of forty-five minutes to reach its conclusion. It is not as complex as something like Terra Mystica but is certainly a lot tougher to get to grips with than Carcassonne. The excellent interface means that players familiar with the board game will be able to jump in and play straight away. New players will have to invest a considerable amount of time going through the comprehensive tutorials, but it is well worth the effort.
Player interaction is limited to grabbing valuable tiles before your opponent does, but it is amazing how just two dice rolls can open up so many choices. Despite rolling dice, you hardly ever feel beholden to luck. There are ways of modifying dice or other options worth considering. Indeed a big part of the skill is to be able to keep your plans fluid and make the most of your current rolls. In each of the five rounds, the points that you earn for completing an area diminish and the game becomes a very tense race to complete regions as quickly as possible.
This year has been brilliant for board game releases, it feels like there have been as many excellent releases in the past two months as in the entirety of last year and The Castles of Burgundy is yet another essential purchase for board game fans.
Unity just made the following tweet:
Essentially a vulnerability was detected in ALL versions of Unity for ALL versions of the Windows operating system, that enable a hacker to remotely run code by exploiting a security flaw in the Unity editor. It DOES NOT affect games created with Unity and Mac and Linux users are unaffected. Applying the patch may result in rebuilding asset bundles when you first open your project after the patch is applied.
The patch was released for all major versions after Unity 5.6, as well as a mitigation tool for people running versions of Unity before Unity 5.6. Here are the download links for the patches and tools:
You can learn more details about the vulnerability and the corresponding patches/mitigation tool here. If you are a Unity developer, I highly recommend you apply the patch immediately, especially as details of the exploit become more publically known.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0UdSokYPTY&w=853&h=480]
04 Mar 2019
Most of what we’ve heard about The Elder Scrolls: Blades since Bethesda revealed it at E3 last year has come in the form of delays: The original release date of September 1, 2018 has come and gone, and now we’re looking at an Early Access period beginning sometime this spring. But before that, Bethesda will be running a closed beta for iOS devices only, and you can still sign up if you’re interested in participating.
If you’re selected for the closed beta, you’ll be under NDA – meaning you won’t be allowed to stream the game or post screenshots of it, or even discuss the game with your friends. However, Bethesda says you’ll have access to the entire game rather than just an initial slice. (Heh, get it? Slice? Because it’s called Blades?)
In any case, the rough timeline is that the closed beta (which is open to iOS devices only) will run for some time before Blades launches into early access, which right now is scheduled for ‘sometime this spring.’ At that point, Android users (as well as everyone who doesn’t get picked for the closed beta) will be able to join in, but on a rolling basis – so you may not get an invite as soon as early access begins. Early access players will not have to worry about any NDA considerations, so at that point you’ll be able to take screenshots or stream the game, and even talk about it online.
Bethesda has posted an FAQ about the closed beta and early access periods over at the official site, and it includes a full list of devices that will be supported in early access. Here’s the current list:
You can pre-register for the closed beta and/or early access through either the App Store or Google Play. It’s going to be free to play, and you won’t have to spend anything to sign up for either of the test phases. We’re pretty interested to see how well the Big Bethesda RPG experience translates to the small screen – hopefully we don’t have much longer to wait to find out for ourselves.
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Feels like its been a decent week, overall – we reviewed Gem Rush, Knights of the Card Table and Wars Across the World next week, also excellent additions to their respective genres. Content wise we’re a bit a of a crossroads as, apart from just making sure we review things and certain things like our Guides stuff, we’re unsure what else would be of use to the mobile audience.
Mobile gaming in general is changing, and it’s important we try and adapt with it – what form that takes though, is something we’re looking to experiment with – if you have any thoughts or suggestions, do let us know.
Meanwhile, in mobile gaming…
Ideally, we’d already have a review of this live by now, but unfortunately, we got our code a bit last in the day. No matter – Matt’s on the case, and we’ll bring out our full thoughts as soon as we can. Castles of Burgundy is an iconic Euro-style boardgame where players must compete to develop the best holdings in 15th Century Europe. It uses a basic dice mechanic, and there are many routes to victory – the winner is the player who gets the most victory points.
The app sports plenty of features we like to see in digital ports: varying AI difficulty for solo, cross-platform multiplayer, asynchronous and hot-seat options a tutorial and plenty of language options. At $8.99 its at the higher end of the price spectrum, up there with Terra Mystica, but DIGIDICED are a known quantity in digital boardgames, so you can be sure it’ll be worth the price.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7T2H16S2t8?controls=0]
After a two-month stint in early access, this rogue-like deck building game is now out in the wild. It lists Slay the Spire and Pixel Dungeon as inspiration and features retro graphics. We didn’t get a chance to test this one out before today’s write-up, but the game features eight different classes, & ten floors to explore. Changes from the early access version include 20 new cards, balancing to the final three floors, a better scoring system and changes to how Altars work. We’ll bring you our full review as soon as we can.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNiRLskgMp4?controls=0]
Our review for this is still incoming, but while we wait the game’s already been updated to fix some high priority bugs. Namely, stability & performance issues a number of 2GB and 3GB devices have been settled. Along with our review, we’ll be doing a code giveaway sometime next week, so stay tuned!
Everyone’s favourite controversial Tower-Defense RTS received a free content update the other day. The Subaquatic Menace takes you three new stages, where you must help Vez’nan defeat King Polxy and his subaquatic army. Plenty of new content, including new enemies, a new hero and a new tower.
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Also, some of you may have noticed that the PC version of Armello received a big ‘2.0’ updated this week. I reached out to the developers regarding whether or not the update would be coming to the mobile version, and here is what they had to say:
“We would like to, though we are genuinely unsure at this time. The mobile version of Armello is an interesting beast and is very different to develop for. Crunching Armello down into those little devices is a feat that we don’t know that we can undertake for v2.0, and some of the core features, such as many of the menu overhauls, wouldn’t translate seamlessly.
We’re going to evaluate our options and let you know when we can.”
The undisputed best version of Reigns is on sales again, so if you’ve yet to pick it up now might be a good time. Fair warning though – it was cheaper over Christmas, so might be worth waiting for a bigger sales event.
Dark and characterful narrative game Beholder is half price, if you fancy challenging yourself with some really horrible moral decisions.
One of our favourite games of yesteryear – 2014’s Out There, is now selling its ‘Omega’ edition for just a dollar. This is an excellent strategy/rpg game from Mi-Clos, and one every mobile gamer should experience.
Seen anything else you like? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
Dawn of Man is Now Available on Steam and is 15% off!*
Command a settlement of ancient humans, guide them through the ages in their struggle for survival. Hunt, gather, craft tools, fight, research new techs and face the challenges the environment will throw at you.
*Offer ends March 8 at 10AM Pacific Time
Space Engineers is Leaving Early Access, is available as a Free Weekend and is 20% off!*
Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction, exploration and survival in space and on planets. Players build space ships, space stations, planetary outposts of various sizes and uses, pilot ships and travel through space to explore planets and gather resources to survive. Featuring both creative and survival modes, there is no limit to what can be built, utilized and explored.
*Offer ends March 7 at 10AM Pacific Time
Offworld Trading Company – Free Multiplayer is Now Available on Steam!
Stardock and Mohawk Games have announced a new multiplayer client for their critically acclaimed real-time strategy game, Offworld Trading Company, that will allow players to face off against each other for free, even if they don’t already own the game.
The basic concept of Wars Across the World is to take a single set of game mechanics that can underpin a range of different scenario types across history, at varying command levels. The design justification being that the base mechanics only need to be learned once, so that the developers can offer a breadth of battles and campaigns that all follow the same underlying logic, and so can be played in succession without much difficulty.
I was rather sceptical that such a design could both be fun and plausible, but so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised with what has been created. A combination of modern gaming techniques and ease of accessibility make Wars across the World an impressive achievement, and an excellent addition to mobile war games overall.
The company behind this, STRATEGIAE, have managed to find the sweet spot for mobile gamers and very much captures you in the ‘just one more turn’ trap. Whether it was defending Berlin in the dying days of the Second World War, force marching down to London from York in 1066 or desperately trying to seize Sinai whilst holding off the Syrians in 1967, I always needed to keep clicking that button to see what happened next.
The success of this game isn’t down to a single contributing factor, there are a range of elements here that have just been done very well underpinned by a well thought out baseline.
Firstly, the game is incredibly easy to pick up and play. Within a minute or two of installation you are quickly in the front line of the action dragging units around, making political decisions and trying to get some sort of strategic plan together. Within ten minutes you are quickly wondering whether not bothering to read through the scenario notes is really an excuse that will go down well in the Fuhrer’s Bunker and perhaps you are just better off blaming everything on Steiner (Insert Downfall meme video-ED).
Every phase it’s very clear what you need to do as the game highlights units and warns you when you haven’t activated elements. Even better it highlights cards that you could play so you don’t need to wade through endless cards trying to figure out what you need to do. It is so well implemented it ought to be mandatory for every game to copy this style of in-game assistance. Mr. Clippy this is not.
The game is built around an area movement map with strict turn and phase orders, but the designers have not let themselves be restricted or influenced by any specific school of wargaming techniques or traditions. This game is a smorgasbord of mechanics and they come together beautifully. Yes, there were times I didn’t really know what was going on but because I was so immersed in the experience it didn’t detract from the game.
My biggest concern was that I couldn’t see how they could merge such wide ranging historical eras together, let alone combine that with options for grand strategic level and operational level player perspectives all into a single game.
How they have overcome this is through incredible flexibility in their design tools. Units can be given any combat, movement and morale stats that fit the geographical region and the historical/ political situation. As a result not all scenarios are equal in quality, some of them are simply better designed than others. The base game on the iPad comes with a tutorial and a single mission but you are going to have to buy additional scenarios to justify getting this game in the first place.
Apart from the Berlin 1945 scenario ($2.99), the rest of the scenario IAPs are $1 each Everything I tried was worth the app purchase fee, and for this review I played Hasting 1066, Waterloo 1815. Tannenberg 1914, Normandy 1944, Berlin 1945 and Six Days 1967. I thought Berlin 1945 was the best of the bunch; an excellent scenario that had considerable depth compared to the other options, which probably explains the higher price.
I always approached each new scenario somewhat sceptically, doubting that the mechanics I had just been using could work on a totally different time frame I was now loading up. However I continually found that my doubts were unfounded and that it was actually really fascinating to see how different unit types worked in different era’s and situations. It was genuinely interesting to compare how my tanks performed in Suez against how my cavalry performed in 1815 or in 1914 at Tannenberg.
There are nuances to combat which I found strange at first as there are restrictions on unit limits and leader requirements. However these restrictions are designed to abstractly reflect logistical limitations and can occasionally be broken with the right card. Relatively modern armies tended to suffer morale collapse less readily than historical armies but none of the scenarios felt like a grind and there was often a real decision to be made. Most importantly the end result is plausible more often than not.
The AI isn’t a genius but considering that I lost my first four games in a row suggests that the competency level is definitely a fun challenge. Certainly the AI rarely lacks compunction to act, which often kills computer war games for me in general.
Wars Across the World also has an option for hotseat multiplayer and because it doesn’t take more than 1-2 hours (and I finished some in 30 minutes) to complete a scenario so you can easily sit down with a friend/ adversary and play a game or two over an evening or on a journey.
Everything you would want from a modern wargame is here; fog of war, morale, logistics, political considerations, supply, time pressures, interesting investment trade off’s. This is a far cry from many of the other wargames that we see with no real political context or pressures. War isn’t a logical, mechanical odds counting exercise, it’s a disorganized mess in which you simply attempt to act less badly than the people on the other team.
Wars Across the World captures that essence through the use of scenario specific cards. These cards cover a whole range of political and military factors and can be played at a strategic and tactical level during various phases of the game. Each set of cards is different for each side in each scenario and they provide a central part of the immersion that make this game good.
Most scenarios allow you to spend investment points on new units, replacements or cards. This creates interesting strategic dynamics and decision trade off’s. Many of the political elements allow you to buy time in some way or alter the balance of the conflict in the longer term. Some of the political cards impact the opponent, creating unforeseen challenges and friction of war.
Current scenarios range from ancient warfare through to the 20th century and there are more being released. Excitingly there is the option for user created scenarios as well. Wars Across the World straddles a line between offering meaningful depth and decisions, without crossing too much into the territory of hardcore wargames that you might see grace the front page of our sister website. It’s a welcome site in an app store increasingly looking at free-to-play and casual audiences.
At the time of writing, Wars Across the World has the following IAPs, all of which unlock additional scenarios to play within the game:
