Category: Game Releases

Considering the massive popularity of real-time strategy on PCs, where StarCraft was the first game to gain such a following as to become a legitimate profession, it’s a bit surprising that there are so few successful mobile RTS in the same vein. That combination of speed, precision, and strategy can be a heady brew, and one that’s hard to distil to a handheld screen. Although you can find a lot of options in our most recent Best Of feature, Front Armies is one game that won’t be joining the list.

At first glance, the game is attractive. The graphics are literally iconic. Each unit and building is represented by a front-facing (thus the title?) non-animated graphic. This is an unusual choice, but not one I’m wholly opposed to, especially since it makes identifying units easy at a distance. That’s a smart choice for a mobile RTS, which too often crowd the screen with tiny little soldiers made of a handful of pixels. There’s also less need for a minimap, since you can zoom in and out in a flash.

Likewise, the gameplay is utterly archetypal of an RTS. Minerals are collected and spent on new stuff, with power plants limiting the amount you can build and causing major slowdowns if you run out of power. There are production buildings for land, sea, and air units. Your basic units are a fast but weak buggy, a tough tank, and fragile but powerful artillery. Build a handful of buildings and you can get a few ships similar to the land units, as well as weak and quick flyers. At the top of the tech tree is a ballistic missile that blows a big crater in your opponent’s base in a very satisfying way.

There’s fog-of-war, but it only has one level, so once you reveal your opponent’s base, you get to continue to see all of their plans (or lack thereof) until you muster your forces to crush them.

Control is pretty intuitive. Everything is handled with single taps to select, move, and attack. Buttons on the side let you select all units on the screen, or order construction of buildings or production of units. To select multiple units, you tap and hold to let an expanding circle encompass the group you want. That’s okay, if a bit slow, as long as you’re basically dealing with two groups at a distance. What’s really missing is the ability to select all units of one type, which makes separating groups in your army a chore.

It’s basic, but, in some ways, this is a game that I think people have been asking for. It has familiar RTS gameplay, with visuals that are attractive but simple enough to play well on a phone. Should be, if not a grand slam, at least a hit.

Unfortunately, Front Armies is missing the most important element of any game: somebody to play with.

There is no online play or matchmaking included in the game, so if you want to play multiplayer, you’re stuck with LAN play. That leaves campaign mode or skirmishes against a computer player. Unfortunately, the AI for your own units and your opponents’ is terribly primitive.

Your units are suicidal, rushing to get as close as possible to the enemy they are ordered to attack rather than waiting at a sensible distance. Thus, without careful maneuvering, your artillery and flyers are useless. They are easily separated from their group, taking bizarre looping paths to destinations. They also easily get boxed in if someone else is going the opposite direction. They sometimes don’t react to nearby enemies until they are taking fire.

The opponent AI is no better. The computers build their bases haphazardly, overproducing structures they don’t need which often block in their own units. They underproduce armies and throw them at you with no apparent strategy. Sometimes one or two units will trickle down from their base to spend themselves on your defensive wall. It’s easy to draw their armies into a trap. If you care to spend the time, you can plink away at their defenses from a distance with artillery without drawing a response. But making use of speed or distance abilities in your units requires a lot of handholding. So why bother when you can easily make tanks twice as fast as your opponent and tank rush them before anyone hits the second level of the tech tree?

I tried a 2v2 team game with an AI teammate and found myself taking over all the responsibility for attack and defense for both of us—which wasn’t even hard. There is only one level of AI competence, so the best way to challenge yourself is just to play against three or more at once.

The campaign makes up for this by stacking the deck against you. You get set scenarios with preplaced waves and groups of enemies to wipe out on maps built like corridors. It does a good job teaching you the basics, but sometimes you don’t do what the game expects and get backed into an unwinnable corner.

If, at some point in the future, Front Armies adds some decent AI, it will be a solid recommendation for a mobile RTS. It’s not innovative, but there’s nothing wrong with the core gameplay and a lot to like. But, without an opponent, there’s just nothing to play.

I am really showing my age when I say that I can fondly recall gathering around my Sinclair Spectrum with a couple of friends for a game of the original Chaos. Looking back, it seems amazing that a few blocky pixels and the odd beep could produce so many emotional highs and lows. Chaos, a multiplayer tactical game of duelling wizards, with its wild swings of luck often led to equally wild swings of mood. However, as soon as one battle ended, and the whining and gloating had receded we were all ready to dust off our robes, polish our wands and recommence battle.

In Chaos, each player takes on the role of a wizard, equipped with a deck of spell cards.  Wizards begin at opposite ends of an arena and must attempt to defeat each other by summoning creatures and flinging fireballs and other spells. The author of the original game, Julian Gollop, went on to become an industry legend. Not so much because of Chaos but for a certain tactical squad-based sci-fi game called Rebelstar Raiders, which was later updated in a game entitled Laser Squad, before becoming the basis for the XCOM series.

History lesson over, let’s take a look at Chaos Reborn Adventures, which is based on the 2015 release Chaos Reborn, a PC re-imagining of the original that was designed by Julian Gollop himself. First off, I should address the randomly generated elephant in the room. The level of luck in the original Chaos may be difficult for most modern gamers to stomach. Magic is an unpredictable business with no guarantees of success. Spells have a percentage chance of success and even the simplest of summon spells can fail. Combat is equally ruthless, it is either kill or be killed with just a single hit required to defeat a foe. With a little outrageous fortune, a lowly rat can overcome a dragon – Chaos is indeed aptly named. This may sound highly frustrating, but it does mean that even when things are not going particularly well there is always the chance of pulling off a miraculous dragon spell, hitching a ride and flambéing all of your opponents.

If all of this randomness doesn’t appeal to you then fear not, because a new lawful mode adheres to more modern gaming conventions. In this mode, spells are cast using mana points and health points replace one-off kills. This makes for a far less frustrating experience and although battles take longer it is the mode most likely to appeal to all but the most diehard of gamers. Whichever mode you choose, you will be able to enter into online battles against other players or compete in offline multiplayer matches. There is also an extensive single-player campaign. This will see you traversing realms, acquiring new skills and taking part in increasingly tough battles against AI-controlled wizards.

Whichever mode you choose, lawful or chaos, there are measures that you can take to improve your chances of success. One key strategy is to make for higher ground, as this will significantly improve attacking and defensive abilities. Another thing to keep in mind is that each spell will have an alignment, either chaos, lawful or neutral. Casting spells will impact on the overall cosmic balance. This means that you can work towards casting a powerful spell by first doing the groundwork by casting lesser spells of the same alignment. Then there is the added brilliance of the poker-style bluffing of the illusion spell. Any creature spell can be cast as an illusion with a guaranteed chance of success. Illusionary creatures move around and cause damage just like their real counterparts. However, if an opponent suspects that your dragon is not all that it seems then they can cast a disbelieve spell, making it disappear in a puff of smoke. The disbelieve spell counts as your spell-casting action for the round, so it pays to be pretty sure that the creature isn’t real before casting it.

Mana is vital to success and some is regenerated each turn; you can get an additional boost by burning any cards in your hand. Mana is also awarded for destroying enemy units, with an added bonus if your wizard lands the killing blow in hand-to-hand combat. Make no mistake, these wizards aren’t doddery old men with beards that still contain the remains of yesterday’s lunch. You can equip them with enough armour and weapons to transform them into fearsome killing machines. Alternatively, you can concentrate on developing your magical skills, staying clear of direct conflict. Mana can also be gathered from locations on the map, tempting greedy wizards to overstretch themselves. Each wizard has a mega spell.  As the name suggests these are very powerful spells, such as conjuring a whole pride of lions. However, they require a huge amount of mana. There is no limit to the number of times mega spells can be cast but each casting becomes progressively more expensive.

In a nod towards modern games Chaos Reborn: Adventures also introduces a deck-building element. Victory results in gold, which can be used to purchase random card packs. The contents of these packs include staves and bodygear.  The type of staff you wield influences the hand of spell cards that you draw before the battle, how many cards you can hold at one time and which mega spell will be available. There is an excellent mix of creatures and spells that lead to a range of different tactical approaches. Because you will start each game with different spells you cannot overly rely on a single tactical approach.

Wizards may only have a limited amount of actions, but the nuances make for a game that offers real depth. There is a six-stage tutorial with various additional challenges that help enforce what you have learnt. You can access the rules at any point in the game and they are presented in a nicely illustrated and well-ordered fashion. This degree of care and attention to detail is something that carries over into the single-player campaign. Each level is a tense race against time, as the archmage will be doing their best to summon enough power to expel you from their realm before you have a chance to overcome them in battle. You get to explore ruins, hire mercenaries, enlist help from settlements and even take over citadels. The citadels give access to long-range realm spells such as clearing fog or even breaching the realm’s palace.

The original Chaos was all about the competition of battling against human opponents. Hopefully, the game’s pedigree will help it to secure the following that it needs to ensure an active and competitive online environment. However, the single player campaign is worth the admission price alone, being both tense and having just enough depth to remain interesting. The developers have cleverly elected to cover all bases to create a game that should appeal to diehards newcomers, solitary and social players alike.

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. Byte for byte this is one of the better editions of the year owing to two standout games, one a tactical combat game and the other an old-school-style RPG. We’ve also got a tabletop to digital conversion.

Out Now 

Chaos Reborn: Adventures (iOS Universal) – Full Review Coming Soon!

A tactical turn-based combat game from the creator of XCOM? I’m listening. Recently ported to iOS so I can play it on my iPad? Now we’re talking. Chaos Reborn: Adventures is a grid-and-card-based combat game akin to Duelyst and Faeria, but in a premium pay-once-and-play-forever package. Combat is between two or more wizards, each armed with a deck full of spells driven magical style and gear rather than any deckbuilding efforts on the part of the payer. It requires good tactical planning thanks to considerations such as line-of-sight and high ground. Chaos Reborn also includes some cool mechanics like illusionary creatures. You can choose to cast a creature without paying its mana cost, which places a fully-functional copy on the battlefield. It’s able to attack and be attacked as normal, but, if the opposing wizard chooses to disbelieve the creature it disappears. Disbelieving is a free action if successful but costs the wizard their ability to cast another spell that turn if they are wrong, so it creates some interesting bluffing circumstances and yet another strategic layer.

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Chaos Reborn has a single-player campaign mode as well as online duels against another real-life human where you can choose live or asynchronous action. The AI is actually good and puts up quite a fight, especially as you work to ascend the game’s learning curve. As to that, I highly recommend playing through the tutorial. It’s long but does a nice job of layering in complexity as you go and is a good initial challenge in its own right.

Chaos Reborn: Adventures is a well-designed game and absolutely worth picking up if you love the tactical crunch of games like XCOM and Duelyst. The variety of different creatures and spells—a forest of crystal trees with a chance to transform into elven archers for example—should ensure the game remains compelling for quite some time. The premium price, with no packs to buy, is icing on the cake.

Vampire’s Fall: Origins (iOS Universal and Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

The king is dead, and without heirs his kingdom disintegrates into warring factions. A dark force grows in the power vacuum, The Witchmaster and his army threaten all in their path. Your village, Vamp’Ire, decides to raise a militia and you volunteer. Things…do not go well, and you’re left changed and seeking answers about what happened to you.

This is the setup for Vampire’s Fall: Origins, an old-school indie RPG built for mobile. Aside from the main quest line exploring your new circumstances, the game has side quests and plenty of random combat encounters. It’s also full of laugh-out-loud moments due to some witty and often sarcastic dialogue. The combat is good as well and is turn-based with an intriguing combo system. A normal turn allows you to make one attack or use one special power, but every three turns you can unleash a barrage of attacks and special powers limited only by the amount of energy you have available. It’s quite fun and adds an entertaining tactical layer to planning your attacks and energy  usage.

As you complete quests and defeat foes you gain experience and gold. The former gains you levels and points with which you can improve your abilities and advance your way along three different skill trees called Blood Lines. Each point adds what appears to be a relatively minor benefit, but over the course of a couple levels you can make huge strides in terms of character capability and the blood lines offer a lot of different ways to optimize. Naturally, gold buys gear to kit out your ten different equipment slots (including both main and offhand weapons) and higher quality gear provides special benefits. This all combines for some satisfyingly deep character progression.

Vampire’s Fall: Origins is a surprisingly strong mobile RPG with lots of single-player content, sarcastic NPCs, a PVP mode, and plenty of room to improve over time. It’s built by a small indie crew and is completely free-to-play with no ads or freemium mechanics. The developers plan to add optional IAP down the road to support future development (implementing a clan system is one goal) but are dedicated to not mucking up the user experience. If you’re a fan of RPGs, especially on mobile devices, you should absolutely go grab this one.

Warhammer Age of Sigmar Champions (iOS Universal and Android)

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Champions is a new CCG with the physical game landing on shelves earlier this summer. Now, the digital version has officially launched. You pick one of four Grand Alliances: order, chaos, destruction, and death and go to battle using its champions and blessings. Warhammer doubles down on the two-lane system made popular by Elder Scrolls: Legends. Quite literally, in fact, as there are four lanes, one for each of your champions. The more-unique twist is that turn by turn the champion cards rotate 90 degrees, offering up different effects as they do. The other interesting difference from other CCGs is the fact you can scan your physical cards and make use of them in the digital game.

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Sales

Infinite Passengers (iOS Universal and Android): $.99 on iOS

If you want to simulate running an airline Infinite Passengers has you covered. You cater to customers and attempt to run the best airline in the biz. 

Patchwork the Game (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $2.99/$3.49

Uwe Rosenberg’s two-player quilting game is also on sale on both iOS and Android. It’s easy, colorful, and has a good amount of strategy without being overwhelming. 

Potion Explosion (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $2.99/$3.49

Symbol matching game, Potion Explosion, has a solid solo mode and offers online multiplayer as well.

Cosmic Express (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $2.99

Challenging puzzle game Cosmic Express has reached its lowest price ever. It’s about finding the best train route for a series of space colonies. It’s a lot of fun and worth a look for puzzle fans.

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

When it comes to real-time strategy, the mobile marketplace has big shoes to fill. From Age of Empires to Command and Conquer and Starcraft, the frantic blend of actions-per-minute with grand strategy, the macro- and micro-management required to play this genre at peak performance has inspired many a gamer.

The internet is great, but we don’t always have access to it. Here are some of the best strategy games you can play while offline.

It also presents something of a design challenge – the concept of APM needs to be carefully applied to a touch interface so that players don’t get overwhelmed. Even on-the-go offerings need to provide that similar thrill, with various settings, mechanics, play-modes and distinct pacing.

Here are the best RTS games for android, iPhone & iPad.

Autumn Dynasty

Developer: Touch Dimensions
Platforms:  iOS Universal, Android
Price: $1.99, $4.99 

Autumn Dynasty has campaign progression and a bare-bones story to push the action forward with some serviceable if dull reasoning, but what really makes it shine are the battles. Unit types include simple categories like cavalry, pikemen, archers and catapults but this simplicity is complicated by the rock-paper-scissors relationship between them.

In the heat of battle, single moments of positioning and command become crucial, and this constant feeling of decisive command is what makes Autumn Dynasty such a fulfilling RTS title. Its sequel, Autumn Dynasty: Warlords lost some of the pure force and tension of the original in favor of adding map objectives and 4X elements, but the first game is still the best. This one is for all intents and purposes an Android-exclusive, for the developer’s whole portfolio was wiped out with iOS 11 Appocalypse. It works, but only selectively on older Apple hardware.

Auralux: Constellations (Review)

Developer: War Drum Studios
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: Free (IAPs)

Auralux is generally brilliant and wickedly simple. Glowing orbs skip across the void of space to do battle over planets, which in turn spawn more orbs for the controlling player. Gestures are dead simple, tapping to select and dragging to assign. There is only one type of ‘unit’ and one objective: take over the entire map. From these givens, Auralux has some intense, hair-pulling and nail-biting levels where the odds are almost ludicrously stacked against the little player that could.

The ‘constellations’ in the title are simply clustered series of levels, each with a gimmick mechanic which must be understood and utilized to power through said levels. The game shows its age a bit, but it also demonstrates how a simple idea with excellent execution can stand the test of time. Another bonus is the variable speed setting, which makes the action go from hyper to sedate, depending on playstyle. Local multiplayer is a nice plus, but the game’s primary draw is solo play.

Mushroom Wars 2 (Review)

Developer: Zillion Whales
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: Free (IAPs)

Mushroom Wars 2 has sent its spores far and wide and proliferated grandly for its efforts. (The series has successfully spawned a sequel and premium versions for the PC and Switch, that is). The soldiers in this battle hail from the kingdom ‘Fungi’ and are constantly churned out by villages as players send them out to capture new turf or perhaps take on a boss. The original’s formula was much the same, but this one adds heroes who function as commanders with special abilities to give some tactical oomph to the feel of play. 

The art and story are merely perfunctory, but this is ultimately unimportant, because the game itself has fair, crisp actions and a robust ranked multiplayer mode. Those here just for the single-player campaign will find a challenge but also a fair bit of repetition, so be warned that while solo play will season you in battle, multiplayer is where it’s at.

Dominations

Developer: Nexon M
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: Free (IAPs)

Dominations deserves to be loved and known for the quality of play it provides and its relatively tasteful monetization, but unfortunately the quickest way to worm its way into your heart and home screen are comparisons, so let’s get those over with. It’s Civilization meets Clash of Clans, with empires spanning the Iron Age to Space Age, wonders to build, raids to conduct, and all the usual trappings.

So, yes, there is a certain likeness to established powerhouses, but the devil is in the details, and Dominations gets those spot-on. Playing it to a satisfying endgame without shelling out serious dinero will take patience, but Dominations’ emulation of all of recorded human history and conflict is pretty satisfying to stretch out and play in pieces. Of course, human history never before ran on a timer…

Iron Marines (Review)

Developer: Ironhide Studios
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $4.99

The Iron Marines are a space-trotting, world-saving team of elite squads tasked with putting out fires and defeating hostiles wherever needed. The elevator pitch for the game would be Starcraft…in space. There is a home-base which usually has to be fortified and defended, additional refineries to secure more resources, and just a handful of units. 

From these simple, intuitive elements, the game ekes out a good sense of micromanagement and delectable real-time tension. Its enemies have unusual abilities and synergies, and its difficulty is no joke, especially on the higher levels. Yet the game also retains Ironclad Studios sense of long-term planning and strategy present in its tower defense titles. Its next update will introduce a brand-new world, the icy Borealis, on September 27th, but this is just an extra check in its favor.

Subterfuge

Developer: SnappyTouch
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: Free (IAPs)

Subterfuge is exactly as advertised: a subtle, long-term game of expedient alliances and stone-cold betrayals, filled with the irrefutable logic of hard numbers and the soft uncertainty of fog of war. A turn just means giving subs and bases a command which will take hours to fulfil, so while it is real-time like warfare is real-time, in Subterfuge the theatre of war sees its stage advance slowly.

Its scale is just grand enough to be deeply satisfying but be warned that it does take some time investment to get a game fired up. The leaders provide asymmetrical player powers, but even these super-units can be captured and bartered. Barring these modifies and special cases,  the bases and subs are more or less identical. The game is simply a question of position, resources and force, but these factors are always shifting because of the partial information and precarious alliances.

Rymdkapsel (Review)

Developer: Grapefrukt Games
Platforms:  iOS, Android
Price: $3.99

Rymdkapsel is about space-base-building and defense, mostly, but also includes some spatial puzzling a la Tetris and ‘exploration’. Its minimalism is more than just stylistic, going instead to the core of every action, options and goal. Perhaps the most satisfying bit is the constant packing problem for expanding the base.

New buildings can be any type and go any spot the player chooses, but also must have predefined dimensions. (all four unit polyominoes) A tightly knit base might come across as more defensible but reaching and researching the far-flung monoliths gives permanent global passive bonuses. The game is a logistics and timing puzzle with a really keen sense of efficiency and management for all its stripped-down design.

Tropical Stormfront

Developer: Noble Master Games
Platforms: iOS, Android
Price: $3.99

Island-hopping Tropical Stormfront pits the United Democratic Alliance against Order, Discipline and Obedience in a faux-historical struggle across the archipelago. The graphics are deliberately dated and the unit mixture, contrary to every other item on the list, is realistic and accurate. Missions scenarios range from the typical conquest to capture the flag and survival mode.

It’s like a real-time Advance Wars with pretty much no hand-holding, just sink-or-swim gameplay. The touch controls mean a bigger screen is practically a must, for while missing a swipe or tap in another genre would be merely inconvenient, in a game like this it is quite the setback. Still, Tropical Stormfront is a smartly realized real-time-strategy game with staying power.

Anomaly 2

Developer: 11 bit studios
Platforms: iOS, Android
Price: $3.99, $4.99

‘Reverse tower defense’ just means normal protect-and-escort missions, but the moniker is an apt way of conveying the claustrophobic battles and quick wits required to succeed. The ‘morph’ mechanic lets players adjust squad composition on the fly. Variable tools and an expanded suite of power and abilities go hand-in-hand with vexing and varied level design. The game’s five years old but made waves on release for its unusual level of visual pizazz, which has aged gracefully. Most compelling of all is the asymmetrical multiplayer, scored on a point system shared between the attackers and defenders. This series set the standard a half-decade ago, and it still shines today.

Plague Inc.

Developer: Ndemic Creations
Platforms: iOS, Android
Price: Free (IAPs) 

You’re a disaster waiting to happen, a plague carefully evolved to swallow the whole globe in the embrace of black-winged death. Starting life as just a twinkle of a mass pandemic, in an undeserving corner of the world, players pick traits and use evolution points to increase their plague’s rate of infection and severity of symptoms. From the beginning, players must balance virulence against lethality. While the ultimate goal is always to make the earth a human-free zone, this usually requires a skosh of subtlety.

Once the plague is detected and rated a danger to humanity, the globe will mobilize research efforts towards a cure. So the game has a doomsday clock within a doomsday clock. Plagues must spread well enough to get a reserve of points and eventually flip the kill switch. The many varieties of plague types and scenarios give the game massive replayability, and the pacing is surprisingly sedate given the stakes. Still a tense and intense pleasure and the number-one way to strike fear into the hearts of the WHO.

What would your list of the best RTS games on mobile look like? Let us know!