Category: Game Releases

The summer of sport may be drawing to a close, but for many of us the season will start anew on our favourite handheld device. There seems to be no better time to check out the best sports manager games that mobile gaming has to offer.

Not a sports person? Perhaps you’ll enjoy this list of great puzzle games instead!

Better still, armchair sports fans can chill out and enjoy this cerebral selection of sporting simulations without breaking into a sweat. Whether you’r on iOS or Android, a Soccer sycophantic or a Motorsport maniac, we’ve got you covered.

Football Manager Touch 2018 (Review)

Developer: SEGA
Platforms: iPad, Android
Price: $19.99

There is no shortage of mobile football management games clamouring for attention, but the pedigree of the Football Manager series is difficult to argue with. The games predate Arsène Wenger’s appointment as Arsenal manager and have even been recognised by professional football clubs as a valuable source for scouting new players. The Touch games offer a more accessible take on the PC version, with an interface specially designed for tablet devices.

However, this is still a rich and complex simulation with masses of information and options at your fingertips. If you find this just too overwhelming then you can delegate duties, such as training, to your assistant.  As well as the obligatory player roster updates, the latest version has further refined the interface to ensure that information is presented in a more streamlined fashion. There is also a cheaper and even more pared down mobile version for those that prefer to play on their phone rather than tablet.

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 (Review)

Developer: Playsport Games
Platforms: iOS Universal, Android
Price: $3.99

This series scores an easy pole position in the motorsport management genre, and the latest instalment is the best looking and most feature-rich yet. For a sport game on mobile devices, this is achingly beautiful, especially the dioramic race tracks which are just so pretty. But the game has lots of substance as well as style with plenty to keep you busy as the principal of a motorsport team, including recruiting drivers, developing the best cars and investing in your facilities. Once the action switches to the track during qualifying and races you’ll still have plenty of decisions to make on race strategy, car set-up and tyres.

For the third game in the series Playsport Games has added six new championships across GT and endurance races, making it deeper than ever before. As our four-star review suggested, MM3 does a great job of getting players emotionally invested in their teams, with a fine line between winning and losing “A game made up of so many small decisions and menus allows for a surprising amount of excitement. Watching those small dots speed around the screen may not give the surge of pleasure a standard racing game would, but watching your team secure a win, leading to a championship is genuinely wonderful.”

Cricket Captain 2018

Developer: Childish Things Ltd
Platforms:  iOS Universal, Android
Price: £8.99

This series has been around on mobile devices for several years, but without much fanfare, despite being well received by players. Perhaps cricket is more of a niche interest than other sports, particularly among European or American gamers, but this is a must-buy if you are fan of hearing leather on willow.

Cricket management is a very narrow genre, but this game is unrivalled in it with its deep, accurate and comprehensive simulation. Very much the Football Manager of cricket games with its attention to detail, this is packed with features, stats and tactical options that should keep virtual cricket captains happy for many hours.

Football Chairman Pro

Developer: Underground Creative
Platforms: iOS Universal, Android
Price: £2.99

Not so much Championship Manager as Chairmanship Manager. This simple but satisfying simulation puts you at the head of the table in the boardroom rather than being in the manager’s office or dugout. Instead of being the football manager going to the chairman asking for extra funds or more time to build you squad, you are the chairman who makes the decision on the hiring and firing of your club’s manager. If you get that decision right, along with sponsorship deals, stadium development, transfers, contracts and more, you’ll be able to turn your little non-league football team into a major force.

It’s a more basic, quick-playing game than, say, Football Manager but its fast pace allows you to whizz through seasons in minutes and hours rather than days and months, making it great for short sessions on the commute. Despite the simplicity and less detail, it’s still got plenty of choices for you to make as the big boss, and enough addictive power to keep you coming back.

Baseball Highlights 2045

Developer: Peter Kossits
Platforms: iOS Universal, Android
Price: $3.99

As its name suggests this clever card came condenses baseball matches into short bite-sized 10-minute matches. If you are looking for realism then I suggest you move on as this futuristic take on America’s favourite sport has a player roster that includes robotic and cybernetic players. An entire game consists of each player only playing a total six cards, but it still manages to pack in a lot of tough decisions and tension. On your way to the World Series you get to draft new players into your hand, which gives the whole experience a pleasing bubble-gum card collecting nostalgia.

Punch Club

Developer: tinyBuild
Platforms: iOS Universal, Android
Price: $4.99

This may not be a sports sim in the strictest sense of the word, but if you are interested in a boxing-themed game with lashings of 1980’s nostalgia then Punch Club rings all the right bells. You embark on a Rocky-style quest of vengeance by setting up fights, whilst juggling your work and social life.  It is a game that takes more than its graphical sensibilities from the 1980’s, being tougher than Apollo Creed. This means that you will be doing more grinding than a dirty dancing barista. However, it is still a fine game that is well worth checking out.

New Star Cricket

Developer: New Star Games
Platforms: iOS Universal, Android
Price: Free, Offers In-App Purchases

A cricketing themed follow up to New Star Football that is perfect for those who prefer the thwack of willow on leather. You begin your career with a lowly club in your favourite cricketing nation.  Each season you will compete in both 20 and 50 over competitions. Perform well and famous clubs will be queuing up for your signature, you may even get an international call-up. The game does not stray too far from the winning formula of its forbearer. A series of mini-games enable you to improve your skills and have an impact on matches at key points. Gameplay is as equally satisfying in bite-sized spells as it is in marathon sessions, which makes for an ideal mobile game that will have you padding up and heading out to the middle time and time again. 

MLB Manager 2018

Developer: OOTP Developments
Platforms: iOS Universal, Android
Price: $4.99

A realistic management simulation that is based on the well–established Out of The Park Baseball Series. You can choose to either guide your favourite team through the 2018 season onwards, play in a fictional baseball world, populated with fresh players and clubs or even re-enact an historical season from days gone by. Management options are extensive; you set line-ups and call the shots as the game unfolds, negotiate contract, trades and drafts. The mobile version is not as complex as its big brother but still rather demanding. The latest version includes updated rosters and improved AI.

While we realise our recent review may throw into doubt MLB’s place on this list, to be honest there aren’t many decent Baseball apps out there, so for now at least MLB Manager retains its place here. OOTP’s main sin seems to be releasing the same game every time with little innovation, so make sure you do your research before deciding whether or not to buy this.

1st & Goal

Developer: R&R Games
Platforms: iOS Universal
Price: $4.99

Based on a popular board game, 1st & Goal uses a combination of dice and cards to simulate the rough and tumble of American football. Opponents play cards to determine their offensive and defensive strategies and then dice are rolled to determine the outcome. The dice used will depend on the strategies selected.  For instance, if the offensive team chooses a rushing play and their opponents choose a passing defence, then the offensive team will have a big advantage. You can play a one-off exhibition match, compete in the play-offs or embark on a full season. Whatever you decide you will get a game that sticks closely to its board game roots, with straightforward rules, together with tense bluff and double bluff gameplay.

Pro Strategy Football 2018

Developer: Kerry Batts
Platforms:  iOS Universal
Price: £4.99

Considering its popularity, football of the American variety feels very under-represented in games. There are a few arcade-y options and of course EA is present with the usual free-to-play butchering of a great game in the absurdly titled Madden NFL Overdrive Football, but quality management games are few and far between.

The one serious choice is the Pro Strategy Football series, which once again delivered a very solid offering in its 2018 edition and is about to evolve into PSF 2019. It’s a fun and playable coaching game but also accurate and realistic depending how deep you want to dive in. One of the best things about PSF is how flexible it is, so you can have a quick single match or a multi-season career and then on the field you play in beginner mode just choosing the type of play or expert mode in which you can micromanage every player’s role.

It’s a great game for novices who want to learn more about the complexities of gridiron and hardcore players who want to control every aspect of their team.

What would your list of the best sports strategy/management games on mobile look like? Let us know in the comments!

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. This week features new games and sales across five different genres of games… which means there’s something for everyone!

With Gamescom dominating the industry at large these past few days, we thought we’d have a more low-key week: check out our reviews of One More Button and Holedown if you haven’t already. Otherwise, we gave our guides to the Best Rougelikes & Best RPGs on mobile a bit of a dust off. Also, did you hear? Reigns is getting a Game of Thrones spin-off! 

Out Now

One Hour One Life for Mobile (iOS Universal and Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

One Hour One Life for Mobile is a multiplayer survival game where you have to stave off starvation and the cold and craft what you need to survive. Time passes quickly, and the game occurs over many generations. A year happens in a minute and birth to death in one hour, so there’s no time to waste. Civilization has collapsed, and it is up to you, your descendants, and other players to rebuild it. It’s each generation’s job to make things a bit easier for those to come by crafting necessities and securing superior shelter and equipment.

The game is adapted from the original desktop version of One Hour One Life and it’s a really cool idea. I like how each generation builds on the next, not just for your particular family but for everybody playing the game in aggregate. It’s an intriguing micro/macro dichotomy.

Unfortunately, the controls are too finicky for my liking. You do a lot of swiping in one direction or another and it is easy to do the wrong thing. I found myself making multiple attempts to do basic things and needing to do a fair amount of positioning of my avatar a well. I’d wager it gets better as you get used to it, but I’d prefer that controls weren’t an acquired taste. Also, since the game is online multiplayer you can’t wander away from the app for long. If you do you’ll come back dead (from starvation or having disconnected from the game). This isn’t a huge deal if you can make time for good-sized, uninterrupted play sessions.

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Powerless (iOS Universal)

Interactive fiction meets simulation in Powerless, an “interactive doomsday simulator.” The source of the doom is the sun. A coronal mass ejection is hurtling toward earth and when it hits our atmosphere it will disable electronics the world over. It’s into this new world a host of characters awake, and you are put into their shoes to work through a variety of crisis like delivering a baby or landing a helicopter. It’s a compelling post-apocalyptic world and has an interesting variety of characters you can get to know and develop. Worth a look if you’re into the genre.

Rome: Total War (iOS Universal) (Review)

One of the greatest RTS/turn-based strategy games ever is now available on the iPhone. The app is universal, so you can play on either and share games across them, and the developer videos look great. Unfortunately, the universal part isn’t working on my account for some reason, so I’m unable to provide any impressions or comparisons to iPad. I’ll drop something into next week’s Out Now if I can get it sorted out.  

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Front Armies RTS (iOS Universal and Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

Front Armies is a premium real-time strategy game with simple graphics and good but not great gameplay. The limitations are it’s not terribly deep and you can only play against the AI or local multiplayer. Still, it’s not a bad game and is relatively inexpensive. 

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Sales

Project Highrise (iOS Universal and Android: $2.99) (Review)

Skyscraper simulator Project Highrise puts you in charge of the growth and management of a building. You decide how to grow—office space, shops and restaurants, hotels, and more—and work to attract visitors and keep your tenants happy by offering the right mix of amenities. It came out earlier this year and is on sale for the first time.

Transistor (iOS Universal: $2.99)

Supergiant’s RPG hit, sci-fi title Transistor, is on sale for $3. You wield a weapon of extraordinary power as you fight through a futuristic city in this action RPG.

Chrono Trigger (iOS Universal & Android: $6.99)

Yet another great example from our list of best RPGs, Square Enix’s classic dungeon-crawler CHRONO TRIGGER is 30% off. 

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

A quick news bulletin for you this morning – those of you who were excited by the prospect of playing quirky city-builder Tropico on your iPad will definitely be interested in what we’ve got to share with you.

Feral Interactive have put out a gameplay video showing a direct iPad feed. You get a good look at the menu, the graphics and how the interface handles – especially with the touch inputs registering as little circles – which is cool. It’s just shy of fifteen minutes in length, and we’ve embedded it below for you:

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Yesterday, the developers released the long awaited iPhone port for Rome: Total War, making that a fully universal iOS game. Unfortunately Nick wasn’t able to get the iPhone version to download in time for today’s Weekender, so we’ve got no hands-on impressions for you.

Tropico for iPad is due out later this year, before the end of Autumn.

The developers of Reigns & Reigns: Her Majesty could be bringing us a Game of Thrones-inspired sequel/spin-off/license game in the near future.

Our eagle eyed brethren over at Pocket Gamer spotted a tweet from the official Reigns account yesterday afternoon that was nothing but an image – a map of Westeros (as imagined by the TV Show), rendered in the familiar art style of Nerial’s innovative narrative game.

pic.twitter.com/Ibk7tWyAr1

— Reigns (@reignsgame) August 21, 2018

There’s really nothing else to say without needless speculation, although PG noted we’re approaching the 1 year anniversary of Reigns: Her Majesty’s release date.

What do you guys think? Would you get behind a Games of Thrones skinned reigns? Do we think this is officially licensed or perhaps just inspired? Answers on a post-card!

Mobile puzzle games are a dime a dozen. Many take the path of least resistance, despite the genre being one of the most open to innovation and new concepts. That’s why One More Button stands out despite its simplicity. It takes familiar mechanics and turns them on their head to make for a fun, easy-to-understand, and challenging

One More Button is the sequel to the mobile title No More Buttons, a hand-drawn platform-based puzzler with an intriguing control scheme. It’s more of the same interesting design, and could nearly be called the same game, just an extension of the original. With that said, it’s a great twist on typical ‘move this there, now stand here’ formulate that all-too-often permeates on-the-go puzzlers.

The premise is extremely simple. You play a small yellow creature with one eye looking to reach a level’s end goal. There’s only one problem: There are small bright yellow blocks in your way with lots of different arrows on them. They represent the directions your character can move in. The game doesn’t make this explicitly clear at the beginning, so before you start tapping around trying to figure things out, it can be a bit confusing if you didn’t play the first title.

You’ll notice that there’s no on-screen controls to move your character, and you can’t just tap where you want it to go. That’s because there aren’t any traditional controls. Each maze-like level instead finds you tapping on those yellow blocks with arrows on them, because those are also the controls. Pressing on one of the blocks with a right arrow will move your character right, and so on. It’s an interesting deconstruction of puzzle controls that tie up the very way you control the game as part of each stage as a whole, and it’s a refreshing change of pace because of it.

The goal of each level is obviously to reach the exit the end, marked with a block with a lock on it. This is achieved by pushing around the arrows themselves onto special areas on the map with the outline of where the buttons should go or figuring out how to push the blocks away and into areas where they aren’t blocking your path. It’s quite simple to get accustomed to early on as you’re getting your bearings, but then the game throws quite a few curveballs into the mix to keep you on your toes.

Once you’ve become adept at clearing out paths with its rather unorthodox control scheme, it’s time to tackle special unlockable areas and blocks that require you to flip them around, as you won’t be able to slide them on their designated spaces if they’re pointing in the wrong direction. Luckily, tapping on a button offers precise moves, if a bit frustrating since you’re always going to be searching where the other directional controls are with each puzzle setup. But this setup completely deconstructs the way typical mobile games approach control, which is the most admirable part of the whole thing, and something you’ll come to appreciate as you play.

If you make a mistake, unfortunately, you’ll have to simply restart the entire level. There is no undo button for your last move, so if you find that you’ve pushed a block all the way it can go to the bottom of the screen accidentally, it’s stuck there. It’s prudent to try and remember the moves you’ve made because of this, which can be a bit frustrating in later levels. There’s no real strategic reason to exclude a ‘rewind’ step, so it’s strange that the only option is to erase all progress.

While there are also plenty of levels and mazes to solve, each level isn’t very large, and only takes a few minutes to complete. This isn’t so much a negative, but a hope for longer, more complex mazes in any future content instalments or sequels. Since you’ll have to restart levels several times using the ‘undo’ feature, you’ll be spending plenty of time in each one, anyway.

One More Button is a fun experiment in changing the way players approach and think about puzzle games as well as the way they’re controlled. It’s not absolutely perfect in its execution and could use a bit polish for any future iterations, but it’s a fun diversion for a few minutes at a time while waiting at the doctor’s office or on your commute.