Archive for the 'iPhone' Category

It’s been a long time since I reviewed an iPhone game.  I play plenty of them but, with limited time to write reviews, I usually choose to focus on writing about physical board games.

Cahoots is a trick-taking game with a bit of a difference.  Four players are each dealt cards: 6 suits (colours) and numbered between 4 and 8 with some duplication.  (Suits and colours mean the same thing so I’ll just use the word colour from now.)  Each round, the four players take turns playing a card and do this twice until 8 cards have been played.  The colour with the highest total wins the round.

Players are each allocated 3 colours at the start of the game – I’ll call these scoring colours.  As there are only 6 colours in total in the deck, each player shares each of their colours with a different opponent.

Once 8 cards have been played, the colour with the highest total wins that round and each player who has that colour as one of their scoring colours scores 2 points.  If there’s a tie between colours, all players earn 1 point for each scoring colour that tied the round. Read the rest of this entry »

Apologies for the lack of reviews this last week, I’ve had a lot of work to do (this time designing a freemium game which is very interesting).

I had the opportunity to download and play the iPhone version of Stone Age just before it hit the iPhone store.

I’m really pleased to say it seems excellent. I’ll write a proper review of it soon but the initial impression is that it’s an exact copy of the board game’s gameplay, plus the implementation is very clever.

Fitting everything on a tiny screen is a big challenge in Stone Age as there are lots of different board areas, but this has been achieved very well by displaying the main village areas on one screen and having the resource areas as overlays that slide on- and off- screen very quickly. Also, information about the other players like number of resources and cards held, as well as info on your own position are well handled with info tabs sliding out at a single tap. It’s very slick. Proper review to follow soon.

James.

The Stone Age game app for iPhone has been submitted to Apple and should be released in December.  It’s been developed by Campfire Creations and, from the screen shots so far, it looks very promising.  Stone Age is one of my favourite games (definitely top 10) so I’m looking forwards to seeing how it plays.

Their press release says, “Stone Age: The Board Game will include Pass-n-Play multi-player, three AI opponents, and asynchronous or synchronous online multi-player through Game Center” which sounds great.

The press release also says, “The app will also feature a ranked League Play option for the truly competitive Stone Age players. Campfire is already developing new language support, additional AI opponents, iPhone 5 support, a universal iPad upgrade, and a variety of other features and enhancements.”

Below are some screenshots. Read the rest of this entry »

The guys creating RoboArena – an iPhone and iPad app they’re creating via Kickstarter which is a mix of RoboRally and turn-based X-COM – got in touch with me recently to tell me about their project.  Looks very interesting.  Check out their Kickstarter page and lend your support if you want to get involved.

Check out the details here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bravadowaffle/roboarena-an-iphone-casual-strategy-game (Be quick as there’s only 5 days left to back them.)

Neuroshima Hex on iPhone is a quick-playing well-executed game on iPhone  So, it’s great to see that the same developer (Big Daddy’s Creations) is releasing a puzzle version of the game in March 2011.

Neuroshima Hex Puzzle will contain 100 different puzzles to solve.  I think it sounds like a great idea as it’ll add a new way to play and I do like a good puzzle game especially if it uses a board game.  The iPhone Carcassonne solitaire mode was like a puzzle-mode and worked really well.  So, I’m looking forwards to this.  See the official site for more details.

Through The Ages is Reiner Knizia’s 1998 classic game of camel placement and area control.  I haven’t actually played the original boardgame but have wanted to for some time, so the iPhone game was a great opportunity to do so.

THE GAME
During the game, players place coloured camels (which come in 5 different colours) onto the board in order to score victory points (VPs).  First, players place camels with their leaders on them (one of each camel colour), so long as they’re not too close to other leaders, water holes or oasis.  Once all leaders have been placed, players take turns adding two camels (of any colours) at a time.  Only one camel can be placed on each space and camels must be placed next to camels of the same colour so that coloured herds start to grow (herds of the same colour must not merge).

If a camel is placed on a water hole or next to an oasis, then the leader of that herd gets VPs.  Players also get VPs for any areas that a herd cordons off.  The game ends as soon as there are no more camels of any one colour.  The biggest herd of each colour scores extra VPs for the herd’s owner. Read the rest of this entry »

Battle Line is one of my favourite portable 2-player games.  Consisting of a deck of cards and a few wooden pawns (and even the pawns aren’t totally necessary), it packs lots of punch by posing constant difficult choices and the potential for clever tactical game play.

THE GAME
The basic game consists of 60 troop cards (values 1 to 10 in 6 different colours) and there are 9 flags laid out in a row between the players.  On their turn, a player places one card next to any of the flags from their hand of 7 cards, then draws a new card.  Each player can only place a total of 3 cards next to any one flag.  When there are 3 cards on both sides of a flag, the player with the strongest set of 3 cards wins the flag and moves it to their side.  The cards are compared similar to poker hands: a straight in a single colour is the best, then 3 cards of the same value, then 3 cards of the same colour, then a straight in any mix of colours and finally the total value of the 3 cards.  A player wins the game as soon as they win 3 adjacent flags, or a total of 5 flags. Read the rest of this entry »

The Battlestar Galactica Loyalty Deck is an app that aims to help players during set-up of the Battlestar Galactica board game by FantasyFlight Games.  (If you haven’t played the game, the loyalty deck is the deck of cards that secretly tell each player which side they are on.)

The app’s goal is to make it simple to assemble the correct mixture of cards required for the loyalty deck (as it must have an exact composition) without checking the rulebooks.  With the two expansions available, there are now several factors that affect this composition.  You select the options you want, press the button and it then tells you which cards to combine.

Okay, it may be a nuke to crack a walnut but I like the idea of it.  Also, I appreciate the free app (created by a fan of the game) and think it’s a nice example of what an ap supporting a board game can do.  (Sadly, the Arkham Horror Toolkit app would have benefitted from this approach – see the full review here.)

James.

Want to get Battlestar Galactica Loyalty Deck for iPhone?
Use a link below to go to the App Store.

For iPhone

I was very excited when I saw there was an Arkham Horror Toolkit app for the iPhone.  I’m a big fan of Arkham Horror* – I wasn’t expecting to play the game in an app but I thought it would be something interesting.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Features
The app is a player’s aid with 4 functions:

• Dice roller – As it sounds, this visually rolls 3-D dice with some physics.  Text at the top states how many successes you have rolled and you can set it to count normal successes, cursed and blessed.
• Investigators -You can select an investigator, see all the info that’s on their character sheets and track all their stats.
• Location deck – Pick a map location (or Other World) and you are shown the text of an encounter.
• Maps – Pick a board and view it with zoom in and out functions.

It sounds fine but the biggest problem I have with it is this: What use does it really serve? Read the rest of this entry »

THE GAME
Kingdoms is a tile-placement game by Reiner Knizia which has some similarities to his game Robot Master.  In Kingdoms, players place tiles and their own castles in order to sc0re victory points (VPs).  The player with the most VPs after 3 rounds wins.

Next to the board, there’s a stack of land tiles too which each have values from -6 up to +6, as well as a few special tiles.  Each player starts the game with a set of castle tiles (value 1 to 4) and 1 land tile.

Players take turns placing tiles onto a 6 x 5 grid and a player can either place one of their castle tiles or a land tile.  When placing a land tile from the stack, players commit to drawing it before they see what it is. Read the rest of this entry »