Android Games Thread

Games
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After entirely too much effort considering I basically never play Android games I’ve mostly decided what I’m gonna burn my Amazonbux on. Which I’m posting here because… Uh… I don’t have a good reason. VIDEOGAEM

Stuff I’ve already grabbed:

Tales of Illyria 1 and 2. Got them from other promotional coupons on Amazon. Messed with 1 a bit. S’ok. Would have been happier with less RPG and more fantasy Oregon Trail but eh.

Cyber Knights and Star Traders. Both seem grindy as hell and quite ugly, but both also seem like pretty enjoyable sandboxes with nice gameplay. Not sure when I’ll be in the mood to play them since I’m not much of a tablet gamer but they both grabbed my interest.

Empire. Messed with it a little. Not entirely sure how I feel about it. I like the idea of just about everything, but when I was actually playing it I wasn’t having a particularly good time. It’s possible it’ll click with me later since it’s my ideal tablet game type (Score-attack strategy that can be played slowly/is turn based so you can put it down easily) but I dunno.

And then the things I’m probably gonna burn my last $27 in funny money on and I’ve been debating entirely too much:

Elder Sign. Played it on someone else’s tablet. Right up my alley. Probably going to go the whole $13 hog for the game and all the addons. Only been debating it since that’s damn pricey considering how little I use the tablet, but with Elder Sign I actually would a bit and it’s pennies from heaven anyway.

Plague Inc. Definitely at least the $1 normal version, possibly spending $6ish to unlock the two expansion diseases of zombie-itus and mindworms. Might get old after a while, but score attacks and scenarios might keep me going.

Rebuild. Feel kinda gross about buying a free browser game, but it’s possibly the best browser game I’ve played, and I may have had $3 of fun with the free one already. Again, good score attack easy to put down strategy.

And then the $4ish left is somewhat earmarked for the Witcher board game thing. Since it’s Fantasy Flight same as Elder Sign I’ve got high hopes, but since I haven’t seen any good previews of the boardgame yet I have no idea what the gameplay’s like.

Few other things I was considering but I’ve mostly knocked off the list for the other games are Summoner Wars (Played the demo, seemed enjoyable but the AI didn’t give a good impression and I wouldn’t ever be playing with people), Neuroshima Hex (Mainly knocked off because they don’t have a non-Kindle version on the Amazon store), and Out There (Knocked off because it’s for sale on the Humble store, which leads me to believe it’ll be bundled, which I’ll probably pick up because I usually scoop those Android bundles up).

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If you don’t play games on your tablet very often, for $2 more you can get the Windows version right here. If you’re willing to wait you may get it even cheaper during the Summer sale.

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@Squee:
Thanks for the summary.

I’ve been eyeing Tales of Illyria for a while, so I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts if you keep playing it.

I’ve not tried Cyber knights, but I’ve played the free versions of a few other Trese Brothers games (Space Traders, Heroes of Steel, and the Space Hulk ‘Templar’ game). I have mixed feelings about all of them, but I do appreciate that they put a lot of writing into some of their games (both Heroes of Steel and Templar seem to have missions with some dialog and other narrative bits to add some context to the simple TB battles). Star Traders didn’t seem that great to me (too many menus full of uninteresting choices and–as you say–it seemed like a grind). But I might need to give it more of a chance.

Rebuild is great, and I think its format is great for a tablet. I only played and beat it once, but I’m happy having it on there for airport-layover emergencies.

I didn’t know about a Witcher boardgame for Android. I’ll have to keep that one in mind.

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I had been planning on picking that up for a while now, but since Amazon threw credit at me I’ll probably just scoop up the Android version anyway. Especially since I heard the PC version wasn’t anything special, just higher res. And hell, given a good sale I might double dip for PC.

Few more things I can tell you about Tales of Illyria, you might know that the combat is (Mostly) automated, but what you might not know is that if you fail a combat and restart it it fudges the dice rolls in your favor. If you fail that one, it increases again, etc. Doesn’t bother me too terribly but I could see people being annoyed by being able to just brute force the game. The consequences for all your choices seem to be immediate too. What I’ve played so far didn’t have any choices that might change encounters later, the choices were all of the “You get the pot of gold/you broke your hand!” sort. Writing wasn’t doing anything for me either. Might be sounding a bit harsh on it, but like I said after messing with it a while I kinda wished that they focused more on the fantasy Oregon Trail aspect more than the RPGing. Managing resources and moving around the map with random encounters is the best part.

And as for the Witcher boardgame, here are a few links. Both the actual boardgame and the Android/ios versions are supposed to be sometime late this year as far as I know.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=258&esem=1

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Ah, I did wonder whether it was more visuals than involving puzzles. It’s one I’ll check out at some point I’m sure; I never know how I’ll fall with these things.

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The Amazon App-store has a ton of apps for free right now, including Sonic 2 and Dungeon Village.

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I’ve been playing a lot of Magnifico, which was released for the ipad as Da Vinci’s Art of War. It’s very good boardgame adaptation, with strong A.I. that will kick your butt.

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Also some Adventure Time card game is free on the Amazon store.

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I just noticed that X-Com: EU came out for Android last April. Anyone played the android version, is it worth the $10? (I really liked the PC version, but I’m not sure I’d want to play it again on my 8" tablet.)

Edit: here’s the link.

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If it was XCOM with the EW expansion it would be worth it, but it is just the original so you’d be playing the exact same game. It is a good port though.

The expansion also adds a random skill level up option for soldiers which is a lot of fun and a great option for a second playthrough. Wish they’d skipped to that.

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Huh, that’s weird - the iOS version includes EW.

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Hmm, yeah, having played through both EU and EW on my Mac I don’t feel super compelled to go back to just EU again. Oh well.

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Star Traders 4X Empire. A strategy game this time, not an RPG.

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Here’s TouchArcade’s review of the iOS version.

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Looks like android has Star Realms released for it! ios is due in the next week or so.

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Star Realms even runs well on my backup phone, an LG Optimus L5 E610 with a 800 MHz CPU and 512 MB RAM. Only thing is the crappy display which makes things hard to read (4" 320x240), but the game is still very playable. So if someone wants to try an async game, just send a challenge to Brakara.

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I wish more of the better Android games will show up in the Amazon app store. I got about $30 in Amazon coins and no where to spend them.

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Amazon’s Free App of the Day is Templar Assault.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006C5FWH8/ref=mas_fad_img/178-6642166-0515356
It’s one of the Trese brothers games. Basically a clone of Space Hulk (i.e., a tactical TBS game where your space marines have to spend APs to turn and you’re fighting down narrow corridors against an endless string of Xenomorphs).

I’ve had the free version for a long time, and it’s been on my ‘I’ll probably buy this someday’ list, so I almost felt guilty taking it as the FAotD. The tactical combat isn’t my favorite, but it has some basic RPG elements and little campaigns with stories and dialog to make things more interesting.

edit: Ooo. And now I see that the Trese brothers have something new called Star Traders 4x Empires. The Elite version is $4.99, which makes it their highest priced app ever I think. I wonder if it’s 4x-amazing enough to justify the price? http://www.amazon.com/Star-Traders-4X-Empires-Elite/dp/B00KXW1N56/ref=pd_sim_mas_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=08Q7KYNNSQNEJ47054QD
edit2: I guess Kildar and GingerYellow already covered this up thread.

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Amazon’s freebie of the day is Steve Jackson’s Sorcery!

A few more Amazon freebies (Not sure how long they’ll be free) worth grabbing are Carcassonne and Sonic and Sega Allstars Racing. Not really sure on the Sonic game but Carcassonne at least.

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Speaking of Amazon, the just-launched Wayward Souls is there for $5 / 500 coins, with a 150-coin rebate, making it significantly cheaper than the Play store version and a good outlet if, like me, you collected the various free-coin deals recently and then had a hard time finding good stuff to spend them on.

The game’s elevator-pitch is “Spelunky meets Secret of Mana”, and it got great reviews. I’m liking it a lot after the first hour or so.