As soon as I read that he’d added a turn-based mode I was sold. The one thing that’s kept me away from Galaxy Trucker was the real-time nature of ship construction.
I bought the game, started playing it, and discovered that the single player campaign has ONLY real time ship building. AAAAGGGHHH.
From the Pocket Tactics review:
“For example, the campaign appeared to be done completely in the real-time, simultaneous-play mode, but then I found a planet full of methodical robots and was told that all routes leading off that planet need to be in turn-based mode.”
As far as I can see Galaxy Trucker doesn’t have friend invites, nor does it allow you to set up private games.
TimJames
2846
Yay, a new highly-rated board game conversion with a good iPad port. The landscape looked pretty thin, though I’m just now enjoying Carcassonne.
sharaleo
2847
Also coming to Android at some point according that that thread. Yay!
I’ve been playing the single player campaign and I don’t like it much. The real time shipbuilding ranges from “not too bad” to “I really hate this,” depending on my luck in turning over tiles. With the larger, class II ships, there’s a huge mess of tiles in the center, and I hate pawing through them when they’re all turned over and I’m searching for something, anything, that will fit in the various spots.
The real time building means I generally don’t have any time for real decision making. It’s just throw a bunch of stuff at it and hope that it’s remotely capable of dealing with the trip. Taking time means the other captains take anything I might actually be able to use.
The only reason it’s been tolerable is that on most routes, there’s no need to play to win. Just surviving is sufficient, and that’s usually not hard. It’s quite rare that there’s any real incentive to “win” a route by scoring more than the other captains. The painful bits are when there’s a special mission and simply surviving requires a better ship than I can usually construct.
JoshL
2849
Sounds like a good port, then, since that’s pretty much exactly my experience with the board game.
TimJames
2850
I hate you all! I was looking forward to a fun iOS boardgame.
Maybe it’s better with the action point rules, but for most of the campaign you can’t use them. Multiplayer allows that and has some point to competing, which single player doesn’t.
Tony_M
2852
For what its worth, I’m normally a Turn Based guy, but I enjoy this game alot. I do wish the campaign missions game you greater incentive to win each race though.
Slogged my way up to a Class III license. The bigger the ships get, the more unpleasant the build phase is, and the more likely my ship will be garbage as a result. I gather there’s more to do, but it’s completely unclear as to what, and there’s nothing particularly interesting about grinding away at the various routes to make money which I can’t actually use for anything.
It would have been nice to find the “planet of methodical robots” where there was turn-based building, but I never did, and I don’t see any way forward.
magnet
2854
It is a really, really fun game. I don’t think the real-time aspect detracts at all unless you are a perfectionist. You are supposed to make mistakes while shipbuilding, and part of the game is dealing with the consequences. Unlike many other tile-based boardgames, you can recover even after multiple mistakes. And Galaxy Trucker is one of the few boardgames in which losing is still lots of fun, provided it’s a spectacular loss. There are probably some parallels with Dwarf Fortress…
To me, complaining about the time pressure in Galaxy Trucker is like complaining that you don’t have unlimited time to aim a shot in an FPS. If I really want to take the time to ponder every single tile I place, I would play Tigris and Euphrates instead.
I’m sorry, “you should like it because reasons” doesn’t really work for me. This isn’t a shooter. It’s a ship design game. There’s nothing about ship design that’s inherently about reflexes.
Galaxy Trucker is never going to be a deep game, but it could theoretically be as entertaining as Carcassonne. There are a fair number of parallels there, since they’re both tile-laying games where you’ve got various connection restrictions. If I could actually think about tile selection it’d be a light strategy game, instead of the nearly completely random mess it is now.
magnet
2856
I don’t think I said anyone “should” like any game. I mentioned that perfectionists probably won’t like it. And that wasn’t meant to be a complete list of people who won’t like it. It obviously won’t work for everyone. Neither do FPS games, for that matter.
On the other hand, I think it’s a great game, and I don’t think Tim or anyone else should be discouraged from giving it a chance. It is certainly not meant to be a conventional tile-laying game, and any such expectations should be laid aside.
Galaxy Trucker was meant from the start as a time-pressure game, a common mechanic for party games but rather unusual for Eurogames. It draws more inspiration from Factory Fun than from Carcassonne. The time-pressure mechanic is the main reason it has achieved success as a boardgame - you are correct to note that the actual strategy is pretty shallow. And just as you shouldn’t start playing an FPS expecting a TBS, you shouldn’t start playing Galaxy Trucker expecting a traditional Eurogame. IMHO, you should expect it to be like Hungry Hungry Hippos for grownups.
magnet
2857
Banner Saga is finally out for iOS.
Anyone else trying Card Dungeon? I have very little experience with rogue-likes in general, and only spent a little bit of time with this so far. So I don’t have anything meaningful to say about how well the gameplay card system works (though it seems cool).
The aesthetic is sort of annoying though. The paper cut-out style looks neat at a glance, but I find myself fiddling with the camera way too much to see what I’m doing, where I’m going, etc. Mana and HP should be obvious at a glance, and instead they’re little tokens on the base of you and your enemies’ cut-outs, so if you turn the camera one way to see the room, you have to turn it back (and maybe squint) to see the stats. Keeping track of the dungeon itself is a pain, with no way to zoom out or see a map. Is that an intentional limitation in rogue-likes? The levels are pretty small so far, but I can imagine this getting pretty frustrating.
And even on the iPhone 6, it’s really hard to read a lot of the text. In most situations you can tap a card to see a zoomed in version that’s easier to read, but it’d be nice if the space was better used to save that step. That complaint might not apply to the iPad.
Janster
2859
Gus, they are one of the planets to the right, just at the beginning, they aren’t hard to find.
Thanks, I found them with this hint. Though “planet at the top” is really the landmark, since that has the route to the robots. It’s a quest, but it’s not marked with a nice little flag like the other quests.
On the positive side, the robot mining planet is about the most you can expect from Galaxy Trucker. Ship building uses the action point system instead of real time, the exposed tiles are organized and easily visible instead of a jumbled mess, and you have an incentive to win instead of just survive since you can’t land if you don’t out-score the other ship.
Unfortunately, it’s still a bad game. I hate the Sabotage cards with a passion, since they’re highly random. It’s possible nothing will happen, or that a die roll will spill instant loss. Or conversely, instant random victory, since they can destroy an opponent if you have more crew.
