Clay
3141
FWIW, I noticed that This War of Mine was pulled from the App Store temporarily while they fix a severe bug introduced in the last update. Should be back next week.
Actually, Warlords is not bad at all. Warlords 2 was a little more robust, but they continue to add more maps and scenarios to the iOS version even years since it was released, which is pretty amazing. So it actually has a lot of content for a little retro strategy game.
How do I get in on the Slack hangout?
The same way I told Rain. :)
See you there!
Dungelot: Shattered Lands is a fun and whimsical dungeon crawler on the casual side. It initially appears very straightforward, but has some hidden depth and decision points. Dungelot 2 went the F2P route and was an unmitigated disaster that had to be pulled from the store. This time around there is a small premium price ($3.99 I think) I believe that contributed to a much healthier and player-focused design philosophy that resulted in a very fun game where the player doesn’t need to guess where and when the F2P microtransaction wall hits.
-Todd
I picked this up because of Pocket Tactics GOTY awards and I nabbed an ipad pro - it’s great on this platform so far. Skipped it on the PC because I didn’t see the appeal of Dungeonkeeper/Eye of the Beholder clone after Ultima Underground supplanted that tech 25 years ago, but it’s surprisingly fun to play a game in this style with modern graphics.
Also works well on an iphone 6s+
For some reason I’m mainly playing FTL again on the platform though.
Dear God, no… It can’t be.
Someone in the YouTube comments already made the joke I was going to make:
“Miyazaki would be spinning in his grave. If he was dead I mean.”
Oh man, Super Tribes is a fantastic little stripped-down civilization game. Don’t be scared away because it’s free. There’s only one $.99 in-app purchase, which is to access an additional civilization to start with. Frankly, I think this is a poor business model for this kind of game–they should have gone premium for $3-5–but it certainly makes it easy to recommend. You’re going to want to pay that $.99, just out of good will.
Hansey
3149
So I’m not sure if I have time to comb 105 pages of this thread, so I’ll just ask the question and hopefully can get some recommendations.
I’m looking for either decent city builder type games (in the Anno/Tropico/Zeus/Pharaoh vein) or Harvest Moon/Rune Factory type games for my iPad. Turns out it’s tremendously hard to google for such a thing, because the vast majority of results are FTP, microtransaction laden (which I don’t object to if done well, but very few are), energy system restricted trash. I would very much pay good money for a “normal” version of either of these two game types, since it seems like both genres would play very well on a tablet.
As an added requirement, they need to be playable offline. I’m going to be on a plane for 9 hours next weekend, and offline entertainment is a must. (It annoys me that I’m enjoying Gems of War perfectly well without feeling the need to pay for things, yet apparently I can’t play the game at all without an internet connection.)
I’m probably hoping for a bit much but… any suggestions?
The best city builder I think I’ve seen on mobile is Townsmen. Now, it IS free-to-play with ads. It’s $3 to remove the ads, which is a fair price for the game. It ALSO has microtransactions. The last time I played, though, they were totally unnecessary. Is it possible they tightened the economy since then to pressure people into paying? Totally. But I think it’s worth a try. It’s an honest to goodness city builder with a unique and pretty deep economy system.
Hansey
3151
Thanks, I’ll give it a try - as I said, I don’t mind FTP or microtransactions if they aren’t too intrusive. And if the gameplay is solid, I’ll happily pay $3 to remove the ads. And a fellow Zeus fan would surely not steer me wrong. ;)
We’re like Ajax! Heads and shoulders above the rest!
I think I’ve just been totally charmed by Train Conductor World, a free-to-play game with two gameplay layers:
- Select a city and play the train-directing game. Trains come in from the side on one of a few colored tracks and you have to draw tracks to get them to the correct track without crossing paths and having a crash. It’s quick and fast-paced but surprisingly compelling. I think the closest analogue is Flight Control, but in a more compressed space, if you can imagine.
- By playing you earn coins that, CrossyRoad-style, let you open packages containing rails. These go on a grid-based map of Europe to connect your current cities to new cities, each of which gives you either a new level to play or a site which generates coins for every city that connects to it.
Let’s address the locomotive in the room: Yes, it’s free-to-play. And maybe I have yet to hit the frustration point. But it feels more like a game that just wants to pace out your play than one that wants to aggravate you into paying. And it paces stuff out by rewarding you in a way I find appealing. Special events pop up on cities periodically and basically make playing that level more profitable one time. You can then keep grinding on it or just come back when the event crops up again.
Monetization comes in a few forms: Video ads are used liberally. If you crash some trains in a level you really want to finish (usually for an event), you can watch an ad to wipe your mistake and keep playing. There are also static ads placed in the transitions between screens every once in awhile. These haven’t bothered me at all, as they are quick to dismiss. Then you can spend cash to get bundles of rails to help you connect cities faster. And lastly you can buy cosmetic train upgrades. If you’re weird.
That whole paragraph probably sounds awful, and if it does I don’t know how to tell you that somehow it’s not awful.
I think I’m won over because so much of the game feels surprisingly polished. The levels are clean bright 3D scenes. The trains bump along with a delightful little cadence. When they crash I’m always surprised at the physics simulation that sends the bits tumbling into the river or whatever. For no reason at all they put weather effects into your levels occasionally! The UI has some odd wrinkles, but they only stand out because the rest of it is so nicely put together.
Is the train conducting bit any better than the original Train Conductor, other than the graphics?
Didn’t play it! I find it really smooth and sometimes confounding, but fun, at least for the last few days.
ADDENDUM: I looked up a video and I think the game is basically the same. Trains are color coded, which seems easier to manage than the levels I was seeing. Also, I think the 3D spaces have maybe given them a greater variety of levels. Might be wrong about that.
TheRock
3157
I’ve been playing Crashlands quite a bit lately…nice to have sync from my ipad to laptop to desktop…fun game and my son is way ahead of me now and I will owe him something soon.
Also, playing lots of Talisman with some of the add-ons. Never played the boardgame but really enjoying this…need to play some online games but hard to find many.
My son got me to download the new Kingdom Hearts game on iOS over the weekend and I’m actually having a ton of fun with it so far. Square really nailed it with the graphics and sound. Overall it feels really polished and so far I haven’t felt any pressure whatsoever to put money into it. That might change at the higher levels but so far it feels very fair in what it’s handing out.
I didn’t know a mobile Kingdom Hearts game had even made it out west. Downloading it now!
Anyone playing RYB? I think I found a puzzle that cheats, but not worth trying to explain if no one else is playing.
Edit: Yes, dev confirmed on Twitter the error in one of the later puzzles.
And if you’re not playing, you should check it out: https://appsto.re/us/OlzV-.i
¢99 for a bunch of satisfying logic puzzles. It’s just deducing which colors to fill in geometric patterns based mostly on incomplete information about what colors a given shape is adjacent to.
Very minimalist presentation, but effective. It does a good job of teaching you as you go.
I did find that one confirmed error, and there were one or two puzzles that felt a little off to me, but maybe I just missed something. Usually if you spend long enough, the next move becomes clear, which grants new information, and if you spend long enough thinking about that, the next move becomes clear, etc. And usually that means there’s a space with enough information that there’s only one possibility, and the challenge is just in being observant enough to notice it and enough and logical enough to deduce it. Once or twice a puzzle seemed to ask me to think several moves/possibilities ahead though, which wasn’t unfair exactly, but they stood out. Like I said though, maybe I just wasn’t observant enough and I was doing more work than I needed to.
In any case, cool game, totally worth a dollar.
