iOS Games Thread

I played it straight for about an hour or two. Enjoyed it during that time, but ultimately it started feel like a huge crafting treadmill.

Is it sad? Or is it just the boy who cried wolf effect in action? People stopped paying attention to him.

I suppose it could be both.

I think it’s sort of sad to see somebody who was a forward-thinking driver of innovation in games be an afterthought. Better to quit when you’re ahead, I guess.

Better to quit before you’ve cemented a reputation for over-hyping and under-delivering.

How did i not know that Telltale’s Poker Night At the Inventory 2 is available on iPad?

Pocket Tactics was kind enough to post a ton of iOS Black Friday sales.

Door Kickers for a buck sounds interesting.

Silent Depth has been released the other day, or something.

Being set in the Pacific theatre, it is supposed to be the Silent Service of the TouchToys. I say “supposedly” because, sadly, the game crashes pretty much systematically on my iPad 2. It plays very fine on the phone, but the phone version is really just a scaled down tablet version with small numbers barely decipherable to anybody not wearing glasses on a regular screen. I still managed to play it a bit, but I wasn’t a fan of the atmosphere being cut on and off soundwise - some screens and briefings are silent, other strangely noisy even though the explosions are supposed to take place 1 mile away, not next door. The soundscape is a major aspect of gaming to me, even more so in a submarine simulation, so I was a bit bummed down.
There were some other concerns to me, like the depth being set manually without any clue as to what the game considers a proper periscope depth being displayed, nor could I see a way to lower or raise my phallic observatory of death manually - so I was pretty much diving and raising the whole vehicle as a mean to stalk targets, out of the fright of my periscope’s trail’s probability of being spotted. I also had some issues with the tactical navigation map and setting courses versus zooming - but I have big fingers.
As those are the early days, I hope it will evolve nicely though. There seems to be the basis laid for a really immersive campaign of Silent Hunter depths.
Meanwhile, though, I will stick to its simpler but also more atmospheric competitor.

Space Marshals 2 (iOS Universal) is on sale for $0.99, an historical low. 64-bit device required.

Lost Socks: Naughty Brothers (iOS Universal) is free for the first time ever.

So, what are some good, true open-world games on iOS?

You have the GTA games – San Andreas, in particular. As much as I’ve wanted iOS games to stick for me, the only one that really has is Carcassone.

I’ve been enjoying Ticket to Ride, Small World, and a little bit of KOTOR. The 13-year old graphics in KOTOR are a little tough to get used to.

The Quest is an open world RPG with great reviews. But the graphics are very old school.


Radiation Island
is open world survival vs zombies and such. Extremely well done. With an adventure mode if you don’t want to constant do battle. And only three bucks.

Follow your own path in an environment of breathtaking beauty and gigantic scope. Explore huge forests inhabited by dangerous wolves, bears and mountain lions. Investigate abandoned villages and old military compounds where zombies guard vital tools, weapons and clues to the secrets of this world. You can even swim and dive, if you can avoid the hungry crocodiles.

Mini Metro is 99 cents. Get it!

My iOS GOTY list!

  1. Twilight Struggle – never expected to like a Cold War-based game, but I’m hooked on this one. A spectacular implementation of an acclaimed boardgame, with great asynchronous MP and solid SP.
  2. Pathfinder Adventure Card Game – I like it better than the boardgame as it does the fiddly work for me; non-annoying freemium model (haven’t paid a penny yet)
  3. Imbroglio – roguelike genius, totally addictive
  4. Crashlands – took out the work of survival games, left in the fun
  5. Lost Portal – great CCG

My own is quite similar (disclaimer: most of these might have been released in the past few years, and I just played them this year for all I know!)

5 - Baseball Highlights: 2045 (tablet) - It has been my “leading to sleep” companion since this summer. It is the port of a very relaxing baseball themed card game, with a nice routine to it but also some thinking. The computer opponent is adequate, and I have been grabbing each and every expansions as soon as they got released.
4 - King Rabbit (phone&tablet) - An amazing and very elegant semi-action puzzle game (the action part can be… manipulated) with sometimes various solutions. I absolutely 100%ed it, and can’t wait for new levels. Was payware, is now free to play with zero ads, I think?
3 - Imbroglio (phone) - It’s a Michael Brough game, meaning it is as unimpressive at first as it becomes captivating and headhurting when you finally understand how the systems interplay. The engrossing loop of building and refining a layout that allows you to chase hi-scores got an appeal that is very strong for me.
2 - Hungry Cats Picross (tablet) - It’s a color filling picross game. I have erased the game so I could reinitialise my progress, and replay the game over again twice already, because the initial 30 hours of picrossing weren’t enough. Free, with removable ads.

And #1 would be Twilight Struggle for me too I guess. The game has been devouring my soul for the past few weeks, and the port seems very competent.

I haven’t played this, which is funny because I own the board game. I looked at it when it first came out and it looked somewhat amateurishly-implemented, so I avoided. If it is in your top 5, I will take a look.

This was exactly my experience. After purchase, I didn’t play it much. Recently came back to it and found I couldn’t stop.

I’m tylertoo on their MP server if you want to play a game.

Mine would probably include something like:

Reigns
Steamworld Heist
Neon Chrome
Guild of Dungeoneering
Solitairica

I think it was: I didn’t pick the game up until the author implemented an AI, which happened earlier this year. Some of the quirks have been worked out, some others haven’t quite been (for instance, the game features a phone mode with an interface devoid of animations that makes it near unplayable in my opinion - the tablet version is very functional though). Most importantly to me, although the interface is a bit dry, the game never ever crashed on me, auto-saves progress (in case I fall asleep!), and seemed to not have many rules glitches, if any.

Invited you to my Twilight Struggle spanking (I’ll prolly defcon suicide by error by the 3rd turn). I also just grabbed Crashlands, because I am tired of grinding the first days of Don’t Starve!