Thanks to PocketTactics forums, I discovered a game called Stoneship by Cyan Worlds (the Myst people). It is clearly inspired by Oasis – an old PC and, later, mobile game that’s basically civilization meets minesweeper. Oasis is a fantastic and unique game. If you haven’t played it, check it out. But Stoneship ain’t bad neither. In some ways, its form of exploration makes a bit more sense than the teleporting sorcerer of Oasis. There’s also a very lightly designed combat minigame; I don’t know if it adds anything except variety, but it doesn’t hurt.
If you haven’t played Oasis: Get Oasis. If you have and would appreciate something the same but different: Get Stoneship.
Defense of the Oasis is a good one. I thought Stoneship fell short, personally. I wanted to like it, but a lot depended on the order in which you happened to encounter things, and they tried to give it the trappings of a skill-based game, but if you faced a more powerful opponent, skill made no difference to the outcome.
I thought it was cute they renamed Oasis using the word “defense” so browsers would know it’s like a tower defense game!
Speaking of iOS games in general, I’m eager to play some of the big releases coming out this year. I haven’t played anything except Bulge in the last few months.
Brooski
1584
I thought this said “Kzin Wars” and I was like ok sold! But then I saw it didn’t.
Nathan
1585
The shmup Raiden Legacy is $2 for a bit. I’m enjoying it.
Just a heads up that there are pop up ads in this paid app.
Does anyone else play Elder Sign: Omens? I played the physical version (Elder Sign) for the first time last night with my girlfriend, and it was a lot of fun, so much so that I’m looking forward to the upcoming expansion, Elder Sign: Unseen Forces. We were able to defeat the Ancient One with one doom space remaining! It looks like the expansion makes the game more difficult, which I prefer.
It’s too bad Omens doesn’t include a MP component, as I’d enjoy working with others to beat it.
LordGek
1588
What killed Stoneship for me was they opted to leave out Oasis’ randomization. Simply play through a mission, learn where stuff was, and then repeat the mission with your all knowing powers.
LordGek
1589
The iOS port of this was great! As far as I can tell the two incarnations of the game are identical (iPhone and the HD iPad version) so absolutely no reason for the devs not to go universal (I mean I don’t think they really even did anything special to take advantage of the iPad’s increased space so as to justify the two editions), but a damn cool game besides that nit.
I think they actually altered a few rules from the real physical version to toughen it up a tad and they left out many of the actual game’s elder gods. It offers a few very cool expansions via IAP that I have no idea if they’re original or just digitized versions of physical expansions to the game (adding in cool twists like arctic expeditions or traveling about by sea).
Mark_L
1591
No randomization? Thanks for saving me a purchase, Gek.
If you can get past the dumb FTP heart system in golf star it is actually a good golf game so far. They would have had me spend at least 4.99 on this if it had been just been a upfront purchase. Instead I am just seeing how far the rabbit hole goes before dropping any money.
You can do pass and play multiplayer, but certainly online functionality would be nice. They also really, really need to bring some of their other, less lightweight games to iOS. I would KILL for an actively supported Arkham Horror app, for example. (There’s a helper app that does card drawing and one character worth of sheet management, but that just makes playing the actual boardgame a little easier. And you have to buy all the expansions individually in it. Not for much, but…bleh.)
slantz
1594
Bookworm Heroes is now available worldwide. Multiplayer only.
From your mouth to Fantasy Flight’s ears. The company seems absolutely unconcerned with videogame ports of their games, which is a shame. Elder Sign: Omens is such a great adaptation. It’s too bad that level of love isn’t applied to some of their other titles. :(
-Tom
For those who didn’t click on the link, it says that namco is selling 3 iOS rhythmic games for USD55 each for a total of USD165 in total.
Fantasy flight tried getting several other games on to ios and i thnk they got a little burned. At least two developers went under while working on Wings Of War iOs.
In other news, eclipse just got submitted! Ipad only, but still, yay!
This has some serious problems too so beware. It takes coins to start a game or accept a challenge from someone since you need to hire a hero every time. But what happens, especially if you do games vs random people is that you’ll soon find yourself full on stalled games. People are starting games and dropping the app and not finishing them. You only earn coins by making words in game, spamming your facebook friends or buying them. So in my case I have several stalled games and can’t even accept a challenge from my wife since I don’t have enough coins. But it gets worse, there is a 15 game limit and since there is no way to delete the stalled games, a person can find themselves essentially locked out even if they do have the coins. I’d suggest avoiding this unless you are going to solely play with people you know will finish.
BobM
1599
Game is really not exciting, either. Just doesn’t do anything for me. Bookworm seems better suited to playing against AI to me.
geewhiz
1600
Talisman Prologue released (single player only - a separate multiplayer app will be released later in the year)
http://www.talisman-game.com/prologue/
Review:
