Warhammer Quest: iOS

After reading both Tom and Owen’s reviews I think I have to check this out just to reconcile two wildly different opinions from guys I tend to trust quite a bit.

Agreed. I was ready to buy until seeing Tom’s piece, but I’m not sure if his main concern would concern me, for a game I’m like to simply be playing on my phone during idle moments. But I’m happy, Scott, to let you do the reconciling. Let us know ASAP what you think.

It just takes a little time for brand new titles to get indexed.

I guess that makes sense. I would rather bitch that I cannot instantaneously find what I want when I want it. ;)

The game is fun, but Tom’s criticisms are also spot-on. It’s opaque, and aggressively insulates you from what is actually going on. This may or may not bug people, and the degree to which it bugs you will undoubtedly vary a lot. I played it briefly–long enough to get my entire party killed by goblins–and it seems well worth five bucks at least.

I think it’s a good port of the boardgame. But to continue the echo the only way to have any clue about the mechanics is to look up the old rulebook online. Otherwise, you get a pretty cool crawl, nothing special without the nostalgia complex though. There is probably a reason people play Descent now instead and I am guessing it’s not solely based on GW being stingy. It’s a shame though 2 does seem a little harsh but 3 might be a little high so can we call it a exactly average game and say 2.5?

That said, aside from the opaqueness Rodeo did a great job on the implementation the UI is pretty good and the game paces well they just might have inherited WQ’s old design issues. Now, they should have doubled down in that and just have gone right to Magic Realm. That could give you wonderful dreams or horrible nightmares depending on how they dealt with that.

Tom M

I was dismayed to find that rotating the device is critical to play – evidently you have to put the device in portrait mode to bring up the inventory.

I hate gimmicks like that. I keep my device rotation-locked at all times, because most of the time when I play an iPad game, it’s in bed before I go to sleep. Laying on my side, up is actually sideways.

It’s simply impossible to play this game in that scenario, because there’s no UI button to bring up the inventory. The rotation gimmick is your only option. So there’s $5 wasted unless/until they add UI to do what need doing.

That is the worst. I remember someone mentioning it the other day in a preview, but I completely forgot by the time I was playing. I played a good hour last night assuming there just wasn’t an inventory management system for the game. Bah. That, and the opaqueness of how the magic system works is somewhat frustrating me right now. Do you only get to cast one spell of each type per dungeon? I think I figured out how the Winds of Magic stuff works in replenishing points, but I still feel like there is a lot I’m missing there.

All said, I did have fun with it last night though. The tactics do seem to be a bit light at the start, but that’s probably so I don’t shoot myself in the foot. I hope as time goes on, those questions will eventually be answered and I’ll continue to have fun.

For what it’s worth, I agree with you 100%. But also, this:

For $4.99, I’m very pleased. Yes, all of the criticisms above are valid (the screen rotation is, by far, the worst thing). I still think it is (so far) a great example of polished iOS implementation.

On being obtuse, anyone know what “death trap” is? It appears to be some attack of opportunity that my characters get every once in a while.

Are you sure you don’t mean Deathblow? Deathblows are mentioned in the “in-game” manual (I triggered one during the tutorial and it brought up the little “Manual Entry Added” indicator). It’s listed under Dungeons > Combat > Deathblow. AIUI each time you kill an enemy there’s a small chance that you’ll trigger a Deathblow which allows you to attack another target in addition to your main target. That attack also has a small chance of being a Deathblow, so theoretically you could chain and kill all the targets in your radius.

Brilliant game. The complaints are utterly lost on me. Everything of importance is explained in the journal; the rotating is completely harmless; the hidden die-rolls are a blessing.

I read all the negativity here and elsewhere, and I cant help wondering what it is that people want from a $5 game?

As for spells, you can swipe upwards on the spell label and it allows you to choose which spell to cast. You can mix and match between spells in the dungeon, providing you have the necessary winds of magic stuff. I’ve cast multiples of the same spell (healing, mainly) a lot.

Another annoyance, though this may be me missing something not quite obvious: in the shop, I could not figure out how to tell what my characters already had in inventory, so I didn’t buy a duplicate.

Anyone playing this on an Iphone? I do not have a Pad and wondering if it is playable on the phone at all.

I’m pretty sure I mean “death trap” (or “deathtrap”) but I’ll have to keep an eye out. It happened (twice now) on the monster’s turn. The monster (rats, both times) attacked in melee and then my character (dwarf one time, marauder the other) whacked them back. Sadly, no journal entry appeared.

You were good until here.

Although I know GW likes to let very popular titles languish, you bring up a lot of details that I didn’t know. Still it seems so dead bang obvious to reprint it (or license such a move) if a booming market emerges that is comprised of much more than nostalgic gamers in the wake of an iOS hit. It would be a widely expanded customer pool for currently existing WH Fantasy products. But you are probably right. One can dream that the right kind of greed might finally strike GW.

I loaded it up on my iPhone to check it out for you. It seems to work just great on the iPhone, the only thing that might be a concern is that the text is quite small. I’m getting old and the text is small enough that it makes me wish I had reading glasses, I’d say maybe it’s 2 pts smaller than the text Safari uses for Qt3 posts (or maybe it’s harder to read because it’s a bit scroll like and the colors chosen don’t give as much contrast as Qt3).

If you aren’t concerned with the small sized text, it seems like a great iPhone game.

Also for anyone playing on both iPad and iPhone, make sure you quit to main menu when leaving a device. That seems to force an iCloud sync and you can pick up the game on the other device right in the same dungeon room that you left.

I have seen it, I get what he is saying, and I even agree with parts of it. That said even with the abysmal documentation that it does have, I personally would not kick it down to a 2 out of 5. So far it seems like a very solid game, but having played the original I don’t share his frustrations. I already know the systems under the hood. Although even having the a priori WHQ iOS knowledge that I do, for me, I know I found gems in SotS 1 and Dominions 3 directly in spite of their obtuseness and flawed UI and as a monster hunter fan I don’t necessarily need direct numerical feedback to feel I am making informed choices in a game. And I do like the lore. Reviews are subjective. Can Tom think it is a 2 and I think it is something higher and neither of us be wrong (or right)? I believe so. Do I have my fingers in my ears while willing WHQ iOS to a higher level than the experience with the actual product should produce? I don’t know.

I did respond in the comments section in a way that might help new players enjoy WHQ iOS. I am pasting it here not to stoke the fires of confrontation, but to help any forum goers get over the unnecessary learning curve created by the flawed journal (manual).

[paste]
It is true. The journal has a lot of useful bits in it, but they are needlessly obscured by flowery language and word choice.

In an effort to aid those that might be interested in the game, but find the rules feedback frustrating, I will try to offer my non WHQ iOS understanding of The board game.

For better or worse Games Workshop games are built around a standard D6 die. They don’t generally embrace all the crazy polyhedral dice of other games. This is in fact my biggest beef with GW products as you can only do so much with the odds on six sided dice. Anyway, combat in WHQ breaks down as the following:

Making an attack compares the weapon skill of the target to that of the attacker. An even score is an even chance. This is also what the journal states. What is left out is knowing that it is a d6 system. So equal WS means a hit on a roll of 4+ on a d6 (50%). As the numbers move from neutral the odds change in a non linear progression. WS 3 hits WS 2 on a 1+, a 2 on a 3+, a 4,5,6 on a 4+, a 7,8,9 on a 5+, and a 10 on a 6.

Is this critical information? I don’t know. As a test, knowing only what was in the journal, my test subject quickly grasped what would be easy or hard to hit without knowing 66% or 3+ or 17% on a six by simply looking at WS numbers.

Once a hit occurs the formula is (weapon damage + strength) - toughness= number of wounds lost. This is also in the journal but obfuscated by excessively narrative and poor word choice.

Also, as guessed, Winds of Power is a random die roll. In WHQ it is a d6. In WHQ iOS I suspect it may be something else. Still knowing GW is d6 system or from a few turns of playing the iOS game, it becomes clear that a spell that costs 2 is pretty easy to cast whereas a spell that costs 5 (healing mist) is not to be counted on. For what it is worth, and not meaning to be snarky, my test subject also figured this out pretty quickly from just the journal and playing a few rounds. A roll of a 1 in WHQ is indeed a double whammy as the wizard is neutered and a monster event occurs. The purpose, as guessed, is to slap down the motivation to sit around waiting for 5s to cast healing spells.

I hope this helps someone. I have not played the iOS version too much yet, but the board game is a gem so knowing these few basics may really help in getting to a point to see that in the digital version. The journal does need an overhaul though.

Exactly. I have voiced this complaint in a couple of places and that is that the iOS titles are getting a break because of their low cost. When the platform was starting, I can see the “what do you expect for $5” being legitimate. You want to reward new things and entries into genres you want to see more of so you cut games some slack. However, these games are huge business now. They are beginning to reach more people than any console or PC developer could hope to because everyone and their mother has a phone. I have picked up more than my share of iOS games sight unseen due to the price and the description alone. Hey, It’s only a buck or 5. If you are making a game that could potentially make you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, you should make it to compete with the best games out there not the best Under $5 games out there.

Sorry for the tangent. I most likely with get WHQ and work through the issues and probably will do since it is so cheap, but when giving impressions, it will not get cut any slack based on the price. It just made it more likely that I give it a try and then by future products from that developer. Hunters 2 was pretty bland for me and I did not enjoy it nearly as much as some did. I am really only going to get WHQ because of the license and some good word of mouth from Owen, who I trust, otherwise their game could be one dollar and I probably would not get it.