Ticket To Ride Pocket [$1.99] has received a little more loving by way of content today. In a fresh update, Days of Wonder has dropped 1910 as an expansion for $.99. 1910 adds three modes, all of which seem to offer unique ways to engage with the classic board game. Classic mode rewards players with the largest number of tickets. Mega mode expands destinations from 35 to 69. And Cities keeps it simple by only offering a few cities to work with.
Days of Wonder is doing a crazy good job with its mobile ports, which is proving to be an awesome thing for the board game's sales, too. We'd supplement our digital Ticket to Ride addiction with a slice of physical like a lot of other people, too, but we're not that into cleaning up after ourselves. You don't even want to know what our tower looks like. Seriously. We'd shock the Hoarders TV crew.
Ticket to Ride Pocket [$1.99], the iPhone and iPod Touch-specific version of the wonderful board game translation, has received a huge update. Starting now, users can now rock out online for the first time in a new asynchronous mode that allows up to four games per user. Less excitingly, local play has received a few tweaks: games no longer just quit out whenever there's a disconnect, and an AI or two can now join in on the fun.
The patch notes also mention a lot of bug fixes, including memory leaks. Hit those up if you are really, really into the nitty-gritty of a splendidly comprehensive patch that adds functionality that we've all been waiting for. Here's to hoping Pocket gets all of the maps in the iPad version down the line, too.
Caylus [$4.99] is an outstanding game, consistently ranking in Board Game Geek's top 10. It plays like Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth as you take on the role of a master builder tasked with winning the favor of a ruler and building something great. Your world revolves around struggles for resources, money, favor and opportunity. Big Daddy's Creations, the folks behind Neuroshima Hex [$4.99 / Lite], have put together an equally outstanding port - as long as you're prepared to play locally.
It's becoming a bit of a running joke that Big Daddy's Creations puts out great board game ports with shoddy (or no) multiplayer, and Caylus is no exception. You can't play over Game Center, you can't invite friends, and trying to play asynchronously will extend the game length to near-infinite. But if you're down with fighting AI or playing locally against friends, this is a must-buy for any board game fan.
Attention card geeks and all god slayers: the first expansion pack for the outstanding Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer [$4.99] is now available. After grabbing it via IAP, the cleverly titled pack, Ascension: Return of the Fallen, adds even more monsters, new characters, and even mechanics to the core play. Developer Playdek touched base with us on this the other day, and it seemed pretty stoked about how fans will react to it.
Not familiar with Ascension? We got your back. Earlier this summer, we reviewed the game and, obviously, explored its fundamentals. Here's an excerpt:
The actual game of Ascension is a somewhat refreshing spin on fantasy-based card games in that instead of building a specific deck that you use in battles, you're building your deck on the fly from game to game. Players start the game with identical basic decks of ten cards consisting of two militia cards which provide the "power" resource and eight apprentice cards which provide the "rune" resource. Using power and runes you're able to interact with a common pool of cards to either acquire new cards for your deck or defeat monster cards. Most actions you do in the game award different amounts of victory points, and at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins.
You gotta love it when a sharp game sees the injection of a bunch of new content -- and for a fair price. This expansion is $2.99, so grab it when you can.
This is probably ancient news for the biggest of big fans of Catan [$4.99 / HD] in general, but check this: USM, the same dudes responsible for the App Store port of the popular board game, are putting out a port of Rivals of Catan. This morning, actually, we were told that the "first version" is currently in testing, and USM is inviting its users into a beta to give it a spin.
Rivals of Catan is a card game adaptation of Catan proper built for two players. In brief, it's all about expanding principalities and scoring points for various things in a fairly rapid-fire fashion -- players roll dice for bonuses and draw cards each round, some of which activate a special event or allow general improvements. You can read more about it here, if this is tickling you in any special way.
And by the way, that Cities & Knights expansion is still coming to Catan. A beta test is planned to start at the beginning of the year, and DSM hopes to release at some point around February or even March. Cross-platform multiplayer is also still scheduled to hit at some point after this update, FYI.
Controversial is probably the best word for War on Terror [$1.99]. Originally a board game conceived by Terror Bull Games in 2003, War on Terror has precipitated everything from bans to death threats - true story, I swear. As you can imagine, when the iOS version was released, there was significant concern about it being forcibly annulled from the App Store. It wasn't, and I'm damn well glad for that because War on Terror is the sort of game you should at least play once.
Fans of the title should be forewarned, however. The iOS version is significantly watered down compared to the original. There is no Axis of Evil. There are no off-board negotiations or dealings. Defeated players do not become terrorist nations. You don't even get situational cards. Nonetheless, that doesn't change the fact that War on Terror is surprisingly fun and, once you've realized the genius behind it, devilishly clever.
Hello. My name is Cassandra and I have a problem. I'm a recovering trading card game-holic. I used to play them obsessively - just ask my wallet. But I've been getting better. I've been clean for a while but I have doubts that it is going to last. There's a new game in town and it's smart, sexy and exotic. Meet Cabals: The Card Game [Free], ladies and gentlemen, and kiss your productivity good-bye.
Developed by Finnish Kyy Games, Cabals has all the necessary hallmarks of the genre: exceptional artwork, warring factions, creatures to summon, resources to manage, booster packs - you name it, they've got it.
The world of Cabals: The Card Game is a familiar one. It's our own, after all. The key players here are the Cabals, secret societies comprised of witches and steam punk magicians, of Russians and alchemists and faerie pigs. As is often the case with anything eldritch in nature, these Cabals don't get along too well. This, obviously enough, is where you come in. You're one of the vanguards and you will fight for the glory of your faction. Or something like that.
Ticket to Ride is a popular board game created by board game gurus Days of Wonder. Back in May, Ticket to Ride [$6.99] was digitally converted into an iPad game, one which we thoroughly enjoyed in our review. Ticket to Ride had an excellent computer AI to play against, but the real fun was in playing another real life person. The iPad version contained a slick online multiplayer mode for up to 4 players, but was criticized for not having a local pass-n-play mode, something that should be a core element of any game based on a real life board game. Thankfully, pass-n-play did eventually come in an update a couple months following release, and there was much rejoicing.
Assassin's Creed, as far as I can tell, is about stabbing dudes and pushing down NPCs while on the way to stab more dudes. The upcoming board game for the iPad, on the other hand, is about building a beastly deck of cards and pummeling dudes into submission and taking their territories in real-time. Intrigued? We still are, even though the new details out there are still pretty vague.
IGN recently got their hands on with Assassin's Creed Recollection and are reporting that it features several mechanics from other collectible card games, but fiddles with pacing by introducing a "looping timeline" as seen in, say, Lumines. Cards apparently have the power to attack players or seize a territory, so that's how the action part of the game works, at least.
Ubisoft is still tossing out phrases like "deep tactical gameplay" and "challenging political battles" in regards to what Recollection will offers, but we're not sure how it's going to execute on these promises. We'd look to the new trailer to see what's up, but Ubisoft is still in full-blast mystery mode for its November-bound game.
Regardless of the lack of intel, this continues to be something our all-seeing eye is keyed in on. Assassin's Creed fans should definitely stay with Recollections, too, as it'll deliver collectible assets from all the games, as well as reconnect you with characters and "memories" from Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed 2.
Fantasy Flight Games is a company that's known for creating very complicated tabletop games from geek-friendly properties, like A Song of Ice and Fire, Battlestar Galactica, The Lord of the Rings, and the works of H.P. Lovecraft. One of their most popular offerings is Arkham Horror, a game with approximately 700 cards, tokens and markers to keep track of and a play time of up to four hours. Earlier this year, the company released Elder Sign, a game that takes the Lovecraftian horror of Arkham Horror and distills it down to about half the time and only 200 pieces or so.
I love these games, but there's really no such thing as a quick game of, well, any of them. Between set up, tear down and the inevitable time taken to teach new players and reference forgotten rules, you're looking at a full evening's entertainment. So imagine my delight playing Elder Sign: Omens [$3.99 / HD], the first of Fantasy Flight's more mature games to arrive on the App Store. It's quick to play, can be learned (mostly) as you go, and can be played solo or hotseat with friends. What's not to like?
Ultimate Shuffleboard [$.99] is a boldly branded product for a good reason: it's definitely a cut or two above the rest out there. Peak Systems, a self-described "full service" firm based out in Seattle, have puzzled out a way to link multiple iPhones to a single game of its shuffleboard title. The end result, as shown in its demo trailer, is pretty hip.
The story behind this is pretty cool, too. In a developer blog post, Peak said it wanted to figure out a way to get That One Guy in their real-life shuffleboard group off his phone and into the game. The easiest way to do that, apparently, was to make a game that required and included his or her phone.
Utlimate Shuffleboard requires at least two phones and it seems pretty easy to set up. A host makes the match, others join, and then you put the phones together end-to-end.
We've seen a developers dabbling in using multiple devices in their games, but sticks out to us as a really implementation of the technology. Plus, it practically requires its users to be social while using it, which is something we don't see a lot in this space in general. Neat!
I've been searching for a new asynchronous multi-player game for a while, so when I saw Poker Pals [99c / Free / HD] released by Chillingo: a poker-based game with asynchronous multiplayer mode, my eyes went wide. What I didn't anticipate was that within a few hours I would be snatching up my iPod every couple of minutes to make my next turn, juggling several games at once, like a crazed poker addict. (Thank goodness there's no real money at stake, just bragging rights.)
Poker Pals is not a regular poker game. There's no chips in the middle of the table, no antes and no calling, raising or bluffing. This is actually poker redesigned as a board-game and it resembles a mixture of poker and Scrabble, which works really well. It's reminiscent of Sword and Poker 2 [$3.99 / Free], which also presented poker as a board-game, but included RPG elements.
There's something particularly apt about the timing of the iPad release of Greed Corp HD [$4.99]. While Occupiers around the world freeze and protest sociopathically greedy behavior by major corporations, Greed Corp explores the ultimate end of that behavior. What happens when you're so bent on profit that you'd destroy even the ground under your own feet to keep the other guy from getting it? Greed Corp has the answer.
It's a turn-based strategy game that encourages players to engage in something one step shy of mutually assured destruction. You destroy the lands you harvest, and firing on your enemies crumbles away the ground beneath them.You win as long as you have at least a single unit on a single hex and your enemies don't. This brutally aggressive game first made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network in the early months of 2010, but it's hardly aged in the time it's taken to arrive on iPad. It's also extremely well done for the most part, offering a natural touch interface and both single and multiplayer content.
Yesterday in Unexpected and Weird News, Ubisoft announced plans for an Assassin's Creed board game for the iPad. According to a press release Kotaku obtained, Assassin's Creed Recollection is a real-time strategy "political battle" board game that combines characters and locations from Assassin's Creed 2 and its sequel AC: Brotherhood. Ubisoft says it'll pack in an 8-10 hour campaign, as well as multiplayer upon its release this holiday.
You definitely aren't alone if you're confused by this move or wondering what exactly this thing is. All we have to go on at the moment aside from the vague press release boilerplate are images of the game's cards. My gut tells me that this will be a simple line-up and battle kind of game, like the one featured INSIDE of id's FPS Rage. Could be totally wrong, though.
What a weird announcement and idea, right? Also, wouldn't it be weird if Ubisoft just stopped here with these board game tie-ins? Then again, I don't make the big money decisions at these publishers who want iOS tie-ins or cross-overs.
As far as board games go, Monopoly can be found somewhere near the bottom of the barrel. It's simple to play but hard to keep track of, it takes forever, and someone always steals from the bank. Usually it's the banker, who's probably just looking for a bit of entertainment to offset the monotony. Someone in Korea took the fundamentals of Monopoly and made BlueMarble [$0.99] with them, which is, well, equally unfun, according to the fine people at BoardGameGeek. Thankfully, when the folks at M&M Games Inc. adapted that game for iOS, they kept only the basics -- and then they threw in card collection, deck building and adorable avatars.
BlueMarble doesn't have the cleanest translation, but if you've ever played either of the board games you won't have trouble falling into its rhythms. The first square gives you a nice chunk of cash, you visit places around the world and buy them, and build houses or hotels on them. Some squares cause you to lose money, and others win you more. There's even a jail, er, desert island.
Ticket To Ride Pocket [$1.99] has received a little more loving by way of content today. In a fresh update, Days of Wonder has dropped 1910 as an expansion for $.99. 1910 adds three modes, all of which seem to offer unique ways to engage with the classic board game. Classic mode rewards players with the largest number of tickets. Mega mode expands destinations from 35 to 69. And Cities keeps it simple by only offering a few cities to work with.
