Talisman is a geeky boardgaming legend. Created in 1983 by Games Workshop, it features a broad range of fantasy archetypes (Elves, Wizards, Monks, etc.) competing to be the first to reach the Crown of Command.
Each of the heroes available has a simple set of RPG stats, including Strength and Craft (magical power); plus one or two special abilities, such as the Druid's ability to change his alignment at will. Some also have drawbacks: the Monk can add his starting Craft to his Strength when fighting, but can never equip weapons.
The goal is to reach the center of the board, but movement is intentionally imprecise. Each turn you roll a die and move that many spaces in either direction then follow the instructions for the space you landed on: usually drawing one or more Adventure cards, which can represent monsters, loot, followers and other kinds of enconters.
As someone who can get pretty obsessive about both reading and video games, I keep expecting gamebooks to grab me by the throat. It seems as though they should be perfect for that: part game, part book, all gripping entertainment.
Most of the time, however, I find them a bit thin. Not enough game to really sink into mechanically, not enough book to really reel me in. Sorcery! [$4.99] managed to keep me up well past my bedtime, though. Inkle offers the same expertise they displayed in bringing Frankenstein [$4.99] to life to the task of drawing the magic of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! out onto the screen. At least in part: thus far, only the first of the four books of Sorcery!, The Shamutanti Hills, is available.
The journey through those hills is still a gamebook trip, no doubt about it. There are stats, interactive combat scenes and plenty of big decisions to be made. It's just that nothing feels restrained; nothing feels all that formulaic. Sorcery! goes big where needed, and the app shines for it.
Kingturn RPG [Free] ain't a looker. That was my first reaction to the game, as I suspect it will be yours. But for fans of tactics style turn-based RPGs such as myself, pickings are slim on iOS, so I gave the game a shot. I'm glad I did. Underneath the hood of this old beater lies a beautiful, well-oiled machine, and it won't cost you a penny to take a look for yourself.
For those not in the know, tactics games are a subgenre of turn-based RPGs, first brought to the mainstream by Final Fantasy Tactics (which itself has an iOS port). Tactics games see you leading a small host of heroes over a battlefield in turn-based combat against an opponent. They differ from typical RPGs in that a good deal of the strategy deals with the positioning of you and your opponent's soldiers, a bit like pieces on a chessboard.
Being a good tactician requires patience, but the dearth of tactics titles on iOS would test the patience of even the mighty Sun Tzu. Into that void comes Kingturn, a tactics title to its core. The prologue campaign is free, with the full campaign unlocked as a $4.99 IAP. Kingturn's gameplay owes much to its predecessor, Final Fantasy Tactics, but from the start the game begins to stake its own territory. The first thing you will notice is that this game is not merely challenging, but hard. Kingturn will try the skills of even veteran strategy gamers. Beyond the game's refreshing difficulty, Developers Mangobile have also brought some truly innovative gameplay elements to the table.
The roguelike is a timeless video game genre and helped shape the RPGs and dungeon crawlers we've known and loved for decades. But I've never played one that was a side-scroller. Not until WazHack [Free] anyway. Warwick Allison's WazHack has been around on desktop and Android for about a year, and has now made its way to iOS. I've only just barely scratched the surface of the game, but I'm already hooked.
The funny thing about WazHack is that it being a side-scroller doesn't really change its roguelike feel. You still explore a large, randomly generated dungeon; battle monsters in turn-based fashion; and collect all sorts of sweet loot like items, spells and weapons. Your overall goal is to plunge down to the bottom of the dungeon, retrieve the Amulet of Zaw (hey, that's Waz backwards!), and make your way back up and out alive.
Best of all is that WazHack is free to download and play (or free to play on the official website). Once you get to a certain depth in the dungeon, you'll be prompted to purchase a character class to unlock the full dungeon and continue on. There are four character classes (Knight, Wizard, Sorcerer and Huntsman with male and female versions of each) and each class goes for 99¢ as an IAP.
I like this system, as you can play as each of the different classes up to the cutoff depth as many times as you need, and then you can decide to buy whichever ones you really want. The free portion of the dungeon is more than enough to help you decide if WazHack is something you'd like to drop some money on, too.
I have a feeling there's lots more that I'll be discovering about WazHack in the days to come, but I was having such a good time and the players in our forums have been having such a good time that I felt the need to share it with you right away. But seriously, this thing is deep. With over 300 types of items and more than 130 types of monsters, not to mention the various unique attributes of each of the different classes, both male and female, and randomly generated dungeons, WazHack should be a very different experience every time you play.
Check out an older trailer from the desktop version to see it in action.
Something worth noting is that a couple of minor bugs are in this release version of WazHack. From the App Store description:
* Keyboard input on iPhone does not allow pop-down. This will be fixed very soon (1.1.5).
* Multiplayer does not work except by very circuitous means. This will take a little longer to get working - I may use GameCenter for this, but I would prefer that cross-platform multiplayer works, which will take longer.
Nothing major, but good to be aware of at least.
So, go check out WazHack, it's available right now and it's awesome. You can thank me later.
While most fans of Square Enix should be rightfully concerned with some of the recentFinal Fantasy mobile offerings, one area competently executed are their ports of preexisting console FF offerings. Final Fantasy V [$15.99], the latest port to grace iOS, thankfully continues the trend of offering improved versions of the classic RPG series. Offering one of the better implementations of the main series’ job system, FFV is a great game in its own right, successfully makes the transition to iOS and should be added to the collection of any nostalgic RPG collector.
Originally released in 1992, Final Fantasy V wouldn’t grace the US until its inclusion in the PSX Fantasy Fantasy Anthology in 1999 (and wouldn’t see a mobile release until the 2006 GBA Version). It’s a shame that US FF fans had to wait so long, because Final Fantasy V was a pretty good entry in the series. The overall story, which centered on a sealed evil looking to destroy the elemental crystals holding its bond in place, features a lot of themes and character development that would be utilized in later entries in the series.
There’re a lot of folks that have probably played FFV in some previous iteration and are wondering what the differences are between this iOS version and previous ones. Content-wise, FFV for iOS features the same additions as found in the GBA version. This means that players will find an additional end-game dungeon as well as four extra job classes that weren't in the original. While the additional content is purely optional, the additional job classes add some variety for players that haven't experienced the GBA remake.
The one area that does change significantly in this iOS port is the art style. Instead of using the classic, highly pixelated models of the original, FFV on iOS has a very smoothed art style, with the game looking closer to the recently released Final Fantasy Dimensions. In addition, the game features more artwork from original artist Yoshitaka Amano at a much higher resolution than previous versions. While I welcome the additional Amano art, I'm on the fence about the rest of the visual improvements. There's a lot of nostalgia and charm lost in the move away from the pixel graphics and the current look feels a little bland.
The rest of the additions, meanwhile, are positive in my book. The music, which is classic Nobuo Uematsu, has been remastered beyond the chiptunes of old but still retains everything that made the original soundtrack great. FFV for iOS also includes an auto-battle mode, which speeds up the wait time between turns and automatically uses the previous commands issued for every character. This one little addition does a lot towards speeding up the grind, which is always a concern with these early RPGs. Little additions such as the ability to pinch-zoom the in-game map are also nice touches.
It's always hard to review these classic FF titles on iOS because they're always essentially ports of ports of the originals. Just as was the case with the previously released iOS ports, Final Fantasy V is a no-brainer if you're an RPG fan and have not had the pleasure of playing it. The story, job system, and classic Final Fantasy gameplay are strong in this title and showcase the golden age of Squaresoft 16-bit RPGs.
At the same time, the changes to the visual engine and minor gameplay tweaks probably aren't enough to justify a purchase for fans that have already completed the game (especially on GBA). Although, there's still enough nostalgic appeal that odds are you'll probably buy it anyways.
I don't have any history with Warhammer Quest. I didn't catch it in 1995 when it started hitting shelves. Heck, I didn't even know it existed until Rodeo Games announced that it was bringing the game to iPad. Usually, this kind of obliviousness is a Big Problem when it comes to playing board game ports. Studios tend to double-down on what made the board game great instead of focusing on making a good video game, leaving players with a super sluggish, systems-heavy title that kinda just makes you want to play the physical version instead of even bothering with the digital port. Credit goes to Rodeo for not doing this with Quest. It's a video game first, and to a guy as clueless about the board game as I am, it basically just feels like a modern strategy RPG. That's kinda wild.
Set in a universe bursting with crypts, wizards, orcs, spiders, and at least one magical lute, Quest revolves around an old-school premise: earn fame and fortune by plumbing the depths of the nastiest, monster-filled places in a cold, unforgiving fantasy land. You're given control of a couple of axe-wielding bruisers, as well as an archer and mage at the start.
If you spin the clocks back to GDC (which feels like ages ago even though it totally wasn't), we actually had our pepperoni-greased hands all over Gamevil's Dark Avenger which is due out this evening at 11:00 PM Eastern, or potentially way earlier if you're in Europe or Asia. We took some extensive hands-on video of the game, which still feels representative of the release version of the game:
In a nutshell, Dark Avenger is another crack at a mobile version of Diablo. They were beaten to the App Store by Gameloft's recently released Dungeon Hunter 4 [Free] and I'm super curious to see which will end up being the champion of this proverbial dungeon crawling cage match.
Impressions on our forums generally seem to be positive, although multiple members have mentioned that the game feels a little flat. That echoes my experiences as well, although admittedly I'm very curious to see if/when the game opens up at all to anything more than mindless monster mashing.
Get pumped: A native mobile take on the Final Fantasy Tactics franchise is heading to Android and iOS, Square Enix has revealed via a Japanese language teaser site dedicated to the game and pre-registration for it. Get sad: according to the signage on the site, it'll be a Mobage release, which pretty much promises that it'll be filled with various free-to-play hooks, twists, and shenanigans.
Square Enix has opened a new Japanese website and pre-registration for a new smartphone title called Final Fantasy Tactics S. This “social” game, something of a spinoff of the Ivalice Alliance, will feature designs originally created by Ryoma Ito. The game will also include races, jobs, and monsters featured in 2008′s Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift for the Nintendo DS.
It'll be interesting to see where Square Enix decides to weave the social hooks into the Tactics experience. Considering it's a turn-based strategy series, there'll be a lot of good places to sneak them in. Just imagine the possibilities! Timers, and slot machine mechanics, and IAP weaponry oh my!
No release date or territories have been announced. We'll keep our eyes out for any more intel, though.
Late last year Lost Treasures of Infocom [Free] hit the App Store, and all sorts of horrifying traumatic memories of my childhood came flooding back to me as I inevitably got stuck in each of the games I tried following unlocking the whole $9.99 library of ancient interactive text-only adventure gaming. The sad thing (Well, that's debatable, I suppose.) is that once the advent of computer graphics hit, these text-only adventure games quickly became extinct.
The good news is that indie duo Carlos and Javier Cabrera (Who together make up The Cabrera Brothers, shockingly enough) have been bringing back this method of storytelling with the (relatively) recently released Mac and PC game Cypher which is billed as a "cyberpunk text adventure." Weirder yet, it's made in Unity, the game engine you probably know best from amazing looking 3D games like Dead Trigger [Free]. Cypher reviewed well, although it came with the obvious caveat of "You've got to be in to text adventures."
The reason this is all relevant is becomes The Cabrera Brothers are working on a new project, a horror adventure, that's going to be making its way to iOS devices as well. As someone who would've vastly preferred playing Cypher on the iPad, I'm pretty stoked to hear this news. One of my favorite things about the App Store is its ease of access facilitates crazy projects like this. I mean, a brand new text adventure in 2013? That's crazy, but I love it.
If you're interested in checking out Cypher for the Mac or PC, head over to The Cabrera Brothers' web site where you can download a DRM-free copy for anywhere between $15 and $25 depending on how many "bonus" items you want with it. Additionally, If you want to be alerted for news (and a potential release) of their upcoming horror game, make sure to add this game to your TouchArcade app [Free] watch list.
In this day and age of checkpoint-laden shooters, disposable free to play games, and other flashy titles trying to stay afloat in the sea of the App Store it's pretty rare to have a game make you stop and think, or even let out an audible "Huh." Mr. Roboto Game Studios' upsets that balance with the just-released title Hope: The Other Side of Adventure [Free], a totally free adventure game of sorts where you "play" in bite-sized chunks and explore the story of what the stereotypical video game princess is feeling as she awaits rescue. It's super clever, as in most princess-rescuing video games the princess basically serves as a necessary MacGuffin to give a game a purpose beyond "Hey buddy, just complete these levels." I mean, we've seen this going back to the earliest games, and even persisting through modern-day titles. I'm not sure what the princess is even up to as you're collecting coins in Mario or Triforce fragments in Zelda is something many people even think about, as to the game, it's largely irrelevant.
Hope: The Other Side of Adventure is unlike any game you've played before, so much so that the developers even felt it necessary to include the following warning at the start of the game:
As mentioned above, you play as the princess and your control options are limited to moving around your cell, sighing, and crying. That's it. Each play session is five minutes long, and the tale is told over the course of six days. So far I've experienced the first "chapter" of the game, and really dig the setup. You hit the first stopping point quickly, at which point the game just tells you to come back tomorrow.
If you're into these kind of experimental games on any level this is something that should be on your iOS device. Give it a download, grab some headphones, turn down the lights, and take it in. Discovering this kind of thing is seriously my favorite thing about the App Store. If you want to know more about the game, the developer has posted an extensive blog entry [Translated] on the Mr. Roboto site, but I strongly recommend at least giving the first play session a shot before checking it out to avoid lessening any of the game's impact.
We'll post a deeper look at game next week once we've made it through the whole process as the developer intended. I can't wait.
For some reason there isn't an iOS adaptation of HeroQuest, the adventure board game that informed the childhoods of many folks my age. There are a few that tread similar territory, though, and one of them is Mighty Dungeons, [$1.99] published by Forest Moon Games.
It's a fairly literal take on board-based dungeon crawling, with tokens for heroes and enemies and tiles to reveal as you explore. You choose a hero from one of a few classic classes—warrior, ranger, mage and the like—then take him out on your choice of a ton of missions. Each one takes you down into a dungeon to smite orcs or skeletons and claim their belongings for your own.
Practically speaking, that means tapping. Lots and lots of tapping. Tap on a tile to move to it, then tap the Attack button to attack over and over on the combat screen. Tap doors to open them, traps to disarm them, and objects to investigate them. Every so often you might want to tap a potion or spell, too.
This might sound a little mindless—and frankly, it is. There are few meaningful decisions to be made in Mighty Dungeons. Do you attack, or do you chug one of your plentiful potions first? Do you explore this room first, or that one? It makes no difference, as you'll probably clear the map each and every time you take on a quest.
If you stuck a thermometer in the proverbial mouth of our forums, you'd find them totally afflicted to Kemco fever. Symphony of the Origin [$10.99] was just released a couple weeks ago, followed by another rapid fire release of Silver Nornir [$8.99] today. Both games are the kind of things we joke about on the podcast in that they're basically "Fantasy Game: Fantasy of The Fantasy" but if you're the kind of dude who shoots for the whole tens of hours of gameplay, massive character progression, and just generally saving the world from the ultimate evil over the simpler pick up and play offerings of the App Store, Kemco games are for you.
In this particular game, the world has actually been destroyed by evil twice already, so, third time's the charm, I suppose? Regardless, Silver Nornir seems to be a game of huge battles, an even huge-er game world, and almost Chrono Trigger-sounding combo moves with other characters in battle. Like other Kemco games, there's a small amount of IAP, but they're typically balanced in a way that makes them feel more like optional cheats than required purchases.
Hold the phone: a new video game with Story in the title is out? Can it be? Is another Kairosoft joint on the App Store so soon after the release of the Sushi Spinnery? Oh no, I'm going to be questioning how messed up my priorities in life are pretty soon, aren't I? I'm not going to make it to the gym or remember to give my cat her pill or water the plant on my porch or take my fiber supplement because I don't want to stop playing. Oh, wait, this isn't a Kairosoft game. It's from a developer that obviously digs Kairosoft's telltale mechanics and trimmings, but Epic Pirate Story [$1.99] is definitely not a Kairosoft game.
At the top-level, EPS seems like the same sort of hybrid RPG meets Simulation game that often comes out of the Studio That Built Game Dev Story. But, it's not, even though EPS does its best to copy every single mechanic we've ever seen from a Kairosoft title. It's more of an RPG than anything else. In the game, you're tasked with the chore of building up a fledgling pirate village while sending out pirates on quests that'll net them phat loot and experience points. This is all represented much like it is in a Kairosoft game, right down to your pirates leaving and then you seeing them interacting with chests and coming across monsters on a horizontal strip rendered in the bottom of the UI. Combat is represented similarly, too, tasking you with arranging multiple conga lines of your guys to take out opposing conga lines of bad guys.
This past February a sequel to one of our favorite quirky little iOS titles King Cashing was released, aptly titled King Cashing 2 [$2.99]. It took the main hook of light RPG elements based around a slot-machine battle mechanic and basically cranked everything else up to 11 in terms of new content and improved visuals. We really liked King Cashing 2in our review, if you want to delve a little deeper.
Late last week King Cashing 2 received its first major update, and it's quite a doozy. First off is an entirely new 4th Volume called Wet Crown which continues your adventure with new battles and story progression. Also it has rain, apparently. That crown has to get wet somehow.
Other new additions include a new Hard difficulty if you've felt the current game is a bit too easy, as well as an actual Hardcore mode which will completely delete your save file if you die. Sounds brutal. Enemies get a bit tougher too with a new Fader enemy ability which takes their avatar off the slot reels after a successful hit from you, lessening your chances of hitting them as the battle goes on.
There's also more than 30 new weapons including 6 unique diamond weapons, and a hint at a "super secret" weapon; new bonus items and a new bonus item type called Amulets which let you prevent an enemy from using a move; and two new Game Center leaderboards along with 15 new achievements.
The more mundane details of this King Cashing 2 update include a fast animation option to speed up the battles if you desire, a fix for Volume 3 on the iPhone 3GS and the 3rd Generation iPod touch, and a collection of various other tweaks, fixes and optimizations. King Cashing 2 is an even tighter overall package now and is literally stuffed with content, so if you enjoy a good adventure then it's a game that's definitely worth your time.
This is either something awesome or nothing at all. On April 9, the Australian Classification Board rated The Elder Scrolls: Arena and listed it as a multi-platform title. Dreamers are speculating that this indicates a HD re-make or maybe even a mobile port of the classic RPG could be coming down the pipes since Arena is already available on PC as a $0 download. Why re-release it there, right?
At the same time, we've seen a handful of games over the years get listed by this board or the ESRB that just never see the light of day. The ESRB crushed our souls in 2008 with an EarthBound for Wii listing in the US that never panned out, for example.
Arena was the game that kickstarted the franchise, and despite being brutal, it has its fans. We'll definitely stay tuned to any more developments and get any intel on this one to you when we can.
UPDATE: Bethesda PR has told Joystiq that "there is no new new version of the game coming." Apparently, the classification of multi-platform was a mix-up! Read more through that link.
Talisman is a geeky boardgaming legend. Created in 1983 by Games Workshop, it features a broad range of fantasy archetypes (Elves, Wizards, Monks, etc.) competing to be the first to reach the Crown of Command. 
