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Posts Tagged ‘Dominion’

Official 'Dominion' Coming this Week, Unofficial Version Pulled from the App Store

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

In January of this year an unofficial iOS version of the popular physical card game Dominion hit the App Store. Dominion was originally created by Donald X. Vaccarino and released by Rio Grande Games in 2008, and its subsequent popularity and numerous awards sparked off a trend of similar deck-building card games.

When the unofficial version hit iOS in January, there was question whether it was something legit or just another cloning type scenario which unfortunately happens far too often on the App Store. As it turned out, Rio Grande actually allowed certain developers to make their own Dominion games with the caveat that if they were to release an official version at any time, then the unofficial one would be taken down from sale.

So it wasn’t as shady as it seemed, but it was strange since Rio Grande stated at the same time that they were releasing an official version for iOS, and that it was just “a few weeks” away. Well, those few weeks have turned into 8 months, but according to Pocket Tactics, who spoke with Rio Grande’s Jay Tummelson on the matter, the official Dominion iOS game is set to hit this Thursday.

[Image credit]

Other snippets of info about the game include an offline AI to play against, an online “Adventure Mode”, and unlimited free play of the base Dominion set with additional expansions available as IAP. Interestingly, the iOS version of Dominion is said to be just a front end for the HTML 5 game being developed by Goko.

It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out when Dominion comes later this week, and if you own the unofficial version you might want to back it up since it has been removed from the App Store.

[TUAW via Pocket Tactics]

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Unofficial 'Dominion' Hits the App Store; Official Version Coming in "A Few Weeks"

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

In case you've never heard of it before, Dominion is a deck building card game created by game designer Donald X. Vaccarino and published by Rio Grande Games in 2008. Since its release, Dominion has been ripping up the charts over on BoardGameGeek, and has won all sorts of other awards including taking home game of the year at Germany's Spiel board game festival. In fact, Dominion's success and popularity have spawned an entire genre of other similar deck building games.

A few days ago, Dominion Donald X. Vaccarino [Free] hit the App Store, and since then I've been trying to verify the validity of this port. It seemed pretty shady, and the developer's web site sure didn't help things. After some additional digging, I came across a post by Rio Grande Games' Jay Tummelson over on BoardGameGeek. It turns out that over the years they've given their blessing to a number of developers to release iOS versions of Dominion, provided they agree to remove it once the official version hits the App Store.


Video review courtesy of The Dice Tower

What's more interesting though, is that the official licensed version, per this same forum post, is only "a few weeks" away. Even more curious though is that Chillingo currently has a game titled Dominion [$1.99] on the App Store as well. We'll just have to wait and see how the dust settles on all of this. If you're interested in Dominion, I'd snag the free version out now, and if you own Chillingo's Dominion it might not be a bad idea to back up the .ipa just in case there's any hijinks with take-down requests by Rio Grande Games so they can score the "Dominion" title on the App Store.

I hope Rio Grande is serious about this "few weeks" thing, as an official version of Dominion has potential to be awesome.

App Store Link: Dominion by Donald X. Vaccarino, Free (Universal)


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