When people ask me what I think about certain games, all too often my commentary includes “…and it would be really great if it had some kind of online multiplayer.”
Xpressed has knocked my socks off with UniWar [App Store]. The game is by no means perfect, but for the current promotional price of 99¢, it’s impossible to pass up if you’re even remotely interested in turn based strategy games.
UniWar tips its hat at both the StarCraft and Advance Wars series with three playable races that each have slightly different advantages and disadvantages while waging a turn based war on a hex grid.
The game features a brief tutorial in the 21 map single player campaign that seems to cover everything new players to the genre need to know. (Although it would be nice if these levels could be skipped as they’re fairly remedial to veterans of similar games.) The touch controls are extremely simple and work well aside from a few accidental fat fingered moves here and there that often can’t be undone. UniWar also seemlessly switches from portrait to landscape mode depending on which way you’re holding the device. I experienced less fat fingering while playing in landscape mode, but it would be nice to be able to lock your screen orientation.
Feedback on our forums has been mixed when it comes to the non-adjustable difficulty of single player campaign and solo maps against an AI opponent. Personally, I felt the AI was a little too predictable and on the easy side, but please consider this is coming from someone with a vast history of turn based strategy experience. Others have felt it’s too hard or just right, so what you think of the included AI will greatly depend on your familiarity with the genre.
Outside of the campaign maps, UniWar also comes with solo mode to play individual maps against an AI opponent. Unfortunately, all but the first map comes locked and you can’t choose the next map until you’ve completed the previous. There are 53 maps to choose from in online play, so it really doesn’t make sense to me why you wouldn’t have access to the same set of maps for playing single player skirmishes. This inconsistency also exists in the single device two-player mode. I love that you can play against a friend using one device, but it has really left me scratching my head trying to figure out why you can’t play the same maps that you can online. By doing this, Xpressed is leaving people who are buying the game specifically for local multiplayer out in the cold until they’ve gone through and unlocked everything in single player.
Despite my criticisms with single player and local versus mode, the online multiplayer has earned UniWar complete tenure on my iPhone. Unless the online community dies off, I really can’t see myself ever getting bored of playing over the Internet. Online play with up to 8 players can be done either anonymously or by registering a username. Registering provides online statistics, a friends list, and email notifications. There’s really no reason not to as once you play your first online game you’ll be hooked.
Email notifications? Yes! One of the coolest things about UniWar’s multiplayer is that you can be playing up to twenty games at a time. Xpressed’s servers email you when it’s your turn in a game. After launching UniWar, hit “Current Games”, and make your moves in any that are waiting for you to take your turn. At this point, the email notifications seem like a stopgap solution until Apple releases the 3.0 firmware with the associated push notification service, and it works pretty well. If you have an unlimited SMS package for your phone, you can even get crazy and use your carrier’s email to SMS gateway for instant alerts when it’s your turn.
One thing that’s kind of annoying about the email notifications is right now toggling them on and off seems to be bugged and Xpressed doesn’t queue up alerts to send multiple notifications in the same email. This morning when I was testing out playing several games at once, my inbox was quite literally exploding with emails from 5 concurrent games. I can’t imagine playing 20. It would be nice if there were a setting to throttle the alerts to come in batches every few minutes. Another thing I’d love to see is if these emails included links you could click which launch the app with the correct game open similar to how apps like Tweetie [App Store] can be launched using tweetie:// URL’s. Email invitations or friend list invites could also potentially be sent to people who have the game using the same URL scheme.
While these enhancements would be nice, the most pressing change the notification service needs is to not send emails when you’re actively connected to a game waiting for the other person to take their turn. If you’re playing a game with someone else with no wait in between turns, Xpressed still sends you email notifications. It’s really pretty silly, and after playing a few games I’ve had to white list their email addresses as there was nothing I could to convince my mail client that the notifications weren’t spam otherwise.
All of my complaints, however, can easily be washed away by the fact that UniWar is currently priced at only 99¢. What you get for your dollar is downright ridiculous and with a little refinement the game will easily command a $5 or $10 price tag. The developer has even mentioned on our forums plans to eventually release a free map editor as well.
If they can deliver some solid updates, UniWar is going to be the iPhone online gaming gold standard. As I said before, if you’re even remotely interested in the genre you really can’t pass this game up.
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