Over on our forums, Offworld Games announced today that their iPad port of The Confrontation will hit the App Store later this summer. The Confrontation is a turn-based strategy game by famed German board game designer Reiner Knizia. It’s similar to Stratego in that you can’t see your opponent’s units until they engage in battle, but it features fewer units and an extra layer of card-based combat mechanics.
The cardboard Confrontation was set in the Lord of the Rings universe and released in 2002, during the height of the film trilogy’s popularity. It stands out partly because of its asymmetric win conditions: The Fellowship wins as soon as Frodo enters Mordor, but Sauron’s goal is to move three units in the Shire or to kill Frodo.
Offworld’s more recent digital version strips away all of the Tolkien licensing, replaced by generic fantasy, but the game seems otherwise unchanged: the “Light" faction tries to sneak the Prince into the Shadow Stronghold; “Shadow" players attempt to overrun the Light Capital or defeat the Prince in combat.
If you’re not familiar with The Confrontation, here’s a quick and dirty summary: each player moves his nine units around a diamond shape board carved into regions. You can see where your opponents soldiers are, but not what they are. When two opposing players try to occupy the same region, a short battle ensues that involves resolving special abilities and playing situational cards.
From there, you simply duke it out against your enemy until someone meets their win condition. The Confrontation obviously involves strategic planning and troop movement, but it’s also about bluffing, guessing, and taking risks in each one-on-one skirmish.
Offworld Games, meanwhile, are the team behind Legion of the Damned, another turn-based strategy game we reviewed way back in 2012. Spoiler: we liked it.
Offworld first announced Reiner Knizia’s The Confrontation—oh yeah, that’s the official name, like Sid Meier’s Civilization—late last year for Windows and OS X, with an iPad version to follow. Since then, they’ve set up a Steam Greenlight campaign and launched a Kickstarter for The Confrontation‘s first expansion.
The game is coming to iPad either way, but the Kickstarter would fund development on 18 new characters, essentially doubling the game. Judging from the proposed Kickstarter rewards, Reiner Knizia’s The Confrontation should be on the App Store by at least August and cost $9.99, with a $6.99 in-app purchase for the expansion pack (assuming it’s successfully funded).
