I...know. No need to be shouting. My point is that this game is more solid on its target device (iphone /ipod) than a universal app from a respectable developer (Playdek). Don't want to compare two completely different games, but we talk a lot about universal apps here (read above), and compare Playdek to the Coding Monkeys, so here it is. SW, for me, is still laggy and crashes a lot on the ipad 1. LC, on the other hand, is solid on an ipod. Differrent games, yeah, and diffent treatment as well.
Games that require different resources as well. There's no point at all comparing something the scale of Summoner Wars to Lost Cities. Lost Cities is a very simple card game with minimal information and art at most times. Maybe it would have been best for Playdek to just not support the iPad1.
^^ This. And I hope this comment won't be deleted like my previous one was. Apparently the admins here are big Coding Monkeys fans.
GC does not offer a chat. But if both players have activated Twitter, Lost Cities will use the iOS-Tweet-feature to tweet to the other user including @name and the hastag #lc. If your Twitter-client supports Push-Notifications, thats like a chat. Of course it's a workaround, but Lost Cities does use the infrastructure given by Apple. Apple offers voice chat, but no text chat.
Codito has included chat in Le Havre, every turn can include text to be submitted to the opponent/s, and it uses GC for multiplayer.
I'm guessing the decision not to have chat was to save on server costs. Still, I think the fact that they even thought to include twitter as a workaround for that rather than excluding chat entirely speaks well for the app. The more I play this one, the more I like it. And although I play mostly on iPad, I think that people who aren't buying this because it's not universal are really missing out.
I downloaded it while waiting to pick up some visitors from the airport. In 20 minutes I think I played 6 games. I lost 4. I like it though.
I get crashes with Summoner Wars on my iPad 2. It will sometimes get stuck loading the game and basically freezes up my iPad. Eventually it will go back to the springboard. Saphire had said iPad 1 - I just wanted to point out that stability is an issue with that game on the iPad 2 as well, at least it is on mine. Anyway, I've been playing Lost Cities this morning on my iPhone 4 and I am really enjoying it. Very well done implementation of the game. At least I presume so, seeing how I'd never played it before. Yes, it's a relatively simple game, but it's fun and there's definitely strategy to it. It does play really great on the iPhone. There's certainly no issues with real estate. I'll still take a universal version, though.
I love the simple strategy of the game. But as simple as it is, there is still a thick layer of it in the game. Once you see that an opponent has laid down coins on a color you can now horde that color to force him into minus points. You can also hold off on putting down your cards to hopefully fool the opponent into thinking you don't have anything in that color. I like the risk/reward part of the game as well. You can keep waiting for lower cards in a suit hoping that you'll get something that will help you get a longer run, but you might find out that your opponent already has them and has been waiting to strike. The coins and discards also add to the strategy. I've used the discards to make an opponent think that I have no plans to use a color. i will discard one of my low ones and wait for them to put coins down and then hit get them with my cards in hand. It's a lot more than just a 2-Player Solitaire game. And as for it being on just the iPhone... Doesn't bother me. This is the type of game I would pretty much play just on the iPhone anyway. My iPads are used mostly for the bigger games that need a lot of real estate. Simple card games and word games populate my iPhone for time wasting situations. I think that there has been more outrage over the decision for a business to make a game iPhone only for now (they have talked about getting it to the iPad) than I've seen over some politicians decisions. If some of the members of this forum gave as much passion to real world problems as they do to their gaming on the go... we'd be living in a wonderful, peaceful world.
Game Impressions So after playing through a few games I definitely have similar impressions to those already posted. Lots of polish as you'd expect from the coders of Carcassonne. But as stated before the lack of in-game chat is a supreme bummer... After such a nice online, asynchronous experience with Carcassonne I was really disappointed to see that they used Gamecenter for all of the client-server communications.. Like almost all Gamecenter games it's just clunky. By far the biggest problem I see is, correct me if I'm wrong here, I can't find a way to have more than one game going with the same person?! Given the very short turn length it's critical for a game like this to have multiple games going with each friend. Though, I guess maybe I just need more friends... So in sum I would rate it just a "good" game. Definitely not anywhere near Carcassonne's standards, but well polished. For what it's worth I'd have gladly have paid a few more dollars to support the server costs of in-game chat and multiple games per friend.
If anyone wants more "friends" here is one: griffin611. I think this is drawing me in like Carcassonne, Ascension and SW.
Because arguing about whether Playdek or Coding Monkeys is the better developer is so relevant? I am speaking about the game, what are you doing?
Well I'm so suprised by this. On the iPad, the 2x mode makes this look amazing - as good as if it were Universal, almost. The game itself is stunning - what great gameplay and strategy. The online mode is excellent, with random matching - and the players there seem WAY stronger than the game AI - so I know I have a LONG way to go before I really play this well! Just amazing. Jamie
Played a few rounds last night against the AI. I thought I knew the rules after watching the how to on Boardgamegeek...but I guess I gotta do the tutorial. ;-) Beautiful game on both the iPod touch and the iPad. Since this game is simpler..I personally prefer to play on the iPod. Now time to play against the AI a bit before jumping online. ;-) **silently preparing for a whopping for online play**
Picked this up yesterday and am really enjoying it. Showed it to my wife, who then proceeded to play it for a few straight hours. It's a little grainy at 2x on the ipad, but not terrible at that size by any means. I'd love a dedicated (drop dead gorgeous, I'm sure) ipad version at some point, but it is what it is. The gamecenter multiplayer works fine for me. I don't really care that it's not as slick of a multiplayer presentation as some things -- I'm just pleased to have async, as rare as that tends to be.
Haha..tried 2 rounds with a random person and got my butt handed to me. Fun stuff. =) Good thing is I don't care and am ready to jump back for another game.
I don't think I'd want to play 2 games against the same person at the same time, so that's not an issue for me. This works well played async, unlike many games, but it's definitely still more fun played live. As such I wish it had a timers option.
