Dice Versa review
September 19, 2022 by RSS Feed
You could skip this review of Dice Versa entirely and just play it. This puzzle game that dropped practically out of nowhere is available now on the App Store for free. There's no ads, no in-app purchases, and it's pretty enjoyable for what it is.
Dice with the devil
Dice Versa is a game where you have to match dice on a game board. Each dice has a number and color value assigned to it and the trick of the game is that you can't place dice next to each other that don't match in color and/or number. Once you fill a row or column of four dice, they clear off the board and add to your overall score, which is tallied for the leaderboards once you've run out of viable moves to make.
It's pretty similar to a lot of other matching puzzle games, but there are some key nuances to Dice Versa that help it stand out. Over time, your dice pool gets larger, as do the numbers and color variety of dice. There are also "wild" dice that can match with any number of dice and a combo system for chaining multiple matches together at once, clearing rows or columns with single numbers/colors, and more.
Pure chance
Outside of simply score climbing (and an initial tutorial), Dice Versa doesn't have much to offer. This may come as no surprise if you understand Dice Versa's origins. The game started as an entry in the Game Makers' Toolkit 2022 Game Jam, and thanks to its popularity and selection as one of the event's winners, it got polished up just enough to be released.
This is all to say that Dice Versa doesn't have some of the other trimmings you might expect from other mobile puzzle games. There aren't unlocks, cosmetics, achievements, or any other frills to keep you playing beyond the core matching systems themselves. Generally speaking, I prefer my puzzle games this way, though I know that seems to go against current design trends for creating successful mobile titles.
Rolling restarts
For all that is included in Dice Versa, the finished product is quite nice and user friendly. The game board helpfully highlights where you can make valid plays and explains when you get a score multiplier and what it is for. It also has some accessibility features like a colorblind mode, haptic feedback, and screen shake toggles that you can adjust to your liking.
While all of these features are great, I did find myself wanting two key features that are noticeably absent from Dice Versa. The first is a way to resume play sessions if you step away from a run or restart your phone. The other is some kind of alternate control scheme, as I found myself sometimes dragging dice to slots I didn't intend to drop them in, which a tap-based input method would likely prevent.
The bottom line
Dice Versa is a neat little puzzle game that is both easy to and well worth checking out. It isn't swimming in bells and whistles, but it also doesn't really need to, especially considering the asking price.
Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/dice-versa-review/
credit : 148apps
Railbound review
September 15, 2022 by RSS Feed
Puzzle games don't have to be complicated to be fun, but they do have to find a way to distinguish themselves from others. Railbound certainly looks nice and serves up some clever puzzles, but its train-based puzzling feels like a well-worn idea that doesn't get shaken up enough to make it feel more than simply competent.
Locomotive link-up
Railbound consists primarily of levels on a grid where your goal is to place railroad tracks so they provide a path for train cars to link up to a locomotive. Most levels begin with scattered pieces of rail already placed and immovable from their predefined locations while you have to fill in the gaps with a limited set of track pieces.
Once your path is set, you tap a button to watch the train cars go. If you mapped things out right, the cars connect to the engine and you chug off to the next level. If you are wrong, you get to watch how things go awry before resetting and trying a different track layout.
Tricky tracks
At the start of Railbound, the primary constraint on creating paths for your train cars is a limited amount of track pieces. The further you get in the game, more complicating factors start emerging like multiple train cars, tunnels, gates, switches, and more.
Each time one of these new features gets introduced, Railbound is pretty careful about rolling back the difficulty to let you learn how it works before layering previously explored mechanics back in. If at any point you get hung up on a particular challenge, you can often hop out of it and instead try a secondary level or even unlock all levels or toggle on a hint system in the game's settings.
One-track mind
Railbound has a ton of track-placing puzzling to offer and its levels are divided into different worlds that make good use of color and make the game look nice and varied. Its challenges are also pretty clever and contain more than the occasional stumper. Many times when playing, I had to take breaks so I could come back with a fresh perspective to tease out solutions.
This all sounds well and good, and for the most part it is, but all while playing Railbound I was also hoping and looking for something that would really open up the game's possibility space or add some more personality to its puzzling. There are some cute drawings of dogs who are the characters taking these trains on their journeys, but the glimpses we get of them are few and far between.
The bottom line
Railbound is a perfectly competent puzzle game. There's nothing wrong with that except for the fact that I could say that about a lot of other games on iOS as well. There are some unique things about this track-laying game, but they don't leave a lasting impression.
Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/railbound-review/
credit : 148apps
ScourgeBringer review
September 14, 2022 by RSS Feed
I have become fully convinced that it is possible to squeeze an action roguelite down to iOS screens and keep the action manageable for touch screens. Gunfire Reborn did it. Fury Unleashed did it. Weirder variations like Descenders managed it, and even Dead Cells feels mostly fine on iOS (though vastly better with a bluetooth controller). So why then do I find myself feeling less-than-enthused spending time with ScourgeBringer? Well, the short version is that the core of the game relies on loosely connected ideas that never really form a cohesive whole.
Near perfect port
If the only reason you are reading this review is to understand how the iOS version of ScourgeBringer is, then know this is a high quality mobile port. The game looks sharp and plays well. It also has perfect bluetooth controller support if you are into that.
The only room for improvement I can readily identify is the lack of iCloud support. This includes not just the ability to share progress across devices but also retain your progress after deleting the app. This seems to be a rare thing to find across most iOS releases these days (unless they are Apple Arcade titles), but nevertheless it is a noticeable absence.
Deadly dasher
For those who may be less familiar with the game, ScourgeBringer is a roguelite where you play as a fierce warrior who can dash, jump, wall run, slice, and shoot her way through tiny, box-like rooms to take on bosses and try to uncover her mysterious past. These rooms are stitched together in a procedural way and your goal is to find your way through them to a boss that you must defeat before moving on to the next grid of rooms to fight through.
ScourgeBringer's combat revolves a lot around the traversal options you have in addition to the attacks you have at your disposal. Dodging, using cover, bouncing between enemies to interrupt their attacks, and lots of jumping are arguably just as important as the gun and sword you use to slay enemies. You can't just use these abilities to bypass combat, though, as each room in ScourgeBringer locks you in until you've defeated one or more waves of foes that spawn in. These combat encounters usually move pretty quickly and the game rewards you with more currencies to buy items and upgrades for your character by chaining together kills in quick succession.
Hash and slash
ScourgeBringer is structured just like a traditional roguelite, where death is expected and every retry gives you an opportunity to start your run with slightly better perks you can unlock with currency retained between runs. If the action is too intense, the game also has an "accessibility" menu where you can adjust things like game speed, health regen assist, and more.
All of this is fine. The moment-to-moment action is appropriately thrilling as well. I just can't get myself excited about playing ScourgeBringer, though, and I think it's because its entire design is lifted pretty directly from other games without a ton of regard for making the components work together or teach you--the player--how they should. In all my time with the game it wasn't clear to me what I can or should save my gun ammo for, for example, or why I should worry about deflecting bullets when sometimes counters damage me anyway. I kept playing ScourgeBringer trying to find answers, but would just keep finding more questions like these.
The bottom line
ScourgeBringer is effectively playable on small screens thanks to this iOS port, but even the most perfect port of this game wouldn't address some of the key design issues that eventually make its action feel tiring and tedious.
Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/scourgebringer-review/
credit : 148apps
Automatoys review
September 09, 2022 by RSS Feed
It's hard to overstate how good a mobile game feels when it is tailor made for the device you are playing it on. Ports or titles that emulate other kinds of games on other platforms can be nice if they are carefully constructed with touch in mind, but something like Automatoys, where the game doesn't really feel like it would work anywhere else, is a rare kind of game. For what it's worth, outside of its feel, the game is somewhat skin deep, but a fair free-to-start model conveniently lets you decide if this digital toy/puzzle is up your alley enough to spend more time and money on it.
Digital ball in cup
Automatoys is a puzzle game where you guide a little ball through intricate mechanical toys with controlled taps. Pressing on the screen activates specific features of these toys that can do anything from activate a mini-catapult to tilt a ramp. Using this simple, one-touch control method, you have to time your taps to guide the ball through various different stages of the toy to reach a pre-defined exit.
The whole thing feels like the digital equivalent of a ball in a cup or those water games where you can hit buttons to jet water over bits of plastic to try and get them to different goal points. Automatoys is a lot more complicated than these and presents a lot more variety, but otherwise seems modeled after these kinds of puzzle toys.
Fantastic feel
The selling point of the gameplay in Automatoys is the amount of feedback you get as you navigate its levels. Your phone vibrates with remarkable accuracy to the ball clinking around inside your screen, making for a very tactile experience. This creates a lot of satisfaction when you are able to successfully run through the series of obstacles each level presents.
Automatoys also wouldn't work as well as it does if its machinery was hard to figure out or distinguish visually. Thankfully, the game keeps each level in full view and automatically tilts the camera to effectively highlight where the ball is at all times. There's also some great use of color to make sure the ball and all interactive objects are easy to identify at a glance as well.
Fleeting and free
Automatoys features a dozen levels, but the first three are available for free. To unlock the full game, you can pay $2.99, but you also might get your fill off of those initial levels alone.
That was certainly the case for me. Even with quadruple the amount of levels, Automatoys isn't a terribly long or challenging experience, and the core of what makes it a fun play is right there in those first few levels.
The bottom line
Automatoys is a cool thing that is worthy of praise. It isn't earth-shattering, but it also isn't trying to be. It's a game that firmly understands what is was made for and executes that beautifully. The best part is you can go check to see if you can agree for yourself and toss a few bucks the developer's way if you're hungry for more.
Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/automatoys-review/
credit : 148apps
Iron Marines Invasion review
September 08, 2022 by RSS Feed
The first Iron Marines is easily an all-time classic for me. Ironhide Studios took their years of experience as premier tower-defense designers and made something more akin to Starcraft both in look and feel while being careful to keep things manageable using a touchscreen. In a lot of ways, Iron Marines Invasion is just more of this, which is nice, but it feels less inspired this time around. It's good, but not special like the first game was.
Stellar skirmishing
Just like its predecessor, Iron Marines Invasion is a real-time strategy game where you tap and drag space marines, aliens, mechs, and hero units around a map that you have an overhead view of. Your missions vary from level to level, but they all revolve around a galactic conflict presenting an existential threat to most space-faring life.
Your units will attack all on their own and even regenerate lost health over time, so a lot of the game revolves around combining units or building base defenses that work well in combination with your spacing so that you are able to defeat your foes without having your own forces destroyed.
Rearranging roles
Iron Marines Invasion is a more expansive campaign than the original game, with essentially twice as many levels that have you doing a lot more planet hopping to fight in new locales. While some of these levels--particularly a few setpieces toward the end--feel like the pinnacle of Ironhide's RTS design capabilities to date, large sections of the game simply feel like a re-hash of the first Iron Marines.
A big reason why this game feels so much like the first one is because the unit design isn't all that different from the original Iron Marines. While you can mix and match a greater variety of units that look different, you are still playing with all the same unit archetypes, and because you can equip different sets of units to play with per mission, some duplication in roles is present as well.
Cosmic cost
Perhaps the most noticeable (and unwelcome) changes between Iron Marines and Iron Marines Invasion occur outside of the levels themselves. The level navigation menu is a confusing sprawl of distant planets, constant prompts for turning on notifications pop up, the tech tree upgrade system has fewer ways to customize your progression through the game, and there are fewer hero characters and unit packs that come with the base game (while many more are available for additional purchase).
None of these affect the moment-to-moment action too much, and Iron Marines Invasion is not so difficult that you might feel the need to purchase units to complete the campaign, but it all leaves a pretty gross taste in my mouth. To be fair, the original Iron Marines has some of this (and has added more over time), but Iron Marines Invasion takes things further and thus it feels more detrimental to the experience.
The bottom line
Iron Marines Invasion provides a whole lot more Iron Marines levels to play, which is nice. That said, many ways in which this game tries to evolve past its original formula feel mostly inconsequential and the others just seem like a way to further monetize players who already have to buy in to the experience already. I am glad to have more high-quality RTS action on iOS, but don't love what I have to put up to do so here.
Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/iron-marines-invasion-review/
credit : 148apps
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