"If there is an app for that"

Everdell review

August 26, 2022 by RSS Feed

Everdell is a competitive board game about trying to build the best fantasy forest city teeming with animal citizens and valuable structures. Conceptually and structurally it borrows from some of the most beloved and long-standing board and tabletop games out there, but I'm not sure Everdell makes its component parts fit together as well as they should, nor does this digitized version of it really help its case.

Green cities

As a worker placement game, Everdell is one of the least complicated board games in terms of knowing how to make moves. In each game, players take turns sending their little minions out to do a task as represented by a space on the board. Occupying that space grants specific rewards, like a certain amount of a resource, the ability to draw cards, or a way to complete special actions that reward victory points.

Victory points are the ultimate currency of Everdell, as the player at the end of the game with the most wins. Of course, to rack up points you'll need to think about what kinds of buildings and villagers you want to add to your city, both of which can also grant rewards and other resources that can empower you to earn points. You have to plan all of this carefully, though, as you have a limited amount of city space and only four seasons (rounds) to try and complete your city.

Drafting duels

Between the city-building concept and the worker placement mechanics, Everdell reminds me of a hybrid of two of my absolute favorite board/tabletop games: Dominion and Lords of Waterdeep. These games also have relatively simple rules in terms of how to play them, but their interchangeable parts and competitive design make decision-making and figuring out why to make certain moves at certain times against certain opponents a deep and satisfying exercise every time you play.

That said, I find Everdell's spin on these popular and celebrated ideas to be a little too abstract. There's an internal logic at work assigning point values to cards and actions, but it isn't intuitive beyond understanding that the game designers needed to balance the game. As a result, each turn feels like an agonizing exercise in trying to tease out what my best course of action might be, all while Everdell's woodland fantasy backdrop does very little to help me figure things out.

Scroll through the woods

To its credit, this digital version of Everdell is quite eye-catching, with polygonal critter game pieces moving around a colorfully rendered forest that acts as the game board. There are also a ton of options for playing, including online multiplayer (though not much action is there), pass-and-play, and even some challenge modes that create special rules that traditional matches of Everdell don't follow.

All of this seems purposely designed for someone who is already very familiar with Everdell, though. The tutorial doesn't feel like it goes into strategy considerations enough to help newcomers succeed, and the pleasing visuals of the game board shoves some other UI elements that might be helpful aside or out of the game completely. Having to scroll around the screen to see what other players are doing, objectives you're working toward, or even having to tap and hold on cards to get a full view of them just feels unnecessarily difficult, especially when playing on an iPad that could accommodate a little more visual information more comfortably.

The bottom line

The iOS version of Everdell definitely feels like a tool for folks who already enjoy the board game to do so on-the-go. Even in this capacity, though, the game does feel a little overly clunky and the online multiplayer is hardly existent, which limits its appeal.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/everdell-review/

Hindsight review

August 08, 2022 by RSS Feed

Hindsight is the latest game from the creative mind behind Prune, though you wouldn't necessarily be able to figure that out without someone telling you. In fairness, over the better part of a decade since Prune released (2015) a lot has changed. Funnily enough, Hindsight is all about reacting to changes and processing the past once things aren't what they used to be anymore. It's an ambitious subject matter to tackle and I appreciate Hindsight's willingness to explore the space, even though I don't think it entirely works well.

Cleaning house

The story of Hindsight follows a woman who is revisiting her childhood home under tragic circumstances. Her mother has recently passed away, and now she is packing up all of the things left behind, which obviously stirs up a lot of memories and emotions for her.

The game presents this introspection by storing memories in objects, which you as the player activate and flow between by rotating your view around a scene and catching a reflection or shadow that you can tap on to move into. For example, you may see a teapot in kitchen that—at the right angle—reflects a view of the dining room with the woman’s full family family eating dinner years ago. Tapping on that sucks you into that memory where there are other objects that you can manipulate your view of to take you through to even more new memories.

Puzzling perspective

As you bounce between time periods and vignettes through various objects, the woman narrates an internal monologue about her life and her relationships with her parents and how they shifted over the years. You see everything from casual hangouts in the yard to piano recitals and vacations. The story told across all of these scenes is deeply personal and rife with nuance that extends beyond the surface-level tragedy of losing a caregiver.

Similarly, the ways you find paths forward into new memories get increasingly complicated and--at times--fractured between different objects you can explore in any order you want. Between chapters in the game, you also get to choose a single object to pack into your personal bag to take with you, which doubles as a moment of reflection for the player to think back to which aspects of the experience resonate the most with them.

Grief is messy

I appreciate for the kind of storytelling Hindsight aims for. More games should go out and attempt quieter, introspective experiences. That said, there were times where Hindsight's components didn't really click into place.

Most of this happened when a particular puzzle was a bit too obtuse to figure out, killing the momentum and sense of flow between these memories. Some puzzles even resulted in me putting down the game. To my surprise, when resuming the game, Hindsight went ahead and skipped whatever puzzle I was on for me, which was nice, but jarring. There are also some moments where the delivery of the narrator is so flat or overly philosophical that the dramatic aspects of them got muddled or lost.

The bottom line

Hindsight is at its best when you're cascading between memories and objects and following a steady stream of consciousness. When it stops due to trying to spot the right glowing object or because you're trying to parse what the narrator means, it loses some of its magic and feels a lot more like a standard perspective-based puzzle game. Luckily, this doesn't happen too often, and the game has some ability to put you back on track if you find yourself getting derailed by its rougher edges.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/hindsight-review/

Descenders review

August 05, 2022 by RSS Feed

The prospect of playing a free-roaming biking game that's focused on speed, precision, and stunts sounds like one of the worst matches for touch screen controls that I can imagine. This is precisely what Descenders is, and--unsurpsisingly--the controls are kind of troublesome. What is surprsing though is that my near constant fight to control the game's chaos has turned out to be a big reason why I keep coming back to it. There's something about the wild speed and structure of Descenders that makes it hard to put down, even in arguably its worst form factor.

Speed vs. survival

Descenders is a game about downhill biking. You control a cyclist and try to steer them effectively through various environments, some of which have carved dirt tracks and ramps, where others have no track at all. Your ultimate goal for each run is the same (make it to the finish), but you also receive a randomized sub-objective on each track that might ask you to perform specific stunts, finish the run in a certain amount of time, or complete the track without braking, among others.

Each track in Descenders only takes about a minute or so to complete, but they are connected in a web of tracks that you are supposed to move between before completing a "boss" track that lets you advance to a new region with tougher terrain and challenges. Your biker has a limited amount of health that you lose any time you wreck or wipe out, so a big part of Descenders is trying to balance your own survival with the speed and challenge of completing tracks and their objectives.

Bike hard or die trying

If this sounds a little bit like a roguelike, that's because it totally is. Descenders takes a well explored structure from more combat focused roguelikes like FTL or Slay the Spire and just drops it into a game more like SSX or Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. It's kind of genius, and works surprisingly well. Tracks are appropriately tough and tempt you into taking risks to earn things like crew members who can grant you new abilities and bonuses like better bike stability, higher jumping, etc. On top of that, tracks are procedurally generated but feature a lot of variety, including special challenges like first-person races, sponsor opportunities, and more.

Outside of this primary mode, Descenders also has a Free Ride Mode, different bike parks you can tool around in or compete for leaderboard ranks on, or even play multiplayer (though it kind of seems DOA. No players on release every time I've checked since). If you are playing tracks that other players online are currently riding, they may also pop into the environment, no matter which mode you are playing.

Touch and go

The action in Descenders can be harsh, fast, and unforgiving, but the whole thing works in large part because of how much granular control you have over your cyclist. In addition to basic steering controls, a second directional input allows you to flick in directions to jump, skid, or even wheelie your way around tracks. Essentially, you are given both control of your bicycle and the weight distribution of your character riding it, both of which you need to pilot effectively to make it through even some of the most basic challenges in Descenders.

The elephant in the room regarding these controls is obviously how they work using a touch screen device. In short, they definitely aren't great, particularly if you don't regularly play action games via touch. Even if you are comfortable with touch controls, there are times where you can lose track of how your thumb is dragging a virtual stick that can lead to accidental skids or trying to perform stunts unintentionally. These issues can and will be the reason for ending some runs sometimes. But, probably because it's easy to just hop back in and keep playing, I'm not bothered by them too much (though only if playing on a larger screen like an iPad). If this sounds like a deal-breaker, also just know that Descenders has full and perfect bluetooth controller support that sidesteps all control issues I just named.

The bottom line

Despite seeming like it shouldn't work on mobile devices, Descenders offers up such a fresh take on action sports games that it almost doesn't even matter. I can't say the App Store version is the best way to play it, but if it's the only way you'll end up spending time with this game, then it's well worth picking up.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/descenders-review/

Card Crawl Adventure review

August 03, 2022 by RSS Feed

It's always exciting when a game from Tinytouchtales releases. Since 2012, Arnold Rauers has been using this moniker to collaborate with artists to put out one of the most consistently praise-worthy lineups of releases you can find anywhere, particularly on the App Store. This is all a wind up to deliver the probably not-so-surprising news that Card Crawl Adventure, the newest game from Rauers et al, is yet another great card-based roguelike that is well worth playing.

Crawly thief

If you've played Tinytouchtales games before, the easiest way to describe Card Crawl Adventure is as a mashup of Card Crawl and Card Thief. If that doesn't mean anything to you, first: go play those games. Secondly, it essentially means that it's a card game where you build your own deck of cards based on a character class and mix that in with a dungeon deck to create a grid of face up cards you can trace a path through to activate abilities, defeat monsters, unlock treasure, and escape to your next challenge.

If that sounds really abstract and a little confusing, you'd be absoltely right to think so. Despite a reasonably coherent tutorial, Card Crawl Adventure's early-goings definitely feel like a trial by fire where you have to learn the precise nature of how a rich, interlocking set of ability types and systems interact the hard way.

Charmingly challenging

Even if you find yourself getting stopped early in your quest repeatedly, it's hard to fight the allure of trying again. Some of this magnetism certainly comes from Card Crawl Adventure's art style. More than that, though, the overall presentation of dungeon-crawling is so whimsically framed such that your adventures show you playing this card-based game across the table from the bosses and barkeeps contained within the decks, which is then set against the backdrop of a cozy tavern full of unique patrons ready to take a turn at the game.

Once you start clearing dungeons and have seen most of the card variety there is in the game, Card Crawl Adventure continues to open up and offer new challenges thanks to an achievement system, "Weekly Crawl" leaderboards, a "Cursed Mode," and a unique scoring system that only celebrates how much gold you've managed to collect and not spend across your journey.

Valuable variety

Card Crawl Adventure is listed on the App Store as free with in-app purchases, and you can enjoy almost all of the modes I've named in this review without spending any money just fine. It is only when you want to permanently unlock access to any additional character classes beyond the Scoundrel, participate in the weekly leaderboard challenge, or gain access to an equippable item that makes the game get easier as you fail runs that you are asked to pay any money. All of these items are offered a la carte, so you can spend as much or as little as you want to get the exact unlocks you want.

There is plenty to play with using just the Scoundrel on the free journey to let you know if you want to pay to unlock more variety. These purchases are well worth their asking prices if you want a deeper experience with Card Crawl Adventure, but it's nice that the initial download is free so you can test out if you can decode the somewhat arcane rule system ahead of buying in to the experience.

The bottom line

Card Crawl Adventure is easily the most ambitious release from Tinytouchtales. As a result, it does ask you for quite a bit of patience and perhaps even some trial-and-error before you can really start to wrap your head around it. Once it does, though, Card Crawl Adventure is immensely rewarding, particularly if you opt to unlock everything it has to offer.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/card-crawl-adventure-review/

Pawnbarian review

July 28, 2022 by RSS Feed

Just when I feel like I've seen every ingenious variation on the roguelike dungeon-crawler, games like Pawnbarian come along and surprise me all over again. This game mixes chess with deck-building, and serves this combination up with a huge amount of variety that all but ensures it will stay on your phone as a go-to game for a good, long time.

Movement melee

Pawnbarian throws you into dungeons comprised of tiny floors fashioned after a quarter of a chess board (i.e. a 4x4 grid). Your hero character appears on this board facing up against all manner of enemy creatures, and your goal on each floor is to defeat these foes in as few turns as possible to maximize rewards you spend on upgrades before facing off against a final boss.

To do this, you pick cards from your hand to move and attack. These cards primarily consist of chess piece icons, and the icon on the card dictates how you can move across the board. For example, if you select a card with a knight piece on it, you can move in the unique L-shape of a knight in chess. If you happen to move onto a space with an enemy on it, you defeat them. After selecting two cards to conduct moves and attacks, your enemies then take their turns where they make their attacks and move about the board.

Card complex

Using cards to make chess moves against enemies that follow their own unique rulesets sounds complicated, but Pawnbarian puts these pieces together so elegantly that everything feels intuitive. Even when stacking on mechanics like cantrips, poisoned squares, and a customization system for adding shields, increased range, and other unique properties to your chess-piece cards, your bird's eye view of the action gives you all of the information you need to anticipate, read, and react to situations regardless of how hairy they get.

This elegant UI is useful when playing Pawnbarian's free version, but is an essential element in allowing for the full version of the game to contain all of the complicating features (including additional character classes, difficulty modes, and dungeons) you gain access to after a single $ 6.99 purchase. The full version of the game even contains characters that don't use traditional chess pieces or don't move upon using cards in certain circumstances. All of these variables allow you to essentially fine-tune the exact kind of game and difficulty curve you want to play under.

Stark strategizing

Presumably in order to keep the game from having too many distracting visual elements, Pawnbarian is quite stark in its presentation. Your play screen is perpetually awash with a plain, dark blue background upon which about five other colors combine to show you the board, your hero character, enemies, cards, etc. This is to say it isn't the flashiest game out there, though I will say the black and white line art for all of Pawnbarian's characters is surprisingly expressive.

Another thing to note about Pawnbarian is that it can be a really tough game that asks you to show some restraint and consideration on any given turn. Some of this has to do with just how many different variables you can be playing with at any given time, but even if you are just playing the free dungeon and character, you may have to take some time to tap and hold on enemies to read exactly what kinds of traits they have to fully understand what you're up against. I could see this as frustrating for players who want a faster-paced experience, but that's simply not what Pawnbarian offers up.

The bottom line

The way that Pawnbarian injects chess into a dungeon-crawling roguelike experience is totally brilliant and unexpected. What's more is its core mechanics hold up through essentially all of the time it takes to have mixed and matched the dizzying amount of interchangeable parts packed into the game. So, even though it may not be the most eye-catching game you could be playing on your phone, Pawnbarian is certainly one of the better titles to release on the App Store as of late.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/pawnbarian-review/