"If there is an app for that"

Westurn: Turn Based Showdowns review

July 27, 2022 by RSS Feed

Sometimes competitive games revolve around a metagame with tier lists comparing certain strategic choices that have the highest odds for success. Other games, like Westurn: Turn Based Showdowns, are almost all about mind games. This showdown dueling game has you staring down opponent avatars and making simple choices in hopes that you can anticipate what your foe is thinking to come out the victor. It's a fun dueling game that--despite being free-to-play--is well balanced and enjoyable.

Guessing game

You can probably guess from its title that Westurn: Turn Based Showdowns is a wild west themed game. In it, you choose an alien avatar who then stands face-to-face with another player and has to choose whether to load their weapon, fire it, or try to block an incoming shot. On each turn, you only can choose one action, with your goal being to eventually take your enemy's health down to zero.

This may sound like a pure guessing game, but like any seasoned rock-paper-scissors player knows, there is definitely a way to intuit and read player behaviors to anticipate moves and react to them. It also helps that Westurn has systems that limit players from simply firing or blocking constantly on every turn, which allows you to better zero-in on what your opponent might be trying to do.

Quest in the west

Westurn seems pretty clearly geared toward multiplayer competition, but the game also features a single-player campaign where you work your way through stages of AI enemies before facing a boss. Trying to predict a computer's strategy sounds like it could be pointless or uninteresting, but Westurn manages to make it work somewhat by giving these lifeless enemies some behavior traits and special abilities that keep you on your toes.

Completing quests earns you in-game currencies in Westurn, which you can then spend on powerups that can aid you in online matches or special cosmetic items that can change the appearance of your gun or bullet shield. Free players can only earn a limited amount of this currency though through a gating system for reward redemption on top of ads that regularly breakup the action.

Wild and free

Thankfully, players can opt-out of ads and earn unlimited currency in Westurn by simply paying $ 2.99 once. There are other purchases for increased shop currency amounts as well, but all of that feels unnecessary as the primary annoyance of the game is definitely the ads as opposed to any kind of lopsided pay-to-win balance.

Although there are some powerups that paying players may be able to have more access to across matches of Westurn, you earn plenty of free chances to use these same powerups and can only use one per match. Unless you are planning on trying to grind your way up the ranks of the game's leaderboard by playing continuously over long periods of time, the free-to-play rate of powerup availability is reasonable feels like it has a negligible impact on overall game balance.

The bottom line

Westurn: Turn Based Showdowns is a fun free-to-play dueling game that feels refreshingly fair. It isn't the deepest or most strategic way you can be competing with other players, but it is entertaining to try and see if you can pull over some mind trickery on others, regardless of whether you spend money on the title or not.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/westurn-turn-based-showdowns-review/

Blacken Slash review

July 22, 2022 by RSS Feed

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The more abstract a game is, the more it has to sell you on its premise and find smart ways to communicate information to you as a player. Blacken Slash, a roguelike dungeon-crawler where you play as a computer journeying between nodes in cyberspace, definitely accomplishes the former with a cool neon geometric style, but struggles at times to help you master its systems and mechanics with some unclear messaging and menu design.

Computer combat

Blacken Slash is a level-based game where you play as a iridescent pyramid that battles against foes like orange prisms and teal cylinders on a dark grey gridded battlefield. These shapes are mere representations of an interior digital space where you use cpu cycles to activate scripts that attack and disable other units.

Sounds riveting, right? Or more like... confusing? Don't worry, Blacken Slash is a lot less complicated to play than it is to describe. Every level is really just a turn-based combat field where you are given an objective that you can usually complete in a few turns. Sometimes it's to kill every enemy unit in the level. At others, you need to survive for a set number of turns or reach a pre-defined point in a limited amount of turns. After each level you complete, you get some currency and perhaps some loot you can equip to make your computer stronger before moving on to a new level with tougher challenges.

Custom rig

Every run of Blacken Slash starts out dead simple by giving you a basic script that allows you to spend a cycle (i.e. action point) to move or attack an enemy next to you. Just from completing a few levels, though, you can suddenly be piloting a heavily armored mortar machine or an elusive teleporting and pushing cpu. It all just depends on what kind of random gear drops you find from the enemies you fight.

The delight of Blacken Slash is in discovering the kinds of scripts and circuits you can pick up to customize your computer to create inventive and fun ways to overcome the game's micro levels. The challenges themselves are also creative and force you to consider more than just maximizing your damage or survivability. You don't always have to rely on chance to make sure your computer works the way you want it to, either. Blacken Slash has a unique "archive" system that allows you to bank select gear to use it on future runs, though you have to earn a currency to archive items and doing so usually has a steep opportunity cost against other benefits like healing your computer between levels or getting rare equipment.

Neon nonsense

Although the game uses basic geometric shapes for most of its art, Blacken Slash makes great use of color and other effects to keep its aesthetic from looking too basic or stark. Your adventure itself also comes to life through some basic text communications between you and other cpus that give you some direction in your questing. All this is backed by a smooth synth-based soundtrack that really reinforces a sense of that you're battling your way through a digital ocean of sorts.

My only gripe with Blacken Slash is that some of its systems and iconography could be better at letting me as a player know what is going on. I can't tell you how many times I accidentally ended my turn early, or got struck by cyber lightning, or replaced the wrong piece of equipment in my loadout, all because of Blacken Slash's obtuse UI. All of this gets exacerbated when you get closer to death on a run because the game has a color drain effect that desaturates the whole game as you lose health. It's a cool effect, but in turn it makes it harder to differentiate between item rarities and other color-coded objects. Some of these issues smooth out as you get more familiar with the game or are otherwise easily reversible in the moment, but they still feel like unnecessary pain points in what it otherwise an enjoyable experience.

The bottom line

The abstract dungeon-crawling in Blacken Slash trades on its ability to mix and match its various components into bite-sized chunks of action. For the most part, it's really successful at doing that while also establishing its own unique style and brand of cool. You shouldn't let a couple confusing visual design choices stop you from picking up this game, especially since there is a lite version you can pick up to try for yourself before deciding to buy.

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

Jade Order review

July 13, 2022 by RSS Feed

If you have a fondness for Square Enix's GO series (i.e. Hitman GO, Lara Croft GO, Deus Ex GO), Jade Order should look both familiar and intriguing. This turn-based puzzle game definitely has some clear inspirations, but those touch points are pretty well worn territory at this point, and it takes a lot more than a dark sci-fi aesthetic to make a game like that feel fresh.

Move point puzzler

The core idea of Jade Order is to serve up single screen puzzle stages where you control a character that can only move between predetermined waypoints, or nodes. Your goal is to link together the right sequence of moves between points to accomplish an objective that opens an exit that you can then proceed through.

For the purposes of Jade Order's story, you are controlling a warrior who is supposed to be lighting some beacons while avoiding death from alien creatures roaming along these points on stages. This is all basically set dressing though, as the story seems only deep enough to give basic context to its art design and mechanics, keeping the focus of the experience on serving up different kinds of challenges to complete in each level.

Power play

If you aren't familiar with the GO games or others like it, don't worry: Jade Order has a very gentle ramp of tutorials with levels that teach you how the game works. Each stage has multiple challenges you can complete, with the only required one being to kill enough creatures to unlock the gate before going through it.

The further you get into Jade Order, the more complicated these levels can get, and in turn the game grants you special powers you can and must deploy stragetically to succeed. Some powers let you force individual enemies to move before you do, while others can let you teleport across gaps, for example. The only constraint on these powers is you have to collect a certain item within each stage to use them, which can lead to levels where the goal is quite clear, but the method for how to reach it can get pretty convoluted.

Slow to evolve

There's no big issues with Jade Order, per se, so if you are just fiending for another node-based movement puzzler, this game could really satisfy. That said, I'm somewhat down on the experience as a whole because it doesn't shake up its challenges enough (even with powers) to make it feel like a fresh experience and there are a bunch of little things that I wish were different about it to make it a smoother-playing game.

For starters, Jade Order can be a little hard-to-parse on smaller screens. The detailed pixel art looks awesome, but I found locating certain items or indicators on my iPhone SE screen troublesome at times. I also wish Jade Order was a little snappier when it came to undoing moves or restarting levels. As a game that requires a certain amount of experimentation and trial-and-error, I wish there wasn't a delay (however slight) in rolling back a move or retrying a level fresh. Between these things and the somewhat long and slow ramp up to getting access to powers, the game can definitely feel like a drag.

The bottom line

Jade Order runs into that age-old problem where--in taking inspiration from some truly remarkable titles--it has to wrestle with how playing it will constantly remind you of something else you could be playing instead. Perhaps if it were a bit cleaner and snappier (or perhaps differentiated itself a bit more) this puzzler could stand toe-to-toe with something like Lara Croft GO, but instead it just lives in its shadow.

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

Dicey Dungeons review

July 08, 2022 by RSS Feed

Back in 2019, I wrote about how much potential Terry Cavanagh's then-fresh Dicey Dungeons had for mobile play. Fast forward a few years and it turns out I was 100% correct. Dicey Dungeons continues to be an incredible and charming dungeon-crawling roguelike that has aged well, works beautifully on touch screens, and feels novel once again thanks to new DLC baked into this mobile version.

Rolling through dungeons

Dicey Dungeons made enough of a splash when it released that it's possible you already know about this game and how it works. Just in case you don't, it's a spin on deck-based roguelikes where you build up your hero using specialized gear and abilities but have to plan around the very real element of chance that could ultimately lead to your death.

The twist to Dicey Dungeons is that it doesn't use cards but instead relies on traditional six-sided die to create its chance. Dice need to be plugged into pieces of gear you have equipped to use them, and by mixing and matching the right items you can turn yourself into a highly optimized killing machine. That might sound dark, but all of this death is packaged in a super bright and colorful world that just so happens to have a game show where contestants are turned into dice and forced to fight through dungeons filled with monsters.

The OG and then some

In its wake, Dicey Dungeons spawned some imitators, some of which have been available on the App Store for years now, but nothing has come close to topping the kind of depth, variety, and charm that this game has to offer. Even if you already played the heck out of Dicey Dungeons in 2019, the game is worth returning to now more than ever because of what has been added to the game since then.

On top of the base game, this version of Dicey Dungeons includes two special "Bonus Episodes" that include new items, enemies, and other modifiers. The first is a Halloween episode that re-themes the game with costumed enemies and fall foliage while also giving challenges like "defeat each enemy in one turn." The second episode is a brand new one that released alongside this mobile version called "Reunion" that transforms how each of the original game's heroes work while adding hours of additional dungeon-crawling to do.

Nice dice port

Of course, you can enjoy all of this dice-based dungeon-crawling on your console or PC, but there's something about the simple turn-based gameplay of Dicey Dungeons that makes it feel particularly well suited to phones and tablets. The controls in this mobile version feel perfectly natural with simple tapping and dragging of dice to slot them into equipment. The game also checkpoints constantly and can juggle keeping track of single saves in each individual episode so you can pop in and out and switch up your progress on the game with extreme ease.

The only thing really missing from Dicey Dungeons on iOS is a cloud save functionality that preserves your saves if you remove the app or decide you want to play it on multiple devices. This isn't a huge deal as the game is built around starting from scratch over and over again, but it still would be nice to have.

The bottom line

Dicey Dungeons is a truly excellent roguelike that feels perfectly at home on mobile. Stop playing whatever derivative mobile equivalent you've been putting up with for however long and pick up this true classic.

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

Paragon Pioneers review

June 29, 2022 by RSS Feed

Have you ever wanted a chill city-builder that doubles as an exploration and optimization game? That's essentially the combination that comes together to make Paragon Pioneers work. It's a nice thing to have on your phone to chip away at building a huge empire, even though it has some issues with regard to concept and UI.

Island empire

Paragon Pioneers is a game about colonizing islands with settlers and eventually expanding and building up control over a landmass to create a self-sustaining and productive settlement. You may start with just a handful of pioneers and manually tapping on island trees to generate wood, but with some time you can have swaths of farmland, a military, quarries, ports with trading routes, and more, all of which can be set up to operate in an essentially automated way.

As you start to maximize the potential of an island settlement, you can send ships out to discover new landmasses to find new resources that let you continue advancing along through the 100+ buildings the game has to offer, but starting on those islands involves once again working your way up through conquering and taming the island to suit your needs.

Abstract exploitation

Before going any further, I'll say the colonization aspect of Paragon Pioneers is troublesome to say the least. The game is very clearly about taking land away from native inhabitants through force, as every island has a series of orc fortresses preoccupying most of the map as a way of gating progress in the game.

This isn't anything new when it comes to other management games like this, but it is worth noting that the city-building aspects of this game require players to engage in acts of exploitation, colonization, and military conquest. That said, one of the things that makes Paragon Pioneers tolerable in its design is its abstract nature. Everything you do in the game is neatly condensed into simple icons and menus that make your actions in the game feel more like figuring out and rearranging machinery as opposed to any sort of simulation.

Build it block by block

With its abstract look and mechanics, Paragon Pioneers is fairly easy to look at and manage even on the smallest of phone screens. The way the game divides land into a grid of squares with each building taking up one square allows for a lot of flexibility and complexity when it comes to how you lay out your empire. With everything being reduced to simple, cookie-cutter symbols, you also don't really run into issues that other mobile city-builders face when it comes to visual dissonance between optimal play and realism.

The trade-off of this simplicity though is that sometimes it can create confusion. Some of the UI and menu language and Paragon Pioneers can be a little too obtuse, leaving you having to guess how to solve certain problems or simply blow things up and rebuild them until they are working as intended. As a game built around experimentation and slow, steady progress, this all ends up feeling like a minor issue, especially since Paragon Pioneers's price tag comes with a guarantee that you'll never see ads or have to juggle premium currencies that can speed up or slow down your play.

The bottom line

There are definitely some not-so-appealing aspects of Paragon Pioneers, but that doesn't diminish what it manages to ultimately deliver all too much. There's a lot to explore and discover with this game, and the only thing standing in your way is your own ingenuity, reasonable amounts of time, and (unfortunately) some orcs.

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