September 15, 2022 by RSS Feed
Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free
credit : appadvice
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
September 14, 2022 by RSS Feed
Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free
credit : appadvice
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
September 13, 2022 by RSS Feed
Source link: http://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free
credit : appadvice
APP review today