Archive for the ‘Tutorial’ tag
Best iOS Games January 2012
Our ratings for games we reviewed in January are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a three-star or higher is considered a “good” rating.
Our final scores are not the product of any traditionally objective measures such as graphics or sound, but simply reflect the games we would most recommend to others. Keep in mind, this listing is comprised of games we reviewed in January, and not necessarily games that were specifically released in January.
5 Stars
Super Crate Box, $1.99 – [Review] – [] – Vlambeer knocks it out of the park with this ultra-frantic crate collecting game. With great virtual controls, and gameplay that is great for pick up and play mobile gaming sessions, Super Crate Box is a game you shouldn’t miss.
4.5 Stars
Blockwick, Free – [Review] – [] – A really slick puzzle game that you can try for free. After that, level packs of increasing difficulty are sold in bundles of 60 for 99¢ a pop. Don’t let the initial pack it comes with turn you off, think of it more as a really long tutorial.
Hero Academy, Free – [Review] – [] – This multiplayer tactical game by Robot Entertainment has become incredibly popular amongst our community, and even was the topic of a . If you’re looking for people to play with, hit the forum link and you’ll find tons of people looking for a game.
Run Roo Run, $0.99 – [Review] – [] – From the creators of Scribblenauts comes this super-fun mini-level jumping game. Most levels will only take a few moments to complete, but thankfully, there’s a ton of them. Clearing a world unlocks some really difficult levels that’ll really put you to the test.
Smash Cops, $2.99 – [Review] – [] – Not only does Smash Cops have great graphics, but it also has a new control method that we haven’t seen before for controlling your cop car. You use your finger to “push” the car where you want to go. It sounds strange, but it works great.
Triple Town, Free – [Review] – [] – There’s a definite learning curve to Triple Town but once you get over that hump and come to grips with how the mechanics of the game works, you’ll be building amazing towns and cursing at bears in no time. Argh, those bears. They ruin everything.
Windosill, $2.99 – [Review] – [Forum Thread] – This iPad exclusive puzzle game originally started its life as a Flash title. It’s aged incredibly well, and feels like a perfect fit for the iPad. Multitouch adds so much, even if you played the original, it’s worth trying again on the iPad.
The rest of the game ratings can be seen in their respective rating categories (also found in the sidebar navigation): 5 Stars, 4.5 Stars, 4 Stars, 3.5 Stars, 3 Stars, and 2 Stars.
As always, we expect there will be some debate about relative scores, but keep in mind that everyone’s personal ratings may vary based on individual tastes.
For more of our favorite iOS games, check out our “Best iPhone Games” category which includes all of these monthly posts as well as other special compilations of the greatest games the App Store has to offer.
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More ‘TinyTower’ Drama: Glu Releases Second Knock-Off; Zynga Responds, as Does NimbleBit
I hope NimbleBit believes in the saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” because they’ve certainly been the target of a boat-load of industry drama lately with not one but three individual TinyTower [Free] knock-off “betas” landing on the Canadian App Store in the last week. First there was Zynga’s Dream Heights [Free], then Glu’s Small Street [Free], and this morning we discovered another clone by Glu, Lil’ Dungeon [Free]. The main innovation of Lil’ Dungeon seems to be that you’re building down instead of up. Aside from some new graphics, just like the other clones, all of the gameplay elements are identical.
What’s more interesting than Glu mashing the green button on their copy machines is that Zynga actually has responded to the recent controversy. not only scored a interview with Mark Pincus, Zynga’s chief executive of social games, they also managed to snag a copy of a confidential memo he sent around. The takeaway from the interview is this:
In essence, Pincus is not saying that it’s OK to copy someone else’s game. Rather, he is saying that a company can make a contribution to the canon of gaming if it takes an existing game and improves it. That company can reimagine the game and remove all the barriers that stand between the game reaching a billion people.
…“You should be careful not to throw stones when you live in glass towers,” Pincus said. “When you pull the lens back, you saw that their tower game looked similar to five other tower games going all the way back to SimTower in the early 1990s.” …
In light of this news, I got in contact with NimbleBit’s Ian Marsh for a rebuttal to Pincus’ claims:
It is a smart idea for Mark Pincus and Zynga to try and lump all games with the name Tower together as an actual genre whose games borrow from each other. Unfortunately sharing a name or setting does not a genre make. The games Pincus mentions couldn’t be more different. Sim Tower is a true “sim” with macroscopic management and fine tuning of a buildings facilities. Tower Bloxx is a timing based high score game.
If you take a quick look before “pulling the lens back” as Pincus suggests, you’ll find an innumerable number of details in the game that were painstakingly crafted to be identical to Tiny Tower. These are core gameplay mechanics and rules, not similar settings or themes that games in the same genre might share.
Why are there 5 different business types like Tiny Tower? Why do 5 people fit in an apartment instead of 4 or 6? Why are there VIP elevator riders that perform the same functions as Tiny Tower? Why do businesses employ exactly 3 workers and produce exactly 3 products that are stocked in exactly the same way as Tiny Tower. Even the tutorials at the beginning of the game follow the exact same steps.
All of these things are poorly hidden underneath an uninspired veneer which has become Zynga’s trademark.
It’s hard to disagree with the NimbleBit guys on this one, and it’s equally difficult to find the “improvement” Zynga claims to have packed into Dream Tower. From where we’re sitting, it seems that the main “improvement” that they’re seeing is the Zynga dog in the top left corner of the Dream Tower app icon.
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‘DvO’ Review – Castle Defense At Its Slowest
There’s nothing more frustrating than a game that has good core gameplay that is ruined by missteps and issues in all the other game elements. Such is the case with DvO [$1.99 / HD], a castle defense game that’s heavy on the gameplay depth, but falters in its visuals and slow execution.
DvO (a.k.a. Dwarves vs. Orcs) plays very much like a classic castle defense title. Players send units down five battle lanes taking down the resistance until they reach the opposing castle (with the enemy doing the same to you, obviously). The side that takes down the opposing castle first wins the match. Littered throughout the lanes are crystal patches, which must be mined by your mining units and are used as the currency necessary to build supplemental units.
There are no special moves, upgradeable units, or even changing lanes; units will march down their path until they are either taken out or are attacking the opposing castle. I can see how this kind of simplicity in gameplay can appeal to some folks, but gamers that have experienced (and enjoy) other castle defense games with more modern approaches may feel a bit disappointed.
DvO’s primary strength lies in the wide variety of units you can play with. While you only start out with a handful of units, you unlock subsequent allies as you complete each story mission (you must then ‘buy’ the units using gold earned in matches before you can add them to your list). Once you get a large amount of units unlocked, the real strategic magic of DvO begins. Units include basic melee and ranged units, to mages of a wild variety of elements, to even conjurers that will summon other units onto the field. There are over 25 units available for use, and since you can only bring seven into any individual battle, players will really have to start paying attention to their units and build teams based on their play style.
While DvO’s gameplay variety obviously drives the title forward, its visuals and presentation take the game a few steps back. Graphics-wise, DvO lacks any retina display support, and it’s very apparent in everything from the blurry text to the units and environmental backgrounds. The art style seems to be built more for the iPad’s non-retina display – considering that the HD version is sold separately, I don’t know why they couldn’t have made that one retina compatible. While the blurry visuals aren’t bad enough to actually affect the gameplay, it’s still an eyesore.
Presentation-wise, DvO feels very bare bones. There’s no story (other than a cliché-riddled introduction), and there’s very little to even make you feel like you’re in a world. In addition, the few tutorial portions and even the in-game encyclopedia on the various units don’t really seem to do the game’s depth justice. One of the worst things a strategy game can do is not sufficiently explain the great system it’s built. Unfortunately, DvO seems to fall into that trap.
There are also a lot of silly UI bugs that just feel out of place. For example, tutorial screens pop up when you purchase new units that you unlocked in the previous battle. If you happen to die in the next battle and restart, the game will feed you a tutorial screen for a unit you haven’t unlocked yet (because you haven’t beaten that level). Does it really affect the gaming experience? Of course not, but these kinds of silly missteps hold the game back from being taken seriously.
Perhaps the biggest issue with DvO is simply that the game is too slow. Units plod along at a very sluggish pace, with only the special “fast” units seeming to move at an appropriate speed. Even early battles seem to drag on, and as you get further into the campaign and the likelihood of temporary stalemates rise, missions take forever. Even worse, there aren’t any ways to speed up the gameplay, meaning each map starts painstakingly slow as you’re initially collecting minerals. I’m all for giving folks the time necessary to make proper decisions in a strategy game, but the amount of waiting you will do in DvO is excessive.
With that said, DvO still has a good core gameplay system that should appeal to most fans of castle defense. However, all the missteps in other game elements definitely hold this game back from having a greater appeal. At this point, I’d recommend DvO for hardcore fans of the genre looking for their next fix. Otherwise, you may want to pass.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Creator of ‘Triple Town’ Focuses Legal Lasers on ‘Yeti Town’
They say that bad luck comes in threes, and that definitely seems to be the trend in last week’s news cycle. First Zynga ripped off Tiny Tower [Free], then Glu fired up their copy machines, and then some similar although unrelated drama hit the land of Triple Town [Free]. is all over this recent story, but I’ll provide a quick rundown-
Spry Fox’s Triple Town hit the App Store a couple weeks ago and it was clear that we loved it in our review. It’s even sort of an interesting take on the free to play model, as you can download and play the game for free and play for a limited number of turns. You can buy more turns with in-game coins which you can earn (and buy with real money) or just download the unlimited turns unlock for (currently) $3.99. If you don’t play much, or get bored easily, you might not ever need to buy anything… But once you get to the point where you need unlimited turns, chances are you’ve gotten way more than four bucks of entertainment out of the game anyway. I like that.
Anyway, , they’ve filed a copyright infringement suit in federal court against 6Waves LOLAPPS due to Yeti Town [Free] which actually beat Triple Town to release by nearly a month. It’s the same sad story we hear way too often on the App Store in that Yeti Town relentlessly copies absolutely every aspect of Triple Town.
Per Spry Fox:
Yeti Town, as launched by 6waves, was a nearly perfect copy of Triple Town. We’re not just talking about the game’s basic mechanics here. We’re talking about tons of little details, from the language in the tutorial, to many of our UI elements, to the quantities and prices of every single item in the store (how exactly did 6waves “independently” decide to price 200 turns for 950 coins, or 4 wildcards for 1500 coins each? That’s quite a coincidence!)
This exact copying is also one of the things that really amused me about all of these Tiny Tower clones which all featured 5 categories of skills, 5 people per apartment, 3 people to a floor, 3 products per floor, 5 elevator upgrades, and other exact copies of core game mechanics. Unfortunately, you can’t copyright a game idea, which is why companies like Gameloft are able to do what they do. Yeti Town is different through, as allegedly Spry Fox was in intense negotiations with 6Waves to publish Triple Town on the App Store which abruptly ended when Yeti Town was released.
As part of this, 6Waves had closed beta access months before Triple Town went public and had been “pumping [Spry Fox] for private information” which included design ideas, Facebook launches, as well as revenue and retention figures. This sort of elevates the Yeti Town clone to an entirely different level of shadiness, at least in my eyes.
If you want to read the full text of the lawsuit, you can . Now, let’s all go back to making our own original games, eh?
[via ]
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‘One Epic Game’ Review – Stick a fork in "Epic," folks. It’s done.
Way back in 2010 when Monster Dash [$0.99] was released it felt a tiny bit lacking. Not that it wasn’t a fantastic game, but it could have used a little more depth. You know, upgrades to earn, a complex mission system, maybe eventual retina support?
Now there’s no need to worry about any of that. Not because One Epic Game [$0.99] brings any of that to the table, mind, but because Jetpack Joyride [Free] came out a year later and blew its predecessor out of the water. So why is it we’re still seeing retreads of an older, lesser product? Could it be, she wonders, because forgot their own game’s roots when bringing it back from PlayStation Minis?
Say it ain’t so, but I can’t see many other explanations for what’s happened here. One Epic Game isn’t a Monster Dash clone, but there are some obvious similarities. To name a few, both have a humorously hardcore hero, randomized levels and weapon drops, the same flavor of non-stop platforming, the same methods of murdering slow-moving enemies, and three-life heart system. Maybe one wasn’t inspired by the other, but that reads like a bit of a stretch. Now, all’s fair in love, war and game development, especially when it comes to making games on different platforms. But if you’re going to bring your game back to compete against its grandaddy, you at least ought to be sure you’ve made a few improvements in the meantime.
Here’s the thing: One Epic Game has more content than Monster Dash. The latter is an endless runner, period. The former has a handful of levels in a story mode and seven challenge modes on top of that. But more isn’t the same as better, and that’s doubly true here.
The game is presented as a parody, hanging a lantern on all those silly things we’ve seen in games. It’s the broadest sort of parody, satirizing concepts that are virtually universal. Ha ha, tutorials are a pain, aren’t they? And so many games have zombies, am I right? Look at this obnoxiously jingoistic story, and mock these bland heroes and villains.
But here’s the rub – the story, heroes and villains are extremely bland. The tutorial is horrid. It’s not a great joke when you actually respect your audience so little you feel you have to teach them the ins and outs of the jump and shoot buttons. One makes you jump. The other makes you shoot. Got it? And yes, there are zombies. And aliens. And World War II settings. Hah, I bet you haven’t seen so much of any of those things before that you might actually be profoundly tired of playing games that fail to use them in any sort of interesting way.
Maybe I’m just not getting the joke, but does it extend to clarifying why the rest of the game is so sloppy? The lack of Game Center and Retina support are the biggies, but if you look any deeper it’s just issues all the way down. The game makes due with the bare minimum of animation, for example. Alpha Dog, your musclebound space marine stereotype, has just one: running. Jumping is just the running animation slowed down. The enemies only get to walk (or fly) in a straight line until they fall off something, still walking. Only the weapons and jetpack do anything of note with the visuals.
So it goes with the platforming. The game just loves to screw with you, sticking the best power-up in a place you can’t survive or hiding the fact that a platform is too small to hit until you’re already mid-jump. That’s the joy of intentionally frustrating design, but then occasionally a platform crumbles away before you can reach the end or an obstacle you jump over stretches a little too far to be survivable. It’s sloppy, pure and simple.
One Epic Game has two things over Monster Dash: you can chain kill enemies to build up a score multiplier, and you actually have a score, making killing monsters distinctly more valuable than avoiding them. All other things being equal, maybe that would be enough to set it apart. But all other things aren’t equal, and we’ve had nearly two years to find better endless runners in the interim. There’s just no reason to go back to something that might have been an okay (if slightly familiar) title two years ago when there are so many fantastic games coming out right now. If you decide to take the plunge anyways, share your thoughts in the. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Time of Heroes’ Review – Time to Sharpen Your Tactical Skills
We previously covered when we took a look at Companions [$4.99/Lite], a well-done top-down role playing/strategy title. Now the developers are back with Time of Heroes [$0.99], another great addition to the genre. Ditching the top-down sprite visuals for a 3D-look, Time of Heroes still maintains smulttlewerk’s reputation for gameplay depth while successfully transitioning to a classic turn-based strategy game.
If you’ve ever played the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics, you’ll feel right at home with Time of Heroes. The game takes place on a series of maps, with players choosing heroes, units and their placements at the beginning of the battle. The game then plays out via turn-based gameplay with the goal being to accomplish all the objectives of the map (typically kill the opposing heroes while keeping your own alive). Time of Heroes is classic turn-based strategy, and I think it gets a lot of things right.
By far, the most successful element that Time of Heroes captures is its very deep gameplay. In addition to the standard rock-paper-scissors type of unit matchup advantages, Time of Heroes also features terrain bonuses (and weaknesses) and aura influence (bestowed by being close to a hero). Considering all these bonuses apply to both your units as well as the enemy, these all lead to every move potentially being very important in the great scheme of winning each battle.
While I absolutely loved the depth, I can imagine that the large amount of variables might seem overwhelming for the novice tactician. This is especially true since the game loves to throw out scripted mini-cutscenes during battles that end up with even more baddies joining the scene. Some of the maps can become downright disheartening when you’ve used up the brunt of your forces, think you’re on your way to killing the final monsters, and then more show up. Thankfully, Time of Heroes also includes a good difficulty system, ensuring that most folks should be able to tailor the game to their own skill.
In addition, Time of Heroes does a great job making your actual heroes stand out stat-wise. Most missions will force you to keep them alive via objectives, but your characters also have a very robust experience system with a large amount of talents that can be picked up via the collection of skill points (which you earn by leveling up). When you add in the fact that each hero can equip various items that can either boost their stats or the stats of the units they command, you’ll find that there’s a lot of choices in how you choose to win each battle. Even the spell system deserves some praise, as most spells offer area of effect bonuses that can be the difference between victory and defeat (your enemies have access to these spells too, so watch your positioning).
Another aspect of Time of Heroes that deserves kudos is its use of IAP. Yes, the game does feature an in-game shop that lets you spend real money, but they are all for items that only offer a small advantage in battle. Furthermore, these items are really only useful in the hands of folks that already possess some modicum of strategy, making them simply supplemental additions rather than ‘Win Game’ super items. Some may argue that IAP should in fact be limited to items that make the game very easy, but I appreciate the fact that Time Of Heroes tried to balance incorporating the option to provide some advantages via IAP while preserving the integrity of the game as a whole.
One thing you’ll notice about Time of Heroes is its pacing. It’s pretty slow, especially at the default settings with full movement and battles on. The game features extended battle scenes that do a decent job showing the various advantages of opposing units, but it can add a decent amount of time to each turn. Granted, the developers have put in plenty of options to skip most of the battle and movement animations, making the game much faster (I highly recommend using them). Despite this, even with the quick options turned on, the game can still be a little slow. However, in all reality this is a minor issue since I’m assuming that anyone that’s a fan of these types of deep strategy games should have more patience than the average gamer.
There are also some UI issues that I’d like addressed. For example, the way in which a unit’s movement becomes permanent as soon as you select another character is confusing at first, and seems counter-intuitive. Even though it would add another step, I thought a ‘Wait’ button would have made more sense. I understand it was done for the purposes of streamlining, but it still feels odd to me. Also, due to the “3D” view of the battle field, it can occasionally be difficult to tap exactly where you want your character to move (especially if the place you want to go is surrounded by units to begin with). Thankfully, a quick undo button is always there in case you have to try again (just don’t tap another unit beforehand).
Finally, I also would have liked more of an interactive tutorial. While the game does a good job getting you going with the basics, an advanced tutorial giving more in-depth lessons on terrain and unit advantages would have been a lot better for me instead of simply telling me to go to those screens and attempt to decipher the large block of percentages. It’s always tough balancing heavy gameplay depth with approachability, and while I think Time of Heroes mostly succeeds, this is one aspect that I think they could have improved upon.
While the concerns mentioned above somewhat detract from the overall experience, Time of Heroes nails the most important elements of a good strategy game. When you combine the large amount of depth on the gameplay side with a good narrative tale and a fairly decent control scheme, Time of Heroes is well worth a recommendation for any fan of strategic turn-based games.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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A Quick Look At ‘Puzzlejuice’
Our collective gut says that we’ll be talking a lot about ’s Puzzlejuice [$2.99] in 2012. That’s big praise considering it’s January and all, but it has that indescribable feel of a remarkable game. To its credit, it does a great job convincing you that it is, in fact, this good; it has an unparalleled swagger, presence, and charisma that crops up in almost every aspect of the title, including the UI and tutorials. It knows it’s hot.
We’re not sure if it knows how crazy it is, though. Puzzlejuice deftly pairs the block matching of a Tetris to a free-form spelling mechanic like the one used in last year’s stand-out, SpellTower [$1.99]. Basically, you create lines by rotating blocks of varying shapes and smashing them together at the bottom of the screen. Once you make a solid line, the matched blocks magically transform into letters that you then have to spell words with.
When you spell a word, the blocks disappear and allow for more matching action. This is especially vital since blocks are constantly tumbling from the top of the screen Tetris-style and threatening to end your session if they breach the top of the level. The push and pull of the action is beyond frantic, as you’ll need to keep your eye on everything at once. Puzzlejuice also tosses in challenges, like, say, “spell a five-letter word,” to the mix, which pushes your dexterity and mental fortitude to its limits.
There’s a lot of smaller mechanical treats within in the package, too: it has power-ups like bombs and total game freezes; it has color-specific hooks in the blocks that allow you to pop matching colors before side-to-side lines are formed; and it has two kinds of “core” scoring modes, one in which asks you to spell at least five-letter words for the maximum amount of block clearing.
Puzzlejuice keeps you on your heels and fighting against a whirlwind of blocks, colors, letters, and challenges. The franticness of the play is a nice change of general genre pacing, which is a big reason why we’re so behind the game. It’s also a looker, too. Check it out:
If you hate word games with a capital H, we can’t imagine that this will be an exception to your overall distaste. If you do enjoy these kinds of titles, Puzzlejuice is probably something you should check out. We’ll be giving this the official go for review shortly, but obviously our impression so far is, er… pretty good.
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‘Cytus’ Review – Beauty In Simplicity
When I play a music game, the most important things I’m looking for are good music and approachable gameplay. Cytus [$0.99] by Rayark manages to nail both of those and even adds a little bit of visual flair on top of it. While Cytus does have a few small issues and miscues in regards to a few elements, it’s still great to play and is a worthy addition to the iOS rhythm genre.
Cytus plays similarly to – note bubbles appear on your screen and must be tapped to the rhythm of the song. An ‘Active Scan Line’ moves up and down the screen to the beat of the song and helps you time the hits on each note. In addition to normal notes, the game also features holds and slides which add some variety to the gameplay. Hits are scored on a system ranging from ‘Perfect’ to ‘Bad’ with a final ranking at song completion dependent on the length of your hit chain and the amount perfect hits.
As you can imagine, the gameplay is pretty simple, but well executed. While the note positioning is mostly done well, there were a few songs where the notes seemed slightly off or not in tune with either the beat or off-beat. There weren’t too many instances of this, but it was still annoying nonetheless.
Where Cytus really shines is in its music selection and presentation. Song-wise, players can choose from 15 songs ranging from J-Pop to Techno with a little bit of Synthpop thrown into the mix. The song selection is very much -inspired and should sound familiar to anyone that has played those types of games before.
While I imagine some gamers may immediately scoff at the music genres I just listed, I’d plead with you to give it a chance. One of the things I loved about each song in Cytus is the approachability regardless of whether you’re a fan of that sort of music. It’s not very often that I play through a music game and I pretty much like every single song that’s thrown at me, which should speak volumes of the care put into the selection in this game. Just make sure you play with some headphones in order to do the music justice.
The overall presentation, meanwhile, is one of the more striking aspects of Cytus. Everything has a very clean, minimalistic feel accompanied with some beautiful artwork. It’s hard to explain what in particular is so appealing – maybe it’s because the whole game looks like a modern Final Fantasy-menu. Also included is Game Center support as well as social network integration. There were a few instances where the interface was a little too bare (for example, the tutorial fails to explain the various pop-up mode options), but otherwise I came away impressed.
While Cytus gets a lot of things right, there are a few elements missing that are typically standard in most music games. For example, there’s no ‘life meter’ in Cytus, meaning that you could just simply launch a song, not do anything and still see the level through (technically, you ‘Fail’ the level, but you don’t know until after the song ends). Granted, you actually have to get a ranking higher than the minimum in order to unlock the ‘Hard’ difficulty and new songs, but some of the fun with music games is working under the pressure of an all-powerful meter judging your performance (or maybe I’m just a masochist).
Another weakness in Cytus is in regards to the hit detection. Basically, the hit window is relatively loose, meaning that you have a wide margin of error between what is considered a ‘Perfect’ tap and what is considered merely a ‘Good’ hit (or between ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ for that matter). While some folks wouldn’t necessarily consider this a bad thing it does decrease the overall challenge, particularly for those of us that are veterans of music games that were rather unforgiving.
Despite these omissions, Cytus still does a great job executing the features it does have. Considering its relative minimalism, I think Cytus is a good title for gamers looking to get into the music genre on iOS devices. I would have liked to have seen more songs, but I’m hoping the developers will add more in the future. Regardless, with a great selection of music, simple but well-executed gameplay, and a good, clean overall presentation, Cytus is well worth a recommendation for anyone interested in rhythm games.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Caylus’ Review – Play Tom Builder, But Prepare to Play Alone
Caylus [$4.99] is an outstanding game, consistently ranking in top 10. It plays like Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth as you take on the role of a master builder tasked with winning the favor of a ruler and building something great. Your world revolves around struggles for resources, money, favor and opportunity. , the folks behind Neuroshima Hex [$4.99 / Lite], have put together an equally outstanding port – as long as you’re prepared to play locally.
It’s becoming a bit of a running joke that Big Daddy’s Creations puts out great board game ports with shoddy (or no) multiplayer, and Caylus is no exception. You can’t play over Game Center, you can’t invite friends, and trying to play asynchronously will extend the game length to near-infinite. But if you’re down with fighting AI or playing locally against friends, this is a must-buy for any board game fan.
Here’s how a typical game of Caylus goes: there is a castle, there are buildings, there is a road. Each players has six workers, and takes turns each round placing them in the various buildings. The provost and bailiff (essentially progress markers) make their way down the road at the end of each round and each worker gets his due. Some buildings provide resources, others provide gold or change the turn order, and some let you trade your resources around.
The ultimate goal is to build up more favor from France’s King Philip the Fair than any of your competition. The king is generous with favor in a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ sort of way. If you use your resources to help build up his castle, he’ll bestow favor upon you – especially if you’re the most productive builder of the round. If you collect resources, you can turn them in at the end of the game for more favor. Building monuments, shops and landmarks like churches will make you very popular, and sometimes you can ship off extra money or resources to earn a little extra mid-game. Though I wouldn’t say Caylus is incredibly strategically deep, these methods of building up points give players a few different tactics to use to defeat their foes.
Going deeper, there are a number of rules and strategies that can affect your success in a big way. For example, each worker you place costs you money. Generally, the further along the road you place a worker, the better the reward. If the provost hasn’t passed the building he’s in, though, it won’t be counted in the round’s final tally. You can pay the provost to move him back toward the castle or further along the road – but so can everyone else. So sending a worker to a far out shop can be a massive risk, especially if you’ve already earmarked unearned resources to help build the castle at the round’s end.
There are five different resources to manage and a huge list of buildings to erect. There are also a slew of conditional rules to keep track of. So here’s where I applaud Big Daddy’s Creations the most: Caylus’s tutorial is outstanding. With the tutorial messages on through my first playthrough, I figured out maybe three quarters of the game. After one more match to polish up on the details I understood nearly everything. I’m still working on strategy, but such a thorough and straightforward introduction is pretty impressive for a game with Caylus’s complexity.
I’ve run into one or two cases that weren’t explained by anything in the rules, and it’s possible they were bugs. A couple crash bugs have been found, as has a miscommunication with Apple about translations (the game is only available in English but lists several other languages in its App Store listing). Big Daddy’s Creations has covered their plans to solve these problems in a already, so I’m confident any other issues that crop up should be handled in a timely fashion.
Otherwise, the big sticking point is multiplayer. Caylus is universal, so you can play with friends on an iPad or pass-and-play on smaller devices. But online play should be a big part of the game, and playing with random unranked strangers that you can’t chat with takes a lot of the fun out of it. Also, you really have to poke around the interface to quit a game once it’s done, or to leave one for another part way. The interface is mostly extremely usable, but that’s an unintuitive task. And there’s a serious lack of stat tracking.
But for pure entertainment dollar by dollar, I’ll take Caylus over most board games in the App Store. It’s an obscenely good game, which makes its flaws all the more frustrating. If you also want to gripe about that, there’s support to be found in our . Me? I’ve said my piece, so now I can go back to playing. It will take more than awkward multiplayer to keep me from having this much fun.
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‘Darkness Rush: Saving Princess’ Review – A Goth-Tastic Endless Runner
Absolutely nothing about the first five minutes of Darkness Rush: Saving Princess [$0.99] gave me any reason to think it would be a good game. There’s that mouthful of a title, for one thing. An absolutely incomprehensible story and translation didn’t help, and the Castlevania stylings and scantly clad ladies plastered everywhere just made me nervous. Even the tutorial was off-putting – I mean, seriously, how does it take that long to show us how to use a jump button?
It was a huge surprise when I realized two things: this game is an endless runner, and it’s really, really fun.
There are two caveats to lay out before we go any further. This game is poorly optimized even compared with standard Unreal Engine memory consumption. My freshly restarted 4S experiences unforgivably bad frame rate drops sometimes. Only the newest generations can run the game, and crashes are a big problem if you’re low on memory. Also, the game pushes its in-app purchases pretty hard for a paid title, but there’s only one thing that can’t be earned by playing. Prepare to put down an extra dollar if you want to unlock the under-dressed (but fantastic) Helena as a playable character.
Now to the fun. Darkness Rush follows a pretty typical formula for an endless runner. You run and jump as long as you can while collecting coins. Eventually gravity gets the better of you, and you die. Your score is uploaded to the Game Center leaderboards and then you do it all over again.
Yawn, right? But remember the awesome mission set up from Jetpack Joyride [Free]? You’ve got that to contend with here as well. Each time you play you work toward four different missions that change up whenever you earn one. Completing missions gives you experience, and leveling up earns you a new title to show off in multiplayer.
You can spend the coins you earn on equipment and power ups. Each time you start a new game you’re prompted to buy single-use powerups that give you extra lives or double your income, that sort of thing. They’re totally reasonably priced and can make the game much easier. Equipment is less reasonably priced, and could take hours to grind (or moments to buy with real cash). Here’s the thing, though: equipment isn’t just cosmetic – it can also increase your agility, mana, jump height and speed. Makes it a bit more worth the grind than Barry’s flowery lei, no?
Mana is where the real fun is, taking Darkness Rush from your standard running and jumping affair to something a lot more interesting. As with Stylish Sprint [$0.99], you can attack some of the obstacles in your way, and you can fly. Both those things cost mana, which regenerates very, very slowly. Run dry and you’re pretty much toast. But you also collect gems as you run, and once you have three you can transform into a wolf, bat or angel depending on your character. While you’re transformed you don’t use up mana. You can also take an extra hit, which knocks you back to your human form. Managing transformations adds a whole new level to the game, and it’s the key to getting a good score.
Then there’s multiplayer. It’s not currently a huge selling point, to be frank. Once you make it through the wait for a match (which varies wildly with the game’s relatively small user base) you’re dropped into a foot race against another player. If you die you get set back, so it’s mostly a challenge to see who can die less. Considering the lag and frame rate drops, this gets pretty hilariously bad.
But multiplayer is just icing on an otherwise excellent cake. The terrible translation is due to be fixed, and it sounds like there may be some optimizations coming down the line, too. I sure hope so. As endless runners go, this one is gorgeous, varied and tons of fun, so it deserves to be playable. And if you’re sitting there steaming that all the lovely gothic art has gone to waste as an endless runner, swing by our . Rumor has it that LuckySheep will be moving on to something more Castlevania-like next. I can’t wait, but dear lord – let them hire an editor first.
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