Mobile Board Games

The morons who had the TTA license let it lapse in December, and just recently let the rest of the world know that. Some other studio is doing it now, and that's probably a good thing in the long run.

Every time I see an announcement from Sirlin all I can think of is the big old bald guy in Reservoir Dogs shouting, "MY WAY, OR THE HIGHWAY!" He's such a solipsistic developer I'm surprised he's not making honest-to-God videogames.

I somehow missed this news when Brad dropped it earlier this week. This is nuts. Last I heard, TTA was very nearly done. They were toward the end of beta. Then they decided to refocus on Ra multiplayer and now they're just scrapping all the work they did on it? What the hell?

Though the good news appears to be that whoever Vlaada and CGE are working with now might be doing more than just TTA. I wouldn't mind playing either of his Dungeon games on my iPad. I can't imagine that Galaxy Trucker would convert well, though.

Mage Knight would make a great video game. It's tough to play as a board game right now because of how much fiddling about you have to do each turn, even though the game is fantastic.

I don't think Mage Knight would be included in any deals since WizKids owns the IP, not CGE.

Oh yeah....

There is that Mage Knight app that takes some of the pain out of game management. Presumably. I haven't actually played yet.

Still playing my first game of Fluxx. We've shuffled the deck three times.

$.99 was too much to pay.

Why are you doing this to yourself?

Is it time to report?

Or should we wait?

Hmm...

Haggis is 99c today.

They still haven't released a meaningful update for this stinker. Though for a buck I suggest getting it just to learn how to play, then getting the real game and some friends together to see what it's like to play against opponents who put up a fight.

Yeah it definitely seems like something I could get a dollar's worth out of even if it doesn't get smarter in the future.

You mean the dummy player app?


Holy shit, there's a Space Alert Mission Generator for android! And an Agricola Buddy. Cool stuff.

Yeah. I guess it's only useful for solitaire play, which means I should have tried it out by now.

Caylus is currently on sale for $2.99 (down from $4.99) matching its lowest sale price. Is it worth it for SP and or MP?

I'm not a huge Caylus fan. I'm waiting for it to hit $.99

It has already gone back up so any fence riders are Outta Luck! Which I was as well.

Get back up on the fence, 'cause it's down to $2.99, again!

I know we've talked about Androminion before, but they've done various upgrades to it, and on a big tablet, it now shows the full text of every card, which makes it a lot better if you haven't memorized every card in all the sets. (You can configure it to do that on phones or small tablets, too, but the screen is really just too small for it, and I don't like it that way.)

It's not the prettiest game -- though it's less ugly than it used to be -- but I'd be shocked if the official version (which: wasn't that supposed to be released a long time ago?) played anywhere near as well.

On one hand, it will allow Android, iOS and PC players to play Dominion against one another.

On the other hand, single-player will require an internet connection.

On a third hand, Goko's handling of the whole thing has been an unmitigated disaster from beginning to end, so fuck those guys.

Just so it's clear, mkozlows is referring to an Android-only single-player Dominion game that was supposed to be withdrawn back when Goku made their official release. Instead, it's still available, still under development, oh and hey look now it's open source!

Did Goku actually release their version, though? Searching Google Play for Dominion doesn't turn anything up except card pickers 'n' stuff.

Just so it's clear, I was replying to this.

And.

Keep waiting. Considering what a disaster the PC version has been, I doubt we'll ever see their version.

A game known as Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy has been released for iOS iPad. Perhaps you've heard of the board game version? :-)

Check out Brad's review.

Also, the developer has stated it runs on 1st generation iPads, but advises that background apps be closed while playing it.

Sales:

The Kingpin ($1.99 -> Free)
Neuroshima Hex ($4.99 -> $2.99)
Caylus ($4.99 -> $2.99)

I played about a half of a game of Eclipse and realized that me and everyone I know is apparently terrible at Eclipse because the normal AI would kill us all with ease. Thanks a lot, iPad.

I got Tigris and Euphrates for droid and I really like it. I'd never played the game before, and I think that is a mistake. I typically don't like Euros as much as Ameritrash, but the theme in T&E seems useful, in a way. Like how it does in Ra, somehow. It's a leap, really, as they're both abstract, but I at least feel like I'm trying to build a civilization. In Agricola, for example, I feel like I'm playing a game called Agricola.

Yeah I'm actually starting to get a bit frustrated. They really REALLY did not balance this appropriately for relative beginners. The idea of an "easy" difficulty is that it should be EASY. Not painful.

Grr. I'm going to go rate this down out of spite.

Agricola submitted to Apple. First time for Playtek on a complicated non-card game. Here's hoping its good.