Tag: iphone

iOS games of 2017: one sentence reviews

I installed and played a lot of ios games in 2017 since I ride the bus an hour and back for work. Most were awful or were good games that just sucked on the iphone form factor.  I’ve got a huge and awkward V6+ which is nearly a mini ipad– but not nearly big enough for many of these games. Here’s what I suffered from so you don’t have to.   

Dungeon Warfare
Solid tower defense that works very well on the phone, worth the purchase.

Mordheim
This was interesting for a short time, but became so samey as to not be worth bothering with due to samey maps and missions.

A Planet of Mine
I got stuck twice early game with no way to create mines to mine the thing I needed to make mines, which was not fun.

Really Bad Chess
It’s chess with random pieces so theory has no place at all in the game, which I appreciate, but it’s still just chess.

Hero Generations Regen
This is a simplistic roguelike where your heroes get old, have babies and the babies grow up to go fight monsters, thought it was cool for about a day and then got very bored.

Vempire Kings of Darkness
Deckbuilder with vampires, this actually may end up being a game I play more of, but it just made me want to go play Ascension more.

Neoscavenger
This seems like a GREAT game, but it’s absolutely terrible on any size phone.

Iron Marines
This is good and works surprisingly well on the phone but, you will need to get your fucking face real close to the screen to play.

Out There
Sort of interesting, but it’s FTL basically and works well on the phone.

Lost Portal
I’m not dying to get to play a MTG clone, and Ascension is just better.

 

Auralux 2

We need to face facts, despite the size of the Iphone 6+, it’s still not a very good form factor for gaming.  All the really good stuff, with a few exceptions, is on the ipad (or the 3DSXL!).  Mostly I can’t read the stuff on the iphone (I want to say — “anymore” here but it’s not that) since the screen size is still super small, and they just don’t do the type big enough for most games.  While I liked quite a few games for a short period, many got too annoying at the screen size to really bother with for long, including, unfortunately, Heroes of Normandie.

So I’m left playing Tigris and Euphrates, (cheating) Backgammon, King of Dragon Pass and now and then, Ascension.  For those with iphones and no ipad to play actual games on, I want to point out a game in a genre that I thought could not be done at this size: an RTS!

Auralux 2 is a stripped down RTS game with a lot of stuff going on for all it’s minimalism.  The staples are there: real time attacking and moving fleets, building up fleets and timing.  The setting is an abstract space war.  I thought that there was no way this could be anything good seeing the istore entry, but it is and quite addicting at that.

all blue
all blue

What’s good about it?  It’s an RTS on the phone for starters, and because it’s so minimalist, the controls are super easy.  Tap and drag is pretty much it.  There’s no base building per se, just minimal upgrades and moving fleets.  For the basic gameplay, everything is awareness and timing.  When to attack, when to defend and build up, and when to move a fleet to a strange position for a ‘drop.’   I figured from the demo I would play just a little bit, but then it got real addicting once I tried some of the not-free constellations.  They have some really odd stuff, like moving planets, super novas and the like.  This adds some tactical challenges that are not present in the free demo so if the demo doesn’t totally grab you but you like it, grab one of the constellations.

The game is relaxing, but it does get very difficult at the INSANE stars within a constellation. I’ve only beaten the base one and the first Constellation so far.  There’s one level I just CANNOT get past currently.

img_1782

Best thing is that it’s free for the basic game and just a few bucks per constellation (about 8 levels each) after that.  I’d recommend getting the free version and then one constellation if you liked that.  If you can finish all levels in that constellation, you are probably going to be itching for more.

A rare occurance: an iphone game recommendation!