So what if it’s a bad iOS game? It’s a Small World world, after all.

Posted by on July 24, 2012 in Reviews

I’ve never played Small World, a fantasy boardgame published by Days of Wonder, the creators of gateway boardgame Ticket to Ride, the frustratingly frivolous Memoir ’44, and the oddly complex add-on boondoggle Battlelore. Days of Wonder does their thing pretty well, even if that thing isn’t my thing. And I have the big fat boxes at the bottom of the stacks in my closet to prove it.

But what better way to ring in a new iPad than with an iPad only game you’ve been curious about for so long? So now I’ve played Small World. It’s utterly brilliant. This iPad version, on the other hand…

After the jump, stout wizards, swamp orcs, and bivouacked halflings

The problem with reviewing ports of tabletop games is that it’s difficult to sort the tabletop game from the port. Where do you draw the line in a critical discussion? If I dislike Summoner Wars — and boy do I dislike Summoner Wars — what am I supposed to do when the port itself is actually pretty good? And if I adore Le Havre, should it get extra points when I’m talking about the somewhat clunky iOS adaptation? Nightfall is such a weird beast on the tabletop, so how much should I hold that against the port? And what kind of uninformed doofus spends days delighted by Ascension with no idea that it’s a port of an actual real-world tabletop game? Don’t answer that last one.

At least with the iPad version of Small World, I’m clear on what’s what. As a boardgame, on the tabletop, from a design perspective, I am astonished that I’ve been missing out on Small World for so long. It’s a triumph of simplicity, depth, variety, and imagination. The basics of players taking turns dropping a handful of tiles on a map to conquer territory, and scoring a single point for each territory, are as easy as could be. There’s even the slightest dash of die-rolling randomness, but only once and only at the end of your turn. This is arguably the simplest gameplay in any Days of Wonder game (you know you still get briefly confused about the train colors, card colors, and route colors in Ticket to Ride, the same way you have to stop and think for a second when you’re figuring out time zone changes).

But Small World’s ultimate brilliance is in the special rules for each player’s handful of tiles. By randomly matching races and adjectives, each with their own rules tweak, and then letting players choose from a list of dynamically generated factions, Small World is a masterfully elegant fantasy world generator. Behold the financial prowess of the merchant ratmen, the insidious threat of underworld skeletons, the rampant military might of berserk amazons, the impregnable dragon master halflings, the unstoppable spirit ghouls, the timeless endurance of stout elves, and the brief reign of wealthy dwarves! These are all the stuff of any detail-choked, fifteen hour, turn-based, 4X fantasy extravaganza. Yet here they are, each expressed simply, vividly, and cleverly, with each player getting to play a couple of them in a game that takes less than an hour, and with each game revealing its own unique cast of characters. No wonder Small World has so many expansions and follow-ups. Richness and simplicity rarely get along so well.

But then there’s the issue of this awful iPad version, which is little more than an ad for the boardgame. It’s a demo, really. A demo you have to pay to play. It expresses the basic brilliance of Small World, but in a limited context. The Small World boardgame scales for 2-5 players. But the iPad version only supports two players. Since it’s an iOS game, you’d expect asynchronous play, especially for something as streamlined as Small World, where each player gets ten turns, no more, no less, and no mucking around during another player’s turn. No such thing happens here. Instead, two players — and only two players — can play on the same iPad. There is no provision for online play, there is no provision for games with more than two players, and there is none of what Days of Wonder has accomplished in Ticket to Ride, an iOS adaptation that supports online play and a variety of configurations, or Memoir ’44 Online, a content rich free-to-play adaptation for the PC.

I’m also surprised at Small World’s crucial and amateurish interface issue of being unable to check what the other player’s pieces can do. Once your opponent has selected his race, that information is forever shut out of the game. Sure, you can call up information on your own race and the races available for selection later in the game. But the other player’s pieces currently in play remain a mystery. How does that not get fixed even after the game has been out for months?

As an iPad game, Small World is a big disappointment. But as an advertisement for the boardgame…well, I’ve just ordered the basic set and two of the expansions. Mission accomplished, Days of Wonder! There aren’t many iPhone games that end up costing me another $50 after I’ve bought them, much less disappointing iPhone games.

2 stars
iOS

  • delirium

    You should check out the stand-alone expansion, Small World Underground, if you like the original game. The base game is basically the same, but the addition of relics and places really opens up the tactical decision making. When “monsters” (replacement for SW’s Lost Tribes) are killed, they drop powerful items (which move around the board when they are used) and places (remain on the space they were found), which seriously shakes up the strategy. You have to always carefully weigh the pros and cons of grabbing these – are the powers you gain worth the extra attention you’ll attract from opponents who will want to take them from you? I like the original Small World a lot, but haven’t been able to go back to it after playing SWU, which I feel is a much deeper and more interesting game.

  • Barac Wiley

    I’m not quite as sold on Underworld. The relics and places are cool, but I don’t feel like the basics are as strong as in the original set, and in particular a lot of the adjectives seemed pretty dull – just extra points. Which, you know, help you win and all, but…eh.

  • tomchick

    Thanks for costing me another $30, jerk.

  • delirium

    Your point is somewhat valid, but to me the extra strategic dimension that the relics and places add are interesting enough that your particular complaint doesn’t resonate for me. I never got deep enough into SW to see how all those races/powers compare at a higher strategic level, but my friends and I have played a ton of SWU (50 games easily) and this game can get very interesting once everyone has a good understanding of it. I actually wrote 10 pages of strategy guide that I’ve been meaning to put online. I’ll link you guys to it when I do.

    I’ve only really gotten into buying/playing new games in the last couple of years, but I say with no reservations that SWU is my all time favorite board game.

  • Barac Wiley

    It’s still worth picking up, but I think it’s unlikely to surpass the original for me unless an expansion perks up the race/power mix some.

  • delirium

    So I found the motivation to post my guide on the Days of Wonder forums. Check it out – http://www.daysofwonder.com/en/msg/?th=25638&start=0

  • http://www.facebook.com/LivinItUpInPhx Dan Samela

    Now that Tom’s purchased the “basic set and two of the expansions,” I wonder if he’d be up for playing the BGG PBF version of the game I’ve moderated in the past. It would be a hoot to see him play in a 5-player game against Dave Perkins and other Qt3 members for bragging rights. Let me know, and I might be convinced to moderate it. :-)

  • Justin Newstrum

    “and the oddly complex add-on boondoggle Battlelore”

    Ok. I’ll admit I’ve been trolled, but I’m such a fanboy fur BL that I don’t care. Battle Lore wasn’t an add-on for M’44, it was a completely new game based on the same system. Sure, it went awry from its original vision (and somewhere along the line got sold to Fantasy Flight) but at this point I’ve gotten more enjoyment out of the system than pretty much any other mass-scale fantasy miniatures wargame.

    Unfortunately, at this point it seems to have been abandoned by FFG, but it still has a pretty active fan-community creating new stuff for the game.

  • tomchick

    That was poor wording on my part, Justin. I didn’t mean that it was an add-on for Memoir 44. I meant that it was a boondoggle for add-ons, as opposed to a complete package. The basic boxed set just feel really anemic, as if I’m expected to then buy all the cool creatures and races.

    And by oddly complex, it’s far more sophisticated than Memoir in terms of the combat, with rules for flanking and whatnot. I find it odd that Battlelore is more “realistic” than Memoir!

    I haven’t played it in forever, and I had no idea the license had been sold to Fantasy Flight. I guess it wasn’t doing that well for Days of Wonder?

  • tomchick

    Ah, I seem to remember when this was running before! That was one of the things that really made me keen to play this. And here I am, months and months later, finally playing. Oh, iPad, is there nothing you can’t do?

    My order is scheduled to arrive on Monday, so I’ll be binging on the boardgame for a while, and I’m certainly open to taking it online at some point in the future.

  • Justin Newstrum

    hah. didn’t mean to put you on the defensive.

    That said, I see what you mean. The expansions trickled out of DoW for a few years, then they sold it FFG, who trickled a few more out for it for another couple years. And even after all that, the game is still pretty much defined by the phrase ‘unrealized potential’. No real new modes of play or new interesting dynamics, just a few new troops with a few new modifiers for the original races the game came with.

    Like I said, though, I still love it. It is a great framework for wargames , especially pre-modern-era stuff; like you I find M’44 the least of the series, both in terms of complexity and verisimilitude. I have no real problem with fan-produced material, (provided it has been playtested and is well thought-out) and in fact have done/am doing quite a bit of it myself. A few years ago I did a project to combine all the rulebooks into one clean, well-edited volume, so I wouldn’t have to go digging through ten separate books. I also did some design work (both graphic and playability) on a terrain generation card system to use with the official card troop deployment system. Now I’m in the middle of trying to design a system for using Undead units and attacking walled cities. Fun stuff.

  • Lizard_Dude

    No reason to debate original vs. Underground. Get both and the Tunnels expansion to connect and use both worlds and all races at once. Do you head underground and seek powerful relics or do you try to spread out in the less crowded but more boring overworld? We’ve never gone back.

  • http://www.facebook.com/LivinItUpInPhx Dan Samela

    Sounds good! Let me know when, and we’ll make it happen. Know, though, that Perkins will attempt to charm your socks off if doing so translates into you sparing his race tokens.

  • Barac Wiley

    Oh, cool. It was sorta possible to mix the two as is, but having official rules support for it would make everything so much better.