A long time ago, strategy articles about boardgames went through an extensive process to get to you. First, they had to be typed. Diagrams had to be mocked up. They then had to be mailed to an editor, who put them in a magazine, which had to be printed and mailed. Eventually, they appeared in your mailbox.
Those days are gone, and I’m a little sad about it. Now, people apparently watch gameplay videos. That’s okay, I guess. There is a set of gameplay videos up for Battle of the Bulge which I haven’t watched yet. Videos are great for watching, but less great for savoring. You can bet that’s what I did with every morsel of strategy advice I ever read for Afrika Korps. Maybe games are more disposable now, or maybe they always were and I just didn’t know it. But there is something to examining a game methodically, and turning it over and over until you have a better appreciation of what it offers. Even if it doesn’t come in a cool magazine.
After the jump, first we take Bastogne Continue reading →
I’m pretty sure I know what “follow the cosmic butterfly” means. It involves a certain kind of mushrooms.
Veiled drug references aside, Paper Galaxy is a perfectly kid-safe iOS game. But it’s also as adult-safe as any well-made bit of casual frippery. You fire a little moon between planets by timing the moment it sneezes to leave orbit. The objective is to get as high as you can (get it?) before the evil crab nebula rises from below and swallows your moon. The cosmic butterfly thing is a suggested route for you to take. If you can hit the planets in that order, you’ll go faster, which gets you farther but makes it harder to nail the timing when you leave orbit. It’s a nifty self-correcting and moderately skill-based variation on just bouncing ever upward.
There are plenty of these “bounce ever upward” games where you try to reach a new height before . I suppose it’s a vertical variation on the endless runner. But what I like about Paper Galaxy is how it litters the screen with planets that have character. I don’t just mean they’re cute; some of them are functionally different. Comet, suns, gas giants, money planets, speed planets, and so forth. The progression system, which is based on the usual collectible coins and goals (and micropayment, if you’re so inclined), is that you’re not just leveling up your little moon. You’re also improving the galaxy by unlocking new types of helpful planets, improving how often they’ll occur, and even improving their functionality.
It’s worth noting Paper Galaxy was made by Liquid Entertainment, a studio with credits as diverse as the sadly underapprecaited RTS Dragonshard, a Desperate Wives tie-in, and a pretty good Greek God of War style RPG called Rise of the Argonauts. It’s always nice to see a familiar name on the splash screen in front of a cute diversion like this.
3 stars
iOS
Hasbro is finally making changes to Monopoly, which has been scientifically proven to be the worst game ever invented (sorry, Tic Tac Toe and Daikatana). Hasbro will let people on Facebook vote one of the pieces out of the box! That’s like letting Youtube commenters decide the winner of American Idol.
You can go here to see how the various pieces are faring. Naturally, the Scottie dog is sitting pretty. Also the battleship and racecar. I would have thought the iron more likely to go than the wheelbarrow, but as anyone holding Facebook stock can attest, who can predict what’s going to happen with Facebook these days?
I know what you’re thinking: when this is all over and there are only seven pieces left, what if I want to play an eight-player Monopoly game? Hasbro anticipated that. You can also vote on a replacement piece, choosing among a cat, a helicopter, a cell phone, a diamond ring, a robot, a guitar, and a Yoda. I only made up one of those. Okay, two.
