iOS Games Thread

[tylertoo]

I'm interested in New Star Soccer, but confused: its listed as free, with in-game upgrade purchases. Yet one of the iTunes reviews mentions a .99c price. So:

--Are there two versions?
--Assuming there's only one version, is possible to play far without making freemium purchases?

A little stop by iTunes and I can answer my own questions:

There are not two versions. The free app gets you arcade mode. The real game, with career mode, is 99 cents. Beyond that, there are many variations of in-game purchases. But Owen of Pocket Tactics wrote:

This is where developers New Star Games have inserted an in-app purchase system, but it’s one that can be played around entirely. The impatient can use real cash to buy energy drinks, but the frugal customer just has to plan his time a little more thoughtfully.

EDIT: Larsen beat me to answering my own question.

Larsen, since you're in the UK, is the app called New Star Football?

This review from the UK iTunes page is wonderful:

Unputdownable!

by Zapp83

I can't leave this game alone. My children have aged and left home, I barely noticed. My wife left me for another man, I ne'er even raised an eyebrow. Bailiffs removed all my worldly possessions, save my kitchen stool and iPhone, I did not even dart a glance.

But, I have won the League Cup with Preston, so y'know...swings and roundabouts.

[Nightgaunt]

It's definitely worth the $.99 for the New Star Soccer career mode. I played that thing to death.

[Larsen B]

It's still called New Star Soccer even though the iOS version is by an English guy! Must be a franchise or something.

I've played coming up to 7 seasons in NSS and the only money I've spent was 99c on the career unlock and 99c on extra weather/pitches. I've maxed out my stats and won trophies without touching the energy drink IAP stuff. In fact, anyone who does that must be pretty bad at the game!

[SamF7]

I can vouch for the awesomeness that is New Star Soccer....and I'm even Americanese.
SamF7

[Brakara]

I mentioned NSS in the other thread, and it's awesome.

Two-player async is definitely supported on TTR Pocket from my personal experience.

Yeah, that was already stated, and I'm actually playing it right now. But it's just incredible annoying that I had to buy TTR Pocket to play async when I already have TTR HD (not to mention the lack of retina graphics in TTR Pocket on my new iPad).

What Dreamshadow meant, was that you can play TTR and TTR Pocket against each other live only. So the mp modes between the versions are as follow:

TTR - TTR: Live
TTR - TTRP: Live
TTRP - TTRP: Live, Async

[kaosfere]

It's still called New Star Soccer even though the iOS version is by an English guy! Must be a franchise or something.

It is. The full PC versions are wonderful homages to Sensible Soccer; definitely try the demo of NSS5 if you're interested in such things.

New Star Grand Prix is a highly enjoyable top-down MicroMachines type F1 racer from the same guy.

[Nightgaunt]

Anyone tried the New Star Tennis game? I love tennis sims. I see Out of Eight only gave it a 4. I usually find him reliable, so I'm going to probably skip it unless someone says it's up there with New Star Soccer...

[Juntei]

Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 is Free!

[GeeWhiz]

Thanks for the heads up!

It is called "Magic 2013" in the app store. Took me a bit to find it.

[forgeforsaken]

Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 is Free!

It's not really free.

[Justin Fletcher]

Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 is Free!

What the what?!

[Jumps onto iTunes]

Oh, it's a three-deck demo with a $10 unlock. Well, I was planning on buying it anyway.

[Defcon One]

Question. I downloaded the game and unlocked the full game. There are a bunch of locked decks in the store. Are those ones I can unlock during normal play, or is buying them the only way to get them?

[Skorin]

Question. I downloaded the game and unlocked the full game. There are a bunch of locked decks in the store. Are those ones I can unlock during normal play, or is buying them the only way to get them?

You'll unlock them in normal play.

[ducker]

Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 is Free!

I tried this out ever so briefly at PaxEast on a PC - it seemed similar to standard card game. But there definitely seemed to be some variations, and I really didn't get enough to really figure out what was going on.

How much of the game play is contingent on paying more money for more cards?
If you have elite card skills can you earn enough cards to continue to develop even more different types of decks?

I'm liking Ascension a lot, but the RNG of the creation of the deck/what's available in the center, drives me insane at times. (ie. I can't play the way I want to play, I have to play to what cards are being presented to me)

[Defcon One]

You don't pay more money for more cards. Once you download the app and pay to unlock the full game, there are decks that you can unlock in normal play that you can pay 99 cents each to unlock early if you're impatient or lazy :).

[ducker]

how close is the gameplay to what it would be like if I sat across from you in a smelly back room of a game shop?

[Alan Friesen]

how close is the gameplay to what it would be like if I sat across from you in a smelly back room of a game shop?

I played the original version released two years ago, not this updated version, so take this with a grain of salt: the electronic version of M:TG are exactly like playing in person except that somebody's handed you a deck of cards and said, "Here, play with these." You can't take cards out or put cards in (aside from unlocks as you play). Most decks are thematic, either single source or a combination (death/fire, nature/illusion, etc.) You can't play a crazy deck that uses five types of mana and a wide variety of magic cards.

Having said that, as long as you're okay with the lack of customisation, it's M:TG. I'm happy with what's being offered and I'm happy to pay $9.99 for an iPad iteration.

[peterb]

There is a "deck builder" option from the main menu, so it seems to me it should be possible.

I'm liking it so far. Biggest gripe: haven't yet found a way to speed up play against the computer.

[ioticus]

The eagerly anticipated Le Havre is here:

http://itunes.apple.com/app/le-havre...ign-mpt=uo%3D4

[Clay]

The eagerly anticipated Le Havre is here:

http://itunes.apple.com/app/le-havre...ign-mpt=uo%3D4

That looks crazy complicated. Is it any good?

[rowe33]

Man, I wish all these board game adaptations would come to Android...jealous!

[GeeWhiz]

That looks crazy complicated. Is it any good?

The urls never work for me through the iPad. Is there a reason why? Seems bad on an iOS thread ;)


Just wondering if there is a setting I need.

[malkav11]

Hey, I was listening to a QT3 Games Podcast from a couple years back (slantz on Civilization V) and there was mention of an iOS version of his game Land of Legends in the works. Did that ever happen, perhaps under a different name?

[Armiger]

The urls never work for me through the iPad. Is there a reason why? Seems bad on an iOS thread ;)


Just wondering if there is a setting I need.

I just tried on my iphone, through both tapatalk and safari, and both times the link just opened directly to the item in the appstore. No settings that I am aware of that would or wouldn't allow that to work. Maybe a 3rd party browser youre using has a conflict with it?

Edit: Just tried with terra browser on the ipad, and it worked there too. So no idea what your issue could be.

[GeeWhiz]

I just tried on my iphone, through both tapatalk and safari, and both times the link just opened directly to the item in the appstore. No settings that I am aware of that would or wouldn't allow that to work. Maybe a 3rd party browser youre using has a conflict with it?

Edit: Just tried with terra browser on the ipad, and it worked there too. So no idea what your issue could be.

Yes, third party browser, must be the reason (didn't think of that, thanks).

[ducker]

Man, I wish all these board game adaptations would come to Android...jealous!

Here's a great write up why often times they don't head over to Android:
http://www.gaslampgames.com/2012/04/...d-questions-2/

Q. Will the game be available for Android?
A. This… is an interesting question. While SDL 1.3 supports Android, at least partly, there are two reasons why we might not go ahead and do this. The first is insufficient demand – my personal experience with Android on previous products have been that Android sales are a very small fraction of iPad sales (in fact, less than the ratio of Linux sales to Windows sales.) Consequently, it’s not entirely clear that this is something that we will actually make money on – especially on the tablet market, where Android tablets are still somewhat of an unknown factor and where the iPad still occupies 75% of the market share.

The second reason why we might not support Android is because the infrastructure for Android is so, so, hideously broken. Again, it’s *worse* than the Linux situation, which is kind of amazing. In order for us to ship on Android, we have to be convinced (more specifically, as the Technical Director for the studio *I* have to be convinced) that we can actually ship an Android version of Dredmor and have it work. Given that there are a number of horror stories floating around about people who test their software on 300 Android devices and get everything working, only to release and have everything explode on Day 1… I’m just not confident that we can do this. It is possible that we might put together an Android release for a *very* limited selection of devices (Kindle Fire, Samsung Galaxy Tab, ASUS EEE Pad Transformer) where we have some hope of having things run in a fashion that we’re happy with. That said, we’re still looking into this, and the iPad port (by virtue of the market share we mentioned above) is still the top priority.

[LionelThompson]

That looks crazy complicated. Is it any good?

It is crazy complicated, but it's also one of my favorite newest games. The game really boils down to using your turn to select resources, of which there are I think ten. You use the resources to buy buildings which then process those resources further (you can also use your opponent's buildings), and eventually you will want to build ships.

That's really, really, high level, but it is made by the guy who created Agricola, and the game play basics aren't THAT much different.

[Ginger Yellow]

I played the original version released two years ago, not this updated version, so take this with a grain of salt: the electronic version of M:TG are exactly like playing in person except that somebody's handed you a deck of cards and said, "Here, play with these." You can't take cards out or put cards in (aside from unlocks as you play). Most decks are thematic, either single source or a combination (death/fire, nature/illusion, etc.) You can't play a crazy deck that uses five types of mana and a wide variety of magic cards.

The more recent versions have increased the amount of customisation you can do a bit, but no, you're not going to be building a deck from the ground up.

[olaf]

Ravenmark is a tremendous game. Turn based wargame set in a fantasy world. Love it.

[Outlandish]

I'm liking Ascension a lot, but the RNG of the creation of the deck/what's available in the center, drives me insane at times. (ie. I can't play the way I want to play, I have to play to what cards are being presented to me)

I'm so on the other side of that. I don't mind the randomness of Ascension, as I can build a deck to handle what the center throws at me and as long as I build my deck properly as I go I feel I have much more control over the game. This is especially true with Storm of Souls where I feel I as a player have more to do with how the game turns out than the RNG did.

In MtG, with a 60 card deck, there's just so many opportunities to have too little land, too much land, too few creatures, etc. It just seems like the RNG can mess with me much more in MtG than Ascension. Especially this stripped down version of MtG where you can't fully build your own deck with the best available cards and tune it better. Still enjoy both games, but when I draw no land or way too much 4 or 5 games in a row I'm so happy to take a break and go back to Ascension!