Dipping my toe into mobile gaming for the first time ever. What do you recommend as far as historical strategy, RPGs, tactical games and sci fi for an iPad Mini 3?
The Tiller stuff holds up fairly well.
^Cool. I know nothing of mobile gaming...I'm assuming there's a wide variety of stuff to play, eh?
Loot & Legends is the iOS adaptation of CardHunter.
Tons of fun stuff.... depends on what yer looking for.
Some recommendations:
Plague Inc. - de-populate the world as various types of plagues. Great fun...and a bit sobering...
War of the Zombie - Real time top down Zombie shooter with high level strategic layer where you manage funds, research, troops and global opinion. Leave the "gore" selector on.
Starbase Orion - Great 4X space game that keeps getting updated.
Pacific Fleet and Atlantic Fleet - great WWII turn based naval combat games.
Crash Dive - great U-boat game
Ace Patrol and Pacific Skies - same as PC only on the iPad, works really well.
Motosport Manager - fun management game for motor car racing. Racing is well done too.
Phantom Leader - Great Dan Verssen Games port to the iPad.
80 Days - Great text based adventure game.
Hitman GO - Fun puzzle game based on Hitman PC series.
Penultimate - good hand writing app.
Oh, and Hunted Cow has a couple of good turn based games. Civil War and Rebels and Redcoats are two I like.
I've done several iOS reviews for this very website, especially on the Hunted Cow games that bbmike mentioned. Despite being awfully similar, they are very fun to play (and light too).
The X-Com Enemy Unknown game translates well to the iPad as well.
I've had a lot of fun with board game translations, such as Ticket to Ride, Agricola, Lords of Waterdeep, Alien Frontiers, and even Galaxy Trucker.
The only thing I play on a mobile device is bejeweled. I'd rather sit and play on the PC or game console than a small hand held. It's a time eater for me waiting for an appointment or such.
Thanks guys - Plague Inc. and Starbase Orion sound perfect.
Oh, yeah...Plague, Inc. is a good one too. I started an AAR somewhere around here with a deadly disease called "Mirthfury." Unfortunately I didn't do much with it. One presumes this monster STD killed everyone on the planet, 'cuz people be bangin'.
Surprised nobody has mentioned any of the slithering titles. The Commander series, the Battle Academy series, he Panzer General series, WH40k Armaggeddon, etc. a lot of them are available on iOS.
The Warhammer Fantasy game is pretty good, but it beats you over the head with in-app purchases, which I cannot stand.
Thanks JH...heh 'Mirthfury'
Jarhead really likes the WH40K: Deathwatch game on iOS (but a lackluster PC port). It's a modified version of the Warhammer Quest engine, but with campaign missions.
I've heard at least some good things about Firefight, which is a little like Close Combat.
I can second Agricola from personal experience; it probably works even better on a pad. I own Lords of Waterdeep but haven't played it; ditto Elder Signs (I think that's the name, a Lovecraftian board-gameish thing, with a PC version).
I don't own a pad, but I suspect most of the games I own for my iPhone4 have a pad version. I can personally vouch for the following (beyond Agricola, which also makes key expansion packs available), keeping in mind however that the pad design might be independently problematic for some reason. All these games can be played solo, and most can also be multiplayer locally or on the net. They're all turn based.
Agricola -- just to reiterate. This is a farming family boardgame port, worker placement and resource management plus a strong card mechanic, rebuilding a village and its environs (competing with other players) in Europe after the Black Death has reduced the population. Lots of complexity in the options, but pretty simple gameplay.
Brief History of the World -- a boardgame port, I think. Clever area-control (not exactly worker placement )and light card game mechanics.
Pre-Civilization Bronze Age -- probably too simple for grogs, but I've wasted a lot of time on it. Essentially it's a worker-placement management game. There's also an updated version called Marble Age for the PC and other platforms. Technically you can follow a group of less-than-cavemen into the Greco-Roman era, but in fact there are four separate campaigns between the two games.
Carcassone -- exactly like the map-builder worker-placement board game; you can buy all the expansions, too. (But not other versions of Carc yet, so far as I know, like Ark of the Covenant or Hunters and Gatherers.)
Settlers of Catan: Rivals -- I've heard the actual Catan game may be screwy; I'm pretty sure there's one for iPad anyway. This is purely a card game (ported from an actual card game) for two players (AI or human). Expansion decks are available. You're building up a medieval county more or less, uncovering resource areas, building roads to new settlements which you upgrade.
Caylus -- a boardgame port. I've heard people complain about bugs, but I've never seen any personally. Nominally a castle-building game, it's really about building the support town downhill of the new castle. A clever variation on worker-placement resource management.
It's Alive -- card game (port I think) where the players are digging up body parts and assembling a monster. A bit shallow but fun premise.
Kingdoms -- port of the Reiner Knizia board game. A highly abstract map-building game (laying tiles). The few expansion tiles are available. Shares some 'eastern' board game area-control mechanics.
Kingdom Builder -- port from Queen Games (I think), who just recently Kickstartered a Big Box variation (not on the phone of course). Area control on a semi-randomized map, by placing tokens. Simple but deceptively strategic in an 'eastern' Go-like fashion.
LeHavre -- port of the card game... about a port! :D Set in France's LeHavre around the end of the 19th century. Strong card game mechanic with resource management and a touch of worker placement. I expect the pad version plays better than the cramped phone version -- it's a miracle of design the game can be played at all on an iPhone4! Quite complex.
Medici -- port of a bidding economy game, where players angle to be the top providers in several commodities by bidding on those commodities each day as they arrive by boat. Not complicated, an easy time waster.
San Juan -- port of a card game by the same designers for the board game Puerto Rico. I'm not actually sure there's a pad version, but I've heard a lot of good things about the pad version of PR. Anyway, the players race to build up their land holdings in Puerto Rico using cards that represent different properties (many of which have special abilities as well as an end-game point value).
Stone Age -- board game port, kind of like Agricola, managing stone age families in a village, but no cards and a lot more dice rolling. I've played this game a lot. Some subtle scoring mechanics makes it nicely unclear until the final tally which family has won.
Thru the Desert -- deceptively simple area control game on a semi-randomized map. Literally a game about plopping camels.
Tigris and Euphrates -- board game port with some complex area control mechanics. Could stand to have a randomized map, as the two maps provided are pauce (and one makes no sense in its design, since it eliminates the middle of one of the titular rivers for no good reason). I know for a fact there's a pad version of this, because the extra map DLC is different depending on whether it's for phone or pad.
Wizard Hex -- a Go-ish sort of stone-placement game, with lots of variations.
Zulus on the Ramparts -- port of a solo board game, defending four corners of the central fort from encroaching Zulus.
Those are the ones currently on my phone, but I've also bought...
Dice Town Mobile -- sort of an Old West competitive yahtzee dice game. The iPhone version either has some bugs, or I don't understand the rules well enough.
Warhammer 40K: Space Wolf -- I heard enough of this Herocraft game to buy it, shortly before finding out it doesn't work on iPhone 4. :buck2: I don't recall what I heard, but its reputation must have been great.
Summoners War -- haven't played yet, but has a good reputation. Pretty sure it's a card game like Magic.
Star Traders 4x Empires -- Trese Brothers 4x game set in the same universe as their Space Hulkish Templar Battleforce (which I suspect they also have a port for now -- one came to PC recently). There's a Rogue Trader-like game, too, Star Traders RPG.
Heroes of Steel RPG -- another Trese Brothers game, this one is a fairly straightforward tactical fantasy RPG.
Kahuna -- a colorful island path-control game.
Frontline -- one of the Slitherine/Matrix games; you probably know about the Frontline series already, but to recap, it's kind of a combination of Battle Academy and Panzer General. I've got the original Road to Moscow game but there's at least one more.
Godzilla -- Smash 3 -- before Pipeworks dashed all our hopes by pooting out a lame tech demo for their next Godzilla 3-D fighting game (and selling it for $50 !! :tickedoff: :uglystupid2: ), they put some of the early art assets to work in this Match 3 game which nearly burnt my phone to death. I like it a lot more than I have any right to, but it depends on your tolerance for match-3 games.
Speaking of which, I strongly suspect the guys behind Puzzle Quest have ported their games to pad by now. Their application of match-3 gameplay to various other genres is legendary as you probably already know, although their best strategy game I'd say is Puzzle Quest: Galactrix which is a space trader game.
Ravenmark Mercenaries -- a fantasy squad tactical campaign game.
Clash of Clans -- do people still play this? Wait, this is real-time strategy. I enjoyed what little I played of it.
Empire: the Deck Building Strategy Game -- (to distinguish it from all the other games called "Empire") A brilliant little Master of Magic type game, but simplistic. You are expected to lose, the question being how long you can keep things going on the map.
Battle of the Bulge -- someone has an AAR of this game in our Digital AAR category somewhere! I think there's at least one maybe two more games from Shenandoah Studio in this series, too.
Run That Town -- political town management sim, with the hook that the towns are randomly chosen real places from Australia. (Actually made by the Australian Bureau of Statistics!)
The aMAZEing Labyrinth -- port of a board game from Ravensburger. Players shift a maze around to navigate their piece to various treasures and back to base, while screwing over the other people.
Elder Sign: Omens -- okay this is the port of the Fantasy Flight Games boardgame I was talking about earlier.
Crimson: Steam Pirates -- tactical navy steampunk game, build your ships and fight on a map, rather like Leviathan (which come to think of it should also be available on pad) but with a more playfully swashbuckling theme and story.
Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer -- very highly respected fantasy card game like MTG. I haven't played it but liked what I saw and read about it. And then I keep forgetting it exists. (Also it has a high memory footprint, so I had to decide if I wanted to keep this or multiple games on my phone.)
Neuroshima Hex -- port of a boardgame I think. Very highly rated, but I only recall I read enough good about it to buy it. Haven't played.
Roll Through the Ages -- boardgame port, with a clever dice mechanic, but currently broken on iPhone4. Highly respected otherwise and for good reason.
War of the Roses -- also known as Rosenkönig. Requires a lot of memory for no clear reason, and has weird haunting music. That aside, it's a Go/Othello-like board-control game where your possible moves are dealt out as cards. I played this a lot, but eventually deleted it so I could have more room for more things. (The fate of many games in this list, btw.)
Oh, and I think I recall hearing of an iPad version for Small World (which might be called Small World 2, as on the PC port). It's another area control piece-placing game on a semi-randomized map, with an insane level of variation on choosing special abilities.
Aside from here at Grogheads, I found a lot of these over at the video games side of Boardgamegeek.
No, Jason, seriously. Do you have any suggestions? :2funny:
Star Command is a fun little game with minor RPG elements set in space. I have it on my iPad.
Quote from: bbmike on January 17, 2016, 09:36:17 PM
The Tiller stuff holds up fairly well.
What Tiller games have you tried on iPad? I was stunned that you can't even check possible destinations before moving your units because they didn't optimize memory usage on the platform for the necessary algorithms. Has that been an issue for you? It was a game breaker for me.
Quote from: Ubercat on February 27, 2016, 11:32:41 PM
Quote from: bbmike on January 17, 2016, 09:36:17 PM
The Tiller stuff holds up fairly well.
What Tiller games have you tried on iPad? I was stunned that you can't even check possible destinations before moving your units because they didn't optimize memory usage on the platform for the necessary algorithms. Has that been an issue for you? It was a game breaker for me.
Just the Civil War one. I agree that the interface isn't really good but from what I've played on the PC neither is it. But having said that, playing on the PC is certainly the better option.
Pike and Shot
Exactly like the PC version (well minus the Campaigns).
Can't go wrong with skirmish and the community scenarios / mods which also is usable on the mobile device.