iOS premium gaming thread

[mrs quoad]

Premium: full game with all intended features available for a one-off payment. Absolutely not free to play / freemium.

It's now possible to play some pretty bloody good games on mobile. Gaming has moved from being a pretty niche phone thing to having a tremendous range of titles, many of which are also available on steam. Sometimes some way behind current efforts (e.g. Total War: Rome, Space Hulk), sometimes pretty much identical (particularly from Indy / smaller studios - e.g. This War of Mine, Papers Please, Prison Architect, Doorkickers, The Banner Saga 1&2, A Tale of Two Brothers, XCOM, Sproggiwood, Binding of Isaac Rebirth, Frozen Synapse, Don't Starve (and Shipwrecked), Steamworld Heist, Death Road to Canada, Dead Age, Stealth Bastard Deluxe, Tomb of the NecroDancer, Kingdom: New Lands).

And most of them are under a fiver.

I'm currently playing Motorsport Manager 2 - a properly beautiful management sim with more depth than you could shake a stick at. Beginning to get a bit repetitive, but I've probably had a good 12hrs out of it for a fiver.

And Ultimate General: Gettysburg. Again, available on Steam, put together my a Total War modder, and utterly fucking beautiful. I've had three or four attempts at the first mission, and have consistently fucked it - it is proper strategic. Which is nice.

And Desktop Dungeons on my iPad mini. Keeps me coming back. A right little beauty, and properly mathematical. Oh! And I was hammering Sunless Sea until recently.

Any other premium iOS gamers?

Don't give a fuck if not, I'll keep on happily plugging away, but at least there's a single thread for it now :lol:

(I currently have 82 games on my phone :lol: Almost all of them premium. (Just counted. More than I expected. Many of them need more time...))

 

[kabbes]

It's very old, but Knights of the Old Republic was just as good on iPad as on the PC. Better, in some ways. And Xcom even more so. That's great.

I enjoyed The Room and its sequels, although they are pretty short.

 

[mrs quoad]

Sigh.

Ultimate general. I managed to flank and enfillade the yankees southern flank, but lost control of my northern edges and let two huge brigades be routed by skirmishers.

I'm also clearly failing to make best use of my guns.

#seventhtimelucky

 

[bi0boy]

12 hours for a fiver? I've had a good few weeks of playing time out of Clash Royale for zilch.

It's going to take a lot to persuade me to buy an iPad game as I am quite fussy - unless they offer refunds if you don't like them, or demo versions?

 

[mrs quoad]

It's going to take a lot to persuade me to buy an iPad game as I am quite fussy - unless they offer refunds if you don't like them, or demo versions?

You can get one refund before they insist you acknowledge that you have declined your right for a refund at every f***ing purchase. European law. Or sth.

Do you ever play games on proper computers? If so, which genres appeal?

Edit: there are a couple of games with free DLs and paid unlocks. From the list above, Prison Architect springs to mind. You can also get an insight into many of the games listed above by looking at Steam reviews - often my first port of call if I'm unsure, and a game has a history on another platform. I think every single game I listed in the OP is also on Steam.

 

[bi0boy]

You can get one refund before they insist you acknowledge that you have declined your right for a refund at every f***ing purchase. European law. Or sth.

Do you ever play games on proper computers? If so, which genres appeal?

PC Steam gives you two hours of play upto which you can get a refund without giving a reason.

I like strategy games like city sims and stuff. Also tower defence etc. I like Clash Royale whatever genre that is.

I still play Alpha Centauri on the PC even though it's 20 years old because I haven't found anything better.

 

[mrs quoad]

I like strategy games like city sims and stuff. Also tower defence etc. I like Clash Royale whatever genre that is.

Pretty much by definition, you wouldn't find Clash as a premium game.

City building is not my forte - but might be worth having a squizz at (free to dl) Prison Architect. Which is a prison world sim. TBH, most of the games in the OP are strategy-ish, too. Total War, This War of Mine (war from the perspective of a small group of survivors trying to scavenge a life), The Banner Saga 1 and 2... XCom: EW is probably the best reputed of them (both base building and strategy) though it may not survive iOS 11, which will expunge all non-64 bit apps. (It's awaiting an update). Slitherine are probably the lead dev for (ugly) battle strategy, but most of their offerings look to be about to suffer the same fate.

Sunless Sea is fucking beautiful, incredibly deep, and profoundly weird. Kept me going for days non-stop. There's a full range of Final Fantasy games, Dungeon of the Endless is properly weird rogue like tower defence, and Star Hammer: the Vanguard Prophecy and Sid Meier's starships are both space strategy. If not to the depth of Alpha.

All links above are to Steam / Steam reviews. Most iOS versions are very much cheaper than their PC counterparts (often less than half price), and most are fully featured. (Sometimes DLC is missing). Tinkering with any of the above on Steam for a couple of hours before demanding a refund would offer one way of finding out whether or not you thought em worth it for when you're away from your lappy.

 

[mrs quoad]

And, fuckit, here's a strategy guide to Desktop Dungeons, which gives some insight into its complexity: Strategy - DDwiki

It's a skin for maths, tbh. But a skin for maths overlaid with sth like 8 unlockable races and 16 unlockable classes [edit: and ten gods], all of which come with different bonuses, debuffs, and play styles.

 

[kabbes]

12 hours for a fiver? I've had a good few weeks of playing time out of Clash Royale for zilch.

It's going to take a lot to persuade me to buy an iPad game as I am quite fussy - unless they offer refunds if you don't like them, or demo versions?

I've gone the opposite way. I've had so many experiences of terrible game balance and stuttering play on freemium games that it will take a lot to persuade me to download one. They generally start well for the first hour or two and then become awful, because the makers have prioritised purchase incentives over difficulty curves, player agency and other ludological concepts. I'd rather pay the price of a coffee or two and know I've got something that's going to be good (subject to suitable research into reviews and so forth).

 

[mrs quoad]

I am actually tempted to get a mfi controller, probably a steelseries jobbie, come next payday. The Binding of Isaac on iOS got me to buy BoI: Afterbirth when it was in the Steam summer sale. And the experience with a controller is just loads better.

Also bought Street Fighter IV a couple weeks back. And, again, that's a game that would benefit from sth hardwired. (I'm also aware that "does it have controller support" is a very very frequent question on toucharcade's forums, which again leads me to think there's sth in it.)

 

[mrs quoad]

Fwiw

I'm reminded, in posting, that Leap of Fate is probably the finest roguelike twin stick to ever hit iOS. Phenomenal game. [Edit: in fact, I've just gone looking for it on Steam, AND IT'S ONLY AVAILABLE ON WINDOWS. The bastards.]

Edit: I'm currently trying to work out what to delete to free up memory, but I'm struggling to bring myself to part with any of the games on there :lol: Srsly, this is a refined collection! Any chaff has been long whittled away.

And, like, 3rd edit: other twin sticks on there include the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, which basically has infinite replayability (it has a ridiculous number of stat- and behaviour- and world-altering items, many of which interact in unpredictable ways; but lacks the drama and excitement of Leap. And Neon Chrome which, tbh, I just haven't found as exciting or varied as Leap - which has four characters, each with multiple gameplay-changing upgrades / challenges, and each of which requires a dramatically different playing style).

 

[mrs quoad]

And Red Conquest gets bonus marks for being the game that's been on my phone by far the longest. I'd guess I first installed it in... 2009? 2nd or 3rd gen iPod touch. Whenever that came out.

The Dev has continued to update the app so's it works, and pay annual registration fees. It's a cracking little RTS - unbelievably complex for 2009, when Angry Birds hadn't even arrived. And an absolute ledge of a developer. (His other apps include Blue Attack, which has to be one of the best five-minute space roguelikes around.

 

[mrs quoad]

Michael Brough also deserves a mention. He develops one-screen roguelike puzzlers.

868-hack has a cult following. IMO, it's fuck ugly, and less interesting than I hoped it'd be. Others clearly disagree, and its Steam reviews are rock solid. Perhaps I just haven't gotten into the maths enough.

Imbroglio, in contrast, has a genuinely lovely aesthetic. And has ridiculous strategic depth. Multiple characters (again, different playing styles required) and a vast number of weapons that can be placed on a 4*4 board. Weapons level up in very different ways as you kill creatures with them. Every time you pick up a star (your goal), the walls within the 4*4 grid are randomly repositioned. It makes for an endearing, very weird, very difficult, very complex game.

 

[mrs quoad]

And Rome: Total War - Alexander is out this morning for iPad, as a standalone app. Given I still haven't got around to putting any time into the first launch, reckon I'll give this a miss for now

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Michael Brough also deserves a mention. He develops one-screen roguelike puzzlers.

868-hack has a cult following. IMO, it's fuck ugly, and less interesting than I hoped it'd be. Others clearly disagree, and its Steam reviews are rock solid. Perhaps I just haven't gotten into the maths enough.

Imbroglio, in contrast, has a genuinely lovely aesthetic. And has ridiculous strategic depth. Multiple characters (again, different playing styles required) and a vast number of weapons that can be placed on a 4*4 board. Weapons level up in very different ways as you kill creatures with them. Every time you pick up a star (your goal), the walls within the 4*4 grid are randomly repositioned. It makes for an endearing, very weird, very difficult, very complex game.

I have a lot of his stuff - he has written some non roguelikes but seems to be concentrating on them for the moment. I was initially a bit sceptical about Imbroglio but it's now easily my most played game ever. It really takes the idea of setting up synergies that's common with roguelikes to a new degree (even if a lot of the really killer ones were nerfed). Still only have 233 stars on any character though.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Oh, and I pretty much only play "premium" games, for similar reasons to kabbes - the freemium model distorts gameplay as well as often signing you up for an unpredictable amount of money if you actually want to finish the thing. Games generally involve fairly random grinding which has to be bypassed with money or time (not skill); they are also deliberately _not very absorbing_ and have short session times, so that people will pick it up repeatedly and potentially spend money repeatedly rather than play for ages then finish. They are just rarely the sort of things I want to play, even if I had unlimited amounts of money.

 

[mrs quoad]

A triplet of original Fighting Fantasy books has just launched, for those with an interest. Fiver for three. Including the Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which I'm pretty sure someone else was talking about not so long ago.

Lots of dicerolls. Yay.

(I have also DLed Neo-Scavenger today; free DL, £10 1-off IAP for total access. Looks a bit RNG / scavengey for my liking, but tremendous Steam reviews. So will see. Also got Galaxy of Pen and Paper, as the previous two Knights of Pen and Papers have been decent enough D&D parodies).

Also: blates #rightthinking from fm and kebabs wrt freemium. Thumbs.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

A triplet of original Fighting Fantasy books has just launched, for those with an interest. Fiver for three. Including the Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which I'm pretty sure someone else was talking about not so long ago.

Lots of dicerolls. Yay.

They have previously released really authentic gamebook versions of FF books - these look pretty different.

If you want gamebook adaptations though I really recommend the Sorcery! series, which were not only quite groundbreaking FF books but in the iOS versions were done by Inkle, who are a fantastic studio (they also did 80 Days which is brilliant). #1 is quite straightforward/linear but still better than most RPGs out there; #2 is where it starts to get actually pretty difficult but also gains loads of atmospheric and is much less linear, and #3 is massive and lovely and weird and has loads of agency and I still haven't finished it so I can't talk about #4.

It's interesting that they can make games that are really challenging without any of the usual forced mechanisms like savepoints or random death - you can literally go back to any decision you've already made and replay from there, even the start of a fight. But like I say they are a proper interactive fiction studio.

 

[mrs quoad]

Greatly enjoyed Sorcery #1. I fizzled a bit w/ #2. I'm not sure why. Had similar problems w/ 80 days, which remains on my phone, but which I've never quite clicked with. I can tell there's a tremendous game in there somewhere, it's just (so far) slightly missed my enthusiasm button. And I'm not sure why. (Hence its persistence!)

Edit: the other game book I have balls-out enjoyed is Legend of Dorn. But I suspect the space marine theme had something to do with that.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Greatly enjoyed Sorcery #1. I fizzled a bit w/ #2. I'm not sure why. Had similar problems w/ 80 days, which remains on my phone, but which I've never quite clicked with. I can tell there's a tremendous game in there somewhere, it's just (so far) slightly missed my enthusiasm button. And I'm not sure why. (Hence its persistence!)

I also fizzled a bit with #2 for a while, mostly because it is bloody hard and I got frustrated. I'll quite happily admit to having looked up solutions in the end. The gamebook was even harder iirc.

#3 is not as hard in the sense that you fail if you don't do things the right way, but it's much larger, and also the replay mechanic leads me to be much more picky about getting things precisely right - also because I really want to see the whole story and know I'm not going to replay the whole thing once I've finished it. It was starting to occupy far more of my time than it should have so I took a break.

 

[mrs quoad]

This morning, I have downloaded Holy Potatoes: A Weapon Shop.

The name sounds dodgy as fuck, but it's a whopper (2.2gb?!). And - after a wee bit of tinkering - looks to be a gentle mash up of RPG and management games. (I am managing a team of potatoes, who make weapons for actual questers. The quality of the weapons determines how well they do, and the fame of my weapon shop (and the skill of my weapon-making potato crew) grows as my weapons allow them to complete quests).

I am sort of hovering, as it looks like there might be a latent risk of repetitiveness.

 

[mrs quoad]

HPAWS turns out to be absolutely awesome. The early stages are a bit repetitive, but as features are unlocked it turns a bit balls-out batshit. Different heroes have very different weapon requirements, and want different characteristics from those weapons. Some want more than one leading characteristic, which I'm not really yet able to achieve. And if the weapons you produce aren't up to heroes' standards, then they'll offer a pitiful price for them.

There's also a money-gouging landlord (effectively) who routinely steals profits, a variety of side quests, benefits to be had from sending your (small pool of) workers off to train, to explore other worlds, to buy resources, or to sell weapons, and a wide variety of character effects, world events, and moods. The moods mean that - after being worked too hard - you'll have to send your depressed workers on vacation. (The holidays offered by various planets vary in both their description, and their restorative effects, depending on the season). And you have to ensure that you've got enough cash in the bank every month to pay the (escalating) wage bill.

Am also looking at Egglia: 'Egglia: Legend of the Redcap' Launches as a Fully Premium, No IAP Game but It Still Requires a Persistent Online Connection

Watched a bit of the intro / first quest video. Actually looks like it has a lot of tempting / complex features. People on TA forums saying they've put well over 100 hours into the soft-launched version, and appears to have a lot of RPG and dice-related characteristics. Tenner and 700mb; will have to free up some phone space and have a think before DLing

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Wish Android got more of these. How it that iOS seems to get so many and Android so few and are stuck with Freemium. Is it that hard to transfer between platforms? I know iOS users are more likely to put hands in pockets, but there are a lot of Android users.

 

[mrs quoad]

Wish Android got more of these. How it that iOS seems to get so many and Android so few and are stuck with Freemium. Is it that hard to transfer between platforms? I know iOS users are more likely to put hands in pockets, but there are a lot of Android users.

Iirc, Android has a larger user base, but iOS owners are a better source of premium revenue. (They're more likely to pay.) I have a feeling that there're also higher rates of illegal downloads on android; though I've also seen some pretty shocking stats on iOS premium apps. Which I'll try to dig up.

I'm also remembering that from a couple of years back, so may be a bit askew.

 

[mrs quoad]

One reflection of the distinction between Android and iOS: some games (I'm looking at you, Panthera Frontier) are released f2p on android and premium on iOS, with a few tweaks to game balance. This caused riots with PF - the whole of the game's TA thread was originally taken up with people outraged that it *also* contained IAPs. To the point where the devs altered the game, and the complaining posts were binned by the mods. (I'm also not convinced that the transfer worked - the open world aspect wasn't very varied or interesting, and probably needed the urgency of running out of resources / value in grinding that the f2p original probably relied on).

Here's an article analysing the death of premium apps in 2013: Paid Games Don't Work For Developers, Here's Why - The Carter Crater

And a rather weird article, apparently by a f2p dev, on the monetisation of f2p: "We Own You" - Confessions of an Anonymous Free to Play Producer

TA did also have an article from a premium dev, who'd ascertained that despite sth like 3,000 sales, sth like 12,000 devices were actively playing his game. Struggling to find that one, tho!

 

[mrs quoad]

They have previously released really authentic gamebook versions of FF books - these look pretty different.

If you want gamebook adaptations though I really recommend the Sorcery! series, which were not only quite groundbreaking FF books but in the iOS versions were done by Inkle, who are a fantastic studio (they also did 80 Days which is brilliant). #1 is quite straightforward/linear but still better than most RPGs out there; #2 is where it starts to get actually pretty difficult but also gains loads of atmospheric and is much less linear, and #3 is massive and lovely and weird and has loads of agency and I still haven't finished it so I can't talk about #4.

It's interesting that they can make games that are really challenging without any of the usual forced mechanisms like savepoints or random death - you can literally go back to any decision you've already made and replay from there, even the start of a fight. But like I say they are a proper interactive fiction studio.

Very positive review: 'Fighting Fantasy Legends' Review - Nomad Successfully Passes their Skill Test

They've clearly taken some cues from previous unorthodox efforts, but in a lot of ways, Fighting Fantasy Legendsfeels the most faithful to the source of this bunch. You're presented with frequent choices that sometimes feel unfair in their outcomes. Your trips through each location feel like they're on rails. You'll need to roll the dice frequently to pass Skill and Luck Tests.

And yet, there are also all sorts of new aspects that expand significantly on the original works. You'll now gain experience and level up, increasing the effectiveness of your dice. Certain sections may be on rails, but you're able to re-enter areas or go elsewhere at your whim. It leans closer to its gamebook roots than its cousins from Tin Man or inkle, but it also feels very much like a tabletop RPG game in the vein of Hero Quest. The outcome is a game that has the speedy pace of a choice-based gamebook combined with the sastisfying depth and fairer difficulty of an RPG. It took all of thirty seconds for me to fall in love with this particular mixture, and hours for me to actually make my way through its traps and adventures.

These are the people who did the Talisman adaptations for iOS, apparently; which also gives me considerable hope. The Talisman apps are tremendous pieces of work.

 

[mrs quoad]

Picked up Cat Quest this week. Convinced by 100% positive out of 118 reviews on Steam.

Have put in a couple of hours, and it is a lovely little light sort-of-RPG. Loot, gear, gold, level-uppable spells (and gear). Decent sense of humour, beautiful presentation, and some respectably tough battles. Steam puts it at a 5-10 hour campaign.

Would cheerily recommend!

 

[mrs quoad]

My cat is now L48 and, having found the gold key, has been going around unlocking all the golden chests hidden in loot caves that I had not previously been able to unlock. I'd guess I'm a good 10hrs in already.

2 dragons dead. One more to kill. But there are some chuffing caves that are L199 / L200, which is either a full-on LULZ-level challenge, or else suggests considerable room for a post-game.

Extraordinarily well suited to mobile. Tonnes of save points, five minute missions. Can get a bit repetitive, and the loot choice is arguably thinner than it could be. But def one of the cheeriest / best assembled (exceptionally lite) open world RPGs I've played on iOS for a long time!


(Holy Potatoes also received an update about an hour ago, which has fixed a persistent crash; but I can no longer remember how to play teh fucker. May have to restart!)

 

[mrs quoad]

Sale on some of the earlier Final Fantasy games, should they be anyone's thing.

It Is (Once Again) Time to Fill in the Gaps of Your 'Final Fantasy' Collection with This Big Sale

Possibly old enough for you to've played first time round, bi0boy?

 

[mrs quoad]

Guild of Dungeoneering on sale. Genuinely tremendous indie effort, actually decent humour, and one of very few games where I don't feel driven to turn the volume off. I've come back to it several times, and it remains on my phone.

Vast array of classes, interesting deck-based combat, decent persistent upgrades, and characters who gain from experience, and progress to having actual graves in your graveyards.

The Innovative 'Guild of Dungeoneering' is On Sale for the First Time Ever

Guild of Dungeoneering on Steam