iOS premium gaming thread

[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!

A week on, I reckon this is one of the finest iOS games I've played. My cat is now high L70s, main campaign finished, and kinda dusting off the last few loot caves (some of which have absurd level requirements). I may delete it before it's thoroughly completed, to free up memory; it has, however, been played through pretty darned thoroughly.

I don't believe it's been as short as ten hours!

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I cracked and bought your fucking cat game and I have to say that it's got one of the smoothest UIs I've yet seen on the phone. It is absurdly easy to play and yet doesn't feel simplified. Normally I find realtime RPGs a pain on phones and get frustrated at not being able to handle fights properly but even the magic is easy to use.

 

[mrs quoad]

I'm going to add Data Wing to this thread: TouchArcade Game of the Week: 'Data Wing'

It's technically a cheat, bc it's free. But it's a free premium release - no IAPs, advertising, timers, grind requirements, dual currencies, or other freemium / f2p mechanics - and developed as a side project by a dev on another team. As TA note, there isn't even a "tip" button for folks who want to thank / remunerate the dev.

It's a tremendous little racing game, with properly interesting physics and a robust learning curve.

And a decent sense of humour!

 

[mrs quoad]

Darkest Dungeon just out: 'Darkest Dungeon' for iPad Has Finally Released on the App Store

I had been playing Ticket to Earth, which got a huge and long awaited content update yesterday; but my phone bricked it about an hour ago, so I guess that's a good reason to look at an iPad only game this week. Sort of lol.

 

[mrs quoad]

Darkest Dungeon just out: 'Darkest Dungeon' for iPad Has Finally Released on the App Store

^^^
This has all the hallmarks of a tremendous game. My first attempt had to be called off, bc I somehow disabled tooltips, and so sent my three main warriors off to the brothel, pub, and to prayer to reduce their panic (not realising this meant they couldn't fight for a week).

My second run has had two teams attempt two missions. Terror levels have been going through the roof, though, and I've got two chars who i currently can't control bc they're shitting themselves and spamming out random attacks.

Think I'm going to read up on some strategy :lol: It is proper deep - 4 chars from a roster of >9 at any one time, each of whom is from one of 16 classes with a random selection 4 of 8 fighting skills (and several camping skills that I haven't yet got to use), and a variety of idiosyncratic buffs and forms of terror / phobia. Every char is properly unique.

Standard char screen below; and the tutorial popup for corpses, bc lol.



Edit: I restarted again. Managing terror a lot better, but one of my novices went to a pub for stress relief and has now gone awol on a bender; whilst a crusader who I sent for a bit of meditation refuses to stop praying.



and the opening screen!

 

[mrs quoad]

Oh, hello, and Codemasters' F1 2016 has just gone on sale for £0.99.

Codemasters' Rapid Racer 'F1 2016' on Sale for $0.99, Its Lowest Price Ever

That's a pretty tremendous price for a 2-3gb racer by a top end developer. (I've been pretty hopeless at actually playing it; it's been on my device for yonks in the "really gotta get round to that" queue.)

 

[mrs quoad]

Put a torch in a malevolent sounding torch holder for lulz. Accidentally got transported to an interdimensional demon infested plane, where one of my posse was killed, and the other three went mad.

I do have a spare posse back at the hamlet, but I'm financially fucked so may restart.

This is awesome

 

[mrs quoad]

Sunless Sea on sale for £7.

The Fantastic 'Sunless Sea' Is on Sale, Has Never Been This Cheap

Really tremendous game. Kept me going pretty much nonstop for ages.

 

[mrs quoad]

SF IV Champion edition £2 ATM.

'Street Fighter IV Champion Edition' Is Discounted to Just $1.99 Right Now

Touch controls only. TBH, the screen controls are pretty damned good. And I considered buying a controller largely to improve said game.

However. That would've been almost exclusively bc I wanted to relive my teens. And the games I actually play these days are very different to the ones I enjoyed then.

(They're probably not, actually, but SF doesn't appeal as it once did).

 

[8den]

Put a torch in a malevolent sounding torch holder for lulz. Accidentally got transported to an interdimensional demon infested plane, where one of my posse was killed, and the other three went mad.

I do have a spare posse back at the hamlet, but I'm financially fucked so may restart.

This is awesome

View attachment 114347 View attachment 114349

I've bought this, and suspect it could become a massive time sink so haven't dived too deep.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I bought Always Sometimes Monsters the other day and even speaking as somebody who likes sentimental indie JRPGs like To The Moon, I played it for half an hour and couldn't be arsed any more. It doesn't help that the controls on mobile are awful, which slows the whole thing down even more, but it felt like it could have been speeded up by a factor of ten.

There are a bunch of indie games on sale for 99p on the front page of the App Store right now, some of which I have. I didn't get on with Device6; Year Walk is good though, particularly if you like Swedish forest mushroom trip simulators. I bought Sailors Dream as I'd heard good things but haven't played yet.

 

[mrs quoad]

All of those are the same dev, fwiw, FridgeMagnet

Device 6 remains on my phone, largely because I suspect it deserves more time and attention than I gave it when I first bought it.

Your comments move it slightly up my delete queue.

Edit: btw, there's talk of a content update or new release from gentle brothers on the toucharcade cat quest thread, fridgey. If you're still playing.

 

[mrs quoad]

I've bought this, and suspect it could become a massive time sink so haven't dived too deep.

It's fucking tremendous. tommers pointed out to me on the "what are you playing right now" thread that the point is to dispose of weaker chars and make best use of the constant inflow. That freed up my cash worries considerably, and I've literally just completed my first medium length mission. Raked it in!

Still l1, mind :lol:

 

[FridgeMagnet]

All of those are the same dev, fwiw, FridgeMagnet

Device 6 remains on my phone, largely because I suspect it deserves more time and attention than I gave it when I first bought it.

Your comments move it slightly up my delete queue.

It was pretty much the same for me until I got a new phone tbh. "Ooh this is fancy and people are raving about it yet for some reason I find it a bit annoying, maybe I need to just give it more time and effort".

One of the good things about iOS games though is that they're so cheap I don't feel the "sunk cost fallacy of games" effect so much, where you convince yourself that something must be good because you paid money for it. It's much easier to just say "eh whatever" and just not play it any more if you don't want to.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Oh, on the subject of sentimental indie games I really liked Open Sorcery, where you play a magical shell script and which is literally a twine game on a phone and wins no Apple design awards. It has good characters, some nice core mechanics, and is quite short but really replayable.

Open Sorcery on the App Store

 

[mrs quoad]

One of the good things about iOS games though is that they're so cheap I don't feel the "sunk cost fallacy of games" effect so much, where you convince yourself that something must be good because you paid money for it. It's much easier to just say "eh whatever" and just not play it any more if you don't want to.

My bigger problem is the "unsunk time" fallacy. There's sth like 70 games on my phone, and I believe every single one of them is excellent. Most have survived multiple culls, big and small, searching for another few mb. And many have had an hour or ten of play.

But... they've got to stay, bc I haven't given them their full desserts. I haven't completed them, and don't have a sense that they're played out - they remain as unfinished business.

Games like Ember or Cat Quest, I've played through - sorted! They can be deleted. But it's the "this game is better than the attention I've given it" games that linger on, on my phone.

(Though the sunk cost fallacy definitely kept a few final fantasy and slitherine games on beyond their sell by date!)

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Sailor's Dream is very pretty and cute and sentimental in that way that I like, but also clearly very resource-intensive because it's very short. (From personal experience I can imagine the devs sweating over, say, a room full of lights that you can touch and move about and which make noises when they hit each other, which I spent a few minutes playing with and moved on.) More of a visual novel type thing than a game. Apparently there is various extra content that pops up on other days, which I'm guessing I will never see. I don't mind paying for that though, particularly if it's 99p.

 

[mrs quoad]

Iron Marines, from the makers of Kingdom Rush, has been having a great deal of smoke blown up its arse since last night.

Mobile version of Starcraft, blah blah blah. Fiver.

TBH, I'm not (yet) impressed. Has some of the hallmarks of a rank f2p - dual currencies (no timers), buckets of IAPs (up to £99.99 LOL), and IAP only playable heroes. And watchable ads. For currency. Bleh. Oh. And did I mention the £4.99 "double value starter pack"? 48 hours only. Gahhhh.

It is not being harshed on TA as powerfully as one might expect, given that premium titles w/ IAP are usually ripped limb from limb by the forum community.

But. Yeah. I'm not yet smitten. Three tutorial missions, followed by the kind of ball-achingly difficult mass destruction of my troops that leads me to suspect an IAP paywall at some point in the future.

 

[tommers]

Iron Marines, from the makers of Kingdom Rush, has been having a great deal of smoke blown up its arse since last night.

I have been waiting for it for about a year. The developers did Kingdom Rush, which are the best tower defence games ever*. I'm willing to cut them a bit of slack. They had paid heroes in KR as well, which was a bit annoying but I still ended up buying my (then) 4 year old son a new hero every weekend as a treat.

I played it a bit on the train this morning. It's... OK so far. I'm not really a fan of RTS. The wonder of KR was the balance - be interesting to see if they get that right again. I like the different powers, cos it feels like you are conducting the action a little bit.

What other IAP is there? I've completed all of the KR games on the hardest setting without using any items so they probably aren't necessary to be honest.

*IMO

 

[mrs quoad]

What other IAP is there?

 

[tommers]

Yeah, the payable heroes are annoying. I think I added up the ones on Frontiers once and it came to about £50 if you bought them all. To be honest heroes in KR games are the only IAP I think I have ever purchased.

The other ones are to buy items aren't they? You get it anyway just by playing the game.

I agree with you though, games don't need this nonsense.

I'd be interested to know how much they make from that stuff rather than the cost of the game itself.

 

[mrs quoad]

The other ones are to buy items aren't they? You get it anyway just by playing the game.

This raises questions about game balance - is it balanced for the people paying £99.99, or those paying £0?

Tbf, early playing leads me to think this is a decent offering. The battles are tight. Strategy is meaningful. Unit strengths need to be carefully considered and, even on easy difficulty, it's pretty easy to fuck right up.

And I'm inclined to think that the IAP really would break it / make it too easy. (Any level doable. Just spam it with bombs. But who wants that?! Tbf, who wants any power up?! Weird.)

Main issue for me ATM is the sheer length of the levels - 20-25 mins, realistically, @ L6? Idk if it's auto saving, but that's one helluva time investment on mobile, and even more of a time investment if death means losing everything. Will be interested in seeing how that pans out!

 

[mrs quoad]

WHEN WARHAMMER quest 2 launches (OCTOBER 19TH), I will celebrate being 4 weeks closer to death than I am today, because Warhammer Quest 2 WILL HAVE LAUNCHED!!!!!1111eleven

The 1st one got well over 100hrs of gameplay out of me, across a couple of saves.

New 'Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times' Gameplay Trailer Released Ahead of October 19th Launch

Literally the only bad thing about it is that it was made in Guildford.

 

[mrs quoad]

Yeah. Ok. I am rayt enjoying iron thingies. Enough to have spent a couple of hours last night grinding tech upgrades, which I don't think can be bought via IAP (?) Not outside the one-level's-worth offered for a fiver in the starter pack, at least.

The reward system seems a bit unbalanced, mind. First extra mission pays €550 tech points for a five minute rescue mission. Second one pays €420 for a somewhat longer wave defence. Third pays €450 for more like a 10min multi wave nightmare.

 

[mrs quoad]

At the risk of sounding weird, I'm finding iron marines both deep and shallow. The tech tree is big. It takes a lot of time to fully unlock. The upgrades are meaningful, and impact on the game / unit selection in ways that - tbf - I still haven't fully grasped. The missions are generally pretty bloody tough, even on easy.

But... at the same time... it feels as if there hasn't been much thought given to mission generation. Lots of them sprawl, in ways that aren't particularly fair (e.g. ten mins in, you are suddenly presented with a new and massively different / insurmountable objective). Others seem quite arbitrary - defend this point for 7 mins!!! Defend this point for 10 mins!!! Feels a lot like they sort of CBA with level design, here's a way to keep you busy for 10 mins. Which is a helluva long time for a mobile game mission w/o save points.

And, yeah. Only 16 main missions. Which. Yeah. Isn't much. It'd be something if there were different rewards for different difficulties. But there aren't. Complete it on easy, and that's the game completed. Tech point and cash rewards also don't scale with mission difficulty or progress, so if I'm grinding, I could get 450 tech points for grinding out level 4 on easy (piece of piss, eyes closed) or about 500 for white knuckling l15 on veteran. Which. Yeah. Doesn't feel right.

Weirdly, it is really deep and complex in some apparent ways, just feels as if the devs have totally failed to capitalise on that complexity. Id even k what some of the units are, or why I'd bother to use them, or why I wouldn't just mech the fuck out of everything after saving up a bit more £££. (There are some advantages to using cheaper units - a coupla unique abilities - but they don't seem to be massive gamechangers when set against the massive fucking melee and rocket tank units.)

 

[mrs quoad]

Oh fuuuuuuuhhhhh

'XCOM: Enemy Within' Has Been Updated with 64-bit Compatibility

That's good news (!) Goodbye, weekend.

 

[tommers]

And, yeah. Only 16 main missions. Which. Yeah. Isn't much.

Id even k what some of the units are, or why I'd bother to use them, or why I wouldn't just mech the fuck out of everything after saving up a bit more £££.

I've just finished it on normal and going through again now on Impossible (not sure how far I will get to be honest). The replayability suffers a bit compared to KR cos it doesn't rate your victory - you either win or you don't. With KR you get stars, and the stars determine your upgrades - so there was an incentive to completing something perfectly and more for doing it on a harder mode. And harder versions were completely different levels, whereas this just seems to be the same level again but with more enemies or more difficult ones (maybe I'm wrong).

I also have a sneaking suspicion that third planet won't be free either. (Although the game was only a fiver which isn't a vast amount so I feel a bit mean moaning about it).

I thought the units were pretty well balanced to be honest. Snipers can hit from ages away, ignore armour and instakill. Engineers repair towers which is vital for the last level. Diplomats make other units invulnerable for a short time. The pink guys can instakill as well. Those missile mechs are rubbish at everything except flying enemies. And the melee ones just stand there without attacking things that are 2 feet away unless you tell them.

 

[mrs quoad]

I need an incentive to up the difficulty (and to replay), and there isn't one.

ATM i haven't completed the last level, or most of the optionals on world two. I've got stuck in a tech tree grinding loop, which isn't really very enjoyable, or doing me any favours. (As by far the most brainless way to grind tech points, ime, is by hammering the 2nd optional level.)

I feel as if this is a game that's a few steps short of being fully / really well implemented. Falls short at the ultimate "but why?" step.

 

[mrs quoad]

Unfortunately, I will have to keep on playing it, as all this week's new releases were shite.

Tbf, maybe I should go back to Jade Empire. It's hogging 3gb of space, but it's stayed in the "need to give this more time" camp ever since taking on its first (afire long and involved) battle tutorial. Or Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons. Which is similar. And which has mostly survived multiple culls bc iirc FridgeMagnet thotht or awesome.

 

[wtfftw]

Stunning visual puzzler 'The Witness' arrives on iOS