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Tag: Card, Board, & MahJong

  • Doodle Kingdom Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    Doodle Kingdom Review

    By

    After several games and several million downloads under their belt, JoyBits has returned with their first new game in the Doodle series in over two years. The original Doodle God staked its claim in the gaming world by having players combine two different elements in order to create a third, and then using that third to create a fourth, and so on until a rich and resource-filled world materialized right before their very eyes. While Doodle Kingdom builds upon this tried and true formula with a fresh thematic twist, the game also tries a few new things to usher in this latest era in the Doodle universe as well.This time around, there are an initial 116 elements to discover across 13 different categories, and if you're a fan of any Doodle game before it, then the odds are you'll feel right at home in this one. Things start out simple enough, with your typical "Human + Forest = Berries and Lumber" equations, until the main draw of Doodle Kingdom begins to kick in: the medieval fantasy elements! Given its name, the game has an inherently medieval theme, and a lot of the elements you'll discover fit into this mold perfectly: from Golems and Dwarves, to Catapults and Forges, to even Unicorns and a Pegasus. It's certainly a breath of fresh air for the game and the series, and one that really ramps up the challenge by forcing you to push your imagination to its limit (related: if anyone knows what the heck a Unicorn can be combined with, you know where to reach me)."Luckily, Doodle Kingdom implements a fairly attractive hint system so you're never stuck for too long, with lots of good incentives to spend currency on more of these nudges in the right direction, but never any hard requirements to do so. There are three different forms of hints you can choose from in the main game: ones that reveal an element that can be created from your existing ones; another that shows two categories which currently have an undiscovered reaction between them; and a third which automatically makes a random elemental pairing for you. Each one has its own addicting benefits, and daily rewards for playing will keep your pockets full of currency to purchase more by the bundle.
  • X-Men: Battle of the Atom Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    X-Men: Battle of the Atom Review

    By

    X-Men: Battle of the Atom is a new free-to-play card battle game that lets you face off against the forces of evil at the head of a famous band of mutant superheroes including Scotius Summerisle, Stepford Cuckoos, the Glob, Cipher, and Cypher. Wait, who?If you're a casual X-Men fan - you enjoyed the movies, maybe read a few trade paperbacks - then the first thing to know about Battle of the Atom is that it's probably not the X-Men you X-pect. As a tie-in with the "Battle of the Atom" comic crossover that began in the fall of 2013, the mobile game features "hundreds of characters spanning 50 years of X-Men history," according to the App Store description. To fill a roster that broad, Aeria Mobile brought in just about everyone who ever appeared in a mutant comic book, from past, present, future, and even alternate worlds."The net result is a menagerie that might be familiar to die-hard fans of the franchise but is largely baffling for anyone who thinks of Thunderbird or Northstar as "exotic" X-Men. This would be fine if it was actually a good CCG, but that's the real problem with Battle of the Atom: It isn't. It is, in a word, boring, and while that may be at least in part due to the cookie-cutter nature of the CCG genre, there's simply nothing about this one that makes it stand out from the crowd.All the usual CCG elements are here: Battle enemies by tapping the screen, collect points to recruit new cards, enhance and evolve cards to make them stronger, build a powerful deck, square off against your fellow players and, when your stamina runs out (which will happen relatively quickly at higher levels), stop playing until it recharges or fork over some money to make it happen immediately. But it's unengaging and flat, and comes off feeling like a minimal-effort tie-in mandated by the marketing department and farmed out to the lowest bidder.
  • Fighting Fantasy: Island of the Lizard King Review
    Reviews
    • Android
    • iOS
    Fighting Fantasy: Island of the Lizard King Review

    By

    The final paragraphs of the gamebook Island of the Lizard King contain a scene I can still remember clearly today, nearly thirty years after I first read it. It stamped itself on my ten-year old brain because it seemed so hideous at the time. I'm made of sterner stuff today, and was positively anticipating re-living those climatic moments on my iPad.As a digital gamebook, you'll spend most of the time reading paragraphs of text and then being presented with a series of possible choices at the end. In this way, you work your own chosen path through a work of fiction. Occasionally you'll be called on to fight creatures or test one of your three statistics, all mediated by dice rolls with a slick and satisfying system.As the title suggests, the plot of this tale sees you travelling to a tropical island to search for, and hopefully dispatch, a deranged lizardman who's been terrorizing local populations with slave raids. 
  • Quarriors Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Quarriors Review

    By

    If, like me, you've never played a physical dice-building game before, then Quarriors should be the right game for you. It's not very complicated. You roll your dice, gather your resources, and attack with your monsters while your enemies defend. Sometimes you buy monsters or spells and build up a whole virtual dice bag of possibilities.Unfortunately, that last paragraph is far and away a better tutorial than the one the game provides. In Quarriors, the actual tutorial is a dizzying info dump of pop-up windows and flavor terms with nary a layman's interpretation to guide you. It will teach you to collect "quiddity" to capture monsters from the "wilds" so you can accrue "glory;" just don't expect a breakdown of what any of that means, or for any of it to be eased into your game organically. If you miss the tutorial blast at the top of your first round, you can dig through a series of static PDFs in the help section for a dictionary of terms and turn orders, but that's hardly optimal. Quarriors does not make a good first impression."Lucky for the developers, then, that the game is so addictive. Once you parse the learning curve, the core mechanics are surprisingly simple - and more importantly, incredibly fun. You can get through an entire match in a few minutes if you play with other humans in the room, or against the game's AI. Online matches take longer, being asynchronous, and unfortunately share the offline mode's drought of information. It took me a few moments to even realize online play was asynchronous.
  • The Gate Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    The Gate Review

    By

    I was disappointed to discover that in spite of all the pre-release promotion, The Gate has about as much to do with real-time strategy as Family Feud, and is in fact a straight-up collectible card battle game. But as I delved into it, I was also elated to learn that it's a really, really good CCG, quite possibly the best one I've played since I broke free of my Rage of Bahamut-habit."Combines Real Time Strategy and Training mechanics," the App Store entry for The Gate promises, and for a brief while I bought into it. Passing through the Gate into a hellish underworld filled with demons and wickedness, your only hope is to fight - and by fighting, your hope is sustained. As you move ever deeper into this sulphuric underworld, you'll acquire "Disciples" who you can train, upgrade, and evolve, and who will do battle on your behalf against both computer-controlled opponents and the forces of your fellow players. This is where the RTS component comes into play, as instead of simply a static, numbers-versus-numbers contest, battles are rendered entirely in 3D and filled with impressive visual effects."You move your characters by tapping and then dragging to where you want them to go, and unleash their skills in battle by tapping on icons at the top of the screen. To heal them, simply tap your healer - everybody has one - and then drag to the character in need. It's simple and reasonably intuitive, although the lack of a zoom control makes it difficult to select a Disciple in the heat of a crowded battle.But it's also almost entirely unnecessary thanks to the "auto" function that will control the demons in your army with a good degree of competence. It may not be quite as effective as handling the situation personally, especially at higher levels, but the "fire and forget" convenience is handy; and if you don't like how things are going, you can turn it off and assume direct control of the action at any time.
  • The Gate Walkthrough
    Walkthroughs
    • iOS
    The Gate Walkthrough

    By

    The Gate is an action role playing game from Spicy Horse Games and Mobage in which you will need to take down the opposing demonic armies that will be in your path. You'll need to strengthen your army by upgrading their skills, taking on Raids and Arena Battles, and battling Bosses that will get in your way. With Gamezebo's Quick Start Guide, you'll have all of the tips, tricks, and walkthroughs you'll need to stay ahead of the game."
  • Space Hulk Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Space Hulk Review

    By

    Sci-fi tactical combat affair Space Hulk is widely acclaimed as one of the most atmospheric board games ever made. It's also commonly recognized as begging for the video game treatment, and yet in the 25 years since its release, all we had were some live-action titles and fan homages. The latest developer to tackle the licence is Full Control, and after a buggy PC release, the game has come to mobile.The action is set amongst the tight corridors and tiny rooms of a derelict spacecraft, where heavily armed Space Marines square off against limitless hordes of slavering alien horrors called Genestealers.  There's a series of missions with varied objectives like retrieving data collection devices or burning strategically important terrain points."Mechanically, it's mostly classic turn-by-turn, action point based tactics: nothing inspirational there. But there are two features that catapult the game into classic status.First, a breathtakingly simple double whammy of hidden information: the Genestealers are never sure how many action points the Marines have, and the Marines are never sure how many Genestealers are on the map.Second is the twisty, claustrophobic nature of the maps. Rather than the open worlds smattered with scenery typical of the genre, Space Hulk takes place in spidery networks of tiny rooms interconnected with one-space wide corridors, dismal with choke points and ambush sites.
  • Space Hulk Walkthrough
    Walkthroughs
    • iOS
    • PC
    Space Hulk Walkthrough

    By

    Space Hulk is a turn-based strategy game created by Full Control. Players take control of a space marine terminator squad aboard the titular "space hulk" to fend off hordes of alien infiltrators called genestealers. Gamezebo's quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game."