Tiny Dice Dungeon Review [iOS]

Tiny Dice Dungeon is a free RPG played with dice. You play as a guy with a big sword who captures monsters Pokemon style and then uses them to beat up other monsters. There is looting and upgrading, mainly of your all important dice as well as in app purchases.

The way the game is played is you roll a bunch of dice. You start out with a small amount of dice but as you level up you get more and you can choose from different types of dice. You get to keep rolling till you choose to attack, or you roll a one. The problem with the, 'rolling a one' mechanic, is that it happens quite often on a six sided dice. Now there are different type of dice, including dice that cannot roll a one but you must always have at least one basic dice that can. It's really friggin' annoying, especially if your whole team rolls a one on their first go and this does happen often.

Items are handled really oddly in this game too, you get a whole horde of these things before you even have any idea what they do. Items could be things like a comb, or a pocket cactus and they give your characters bonuses and often negative attributes. Introducing items after you have collected a bunch only the makes the game more confusing, as now you have to go back and look through all the shit you've collected. Each character can have up to four items and because each item is so vague as to what it is and what it does, it's a pain to equip them, especially because it may negatively effect your character as much as it does benefit it.

Tiny Dice Dungeon is going for a Pokemon type monster collection but it doesn't make collecting and managing your monsters easy, nor does it have particularly interesting monsters to collect. You are very limited on the number of slots you can have for monsters for starters which is very un-Pokemon-like and it does the whole combining monsters together for better stats thing which is always irritating. It just feels like you are constantly hitting the pay-wall in this area. I am not against having pay for features but not when they complicate and confuse the whole feeling of the game.

Tiny Dice Dungeon is a good idea but it doesn't deliver. The dice mechanic is a clever one but it will never beat rolling real dice. Secondly, the game feels too clunky and out of order. Rather than keep it simple, with obvious ideas about upgrading and pay options the, game confuses you with pocket cacti and other nonsense. Finally, it doesn't have the design nor high quality art that Pokemon does and although its 8-bit style is cute it doesn't make up for its other short comings 5.9/10.

[Edit - Due to feedback from a reader I had to lower the score on this game or rewrite the review. I chose the easy option and also perhaps the correct one.]

Warhammer Quest [iOS]

The Games Workshop board game, Warhammer Quest, has been out for sometime on iPhone and iPad but it has been released free to play for one week. Then it goes back to $6.49 AUD. Sad news for Android fans though, with no plans from Rodeo Games to launch it on your favourite little robot.

The game is played out on a map where you can choose quests, visit towns and take care of your merchant/leveling up needs. Then you will enter dungeon crawl mode, which looks almost exactly like the board game, with squares laid out and all combat taking place in a turn based manner. The story is explained to you through text and is moderately interesting. It's mostly standard RPG fair but if you like the Warhammer world, there is a little extra appeal here. You get quite a lot for free but if you want variety, you are going to have to pay for extras. New heroes, new enemies and new dungeons to play in, cost extra. This is fair enough and the characters you start with are quite interesting it's just the monsters and world you fight, that is extremely repetitive. You are probably gonna want to get a region pack if you love this game and I think they are fairly priced for what you get. Dungeon packs on the other hand seem like an experiment in seeing how much you can rip someone off. Given that this is aimed at Warhammer fanatics, the answer is a hell of a lot.

In general I find combat quite exciting but like a lot of Games Workshop's games it can be a bit erratic. One turn your warriors are carving up every enemy in their path and then the next they are missing everything, like a bunch of drunken school boys. The Winds of Magic are incredibly erratic, they can make your wizard unstoppable or useless, which makes it hard to level him up early on. At times, combat can be free flowing, which I find to be the most fun but often due to the cramped nature of the dungeons, the heroes end up walled together, with no way to move, just chomping away at the tide of enemies. I suppose it's designed like this but it happens a little too often and takes away from the feeling of choice you have as a player. Also the turn based movement throughout the dungeon can get a little grating, especially when you are led down the wrong path and have to backtrack.

Aesthetically the game is a little mixed. Animations range from well done, to immensely poor. Often enemies will float across screen without moving their limbs at all, though most of the combat animations are done nicely. The music is quite nice but it is very repetitive and it ultimately becomes grating. Again the monsters and world are a little too repetitive to really keep your interest for long. There are lots of minor niggles with the UI et cetera. Accessing your inventory by switching your phone or tablet to portrait, is a cool idea but there is something of with it's sensor code. Plus, playing on the iPhone makes accessing your inventory and abilities a pain in the arse, as it's just too small. Also you can't skip the enemy kill screen shown at the end of every dungeon.

At the admission price of free it is well worth it, I can see myself getting an expansion pack for it and having a lot of fun but having to buy the game and then pay the same again for an expansion, I would feel a little ripped off. It has gone on sale for a dollar previously and that seems reasonable too, there is a lot of questing here. You can go on endless quests if you like but they all end up feeling the same without adding some new content to it. It's a cool little game, it gives you that board game feeling and it works well on iOS. It just lets it self down in a bunch of small ways that ultimately add up 7.5/10.

Review of Sid Meier's Ace Patrol [iOS]

Turn based strategy games are perfect for phones and tablets. You can put them down at any moment and come back to them whenever you want but good quality ones seem to be sorely lacking. Can Sid Meir himself finally create something decent for the portable device?

Ace Patrol is set in World War I and puts you in command of a squadron of fighter planes. As your pilots achieve victories they level up and you are able to choose which new manoeuvres they will learn. As the war progresses you gain access to new planes and you are also given random upgrades to stick onto planes. The random upgrades seem a little forced and I think it could have been a lot more fun if you had earned some kind of in-game currency that let you choose what you upgraded.

The game is set out in a series of campaigns that make up the greater war effort, much like a tabletop wargame. Failing a mission does not mean you have lost the war and this adds a level of realism. For each battle, you get to choose between three missions to play and each campaign ends with a special mission that you must play. Missions include things like shooting down bombers, fighting an enemy ace one on one, escorting recon planes, plus many others. At first this seems like a lot of choice but as the war is divided into four campaigns and for each different nation you basically play the same thing, there isn't that much to do.

As one would expect in dogfighting, combat is all about manoeuvring. Your choices are represented by arrows laid out on the hexagonal grid, the more moves your pilot knows, the more choices you have. This can become a bit problematic on the iPhone, as with the smaller screen, pressing the correct button can be difficult. It is a lot of fun though as you try to outwit your opponent and trick them into a bad position. Other factors play into this as well such as anti-aircraft guns and cloud cover.

It's available for free though it's gonna cost you at least a dollar to get a full campaign. You also get the choice of two player via hotseat, or network, which is a pretty good inclusion. The problem with the game is that it still feels like a phone game. It lacks the depth of a PC strategy game, it's graphics are a bit hit and miss and the pictures of your characters are kind of creepy (why do they smile like that?). Yet if you were to buy everything it had to offer it would cost you around $15. This once would have seemed cheap but you can pick plenty of indie strategy titles for less; Reus for example is $10 for the PC. Other little things let it down too, such as bugs that display the wrong information and the confusing layout of in app-purchases. Perhaps most confusing is the receipt I received from iTunes that says I bought the All Nations pack, which does not include one of the nations. Although I'm sure some of these things will be ironed out, it is always best to make a good first impression.

The dogfighting, levelling up and the fact that you can get most of the game for only a dollar, make this a pretty solid title, it is just not the dream strategy game I have been waiting for, for my phone 8/10.

Games to Play Whilst You Wait for Your City to Earn Money in Sim City.

Monsters, Inc. Run [iOS] Another 2D run and jump game but it's pretty good, at first I thought it may be a bit hard for it's demographic but then I realised Monsters Inc. came out 12 years ago which is kind of scary really. The graphics, music and sound are all top notch but with the game focusing on just running, jumping and collecting power-ups it lacks a little depth 7.3/10.

Battle Monkey [Android, iOS] You are a monkey in some kind of ancient arena that spits out power-ups. You jump from tile-to-tile collecting them whilst trying to kill the other monkeys. It has single and multiplayer support and whilst the game isn't bad the random nature of the game means it lacks any real strategy 6.5/10.

The Walking Dead Assault [iOS] Is a tactical real time zombie blaster. It draws more inspiration from it's comic book roots than the show, with drawings popping up during battles. I had a lot of fun playing this on my iPhone but it is really much more suited for a tablet. At first I found it lacked much strategy but as the game progresses there are some interesting ways to overcome problems and complete bonus objectives 7.9/10.

Ghosbusters [iOS]

Ghostbusters by Beeline, sees you in charge of a team of new recruit ghostbusters. Your main mission is to penetrate the halls of a haunted skyscraper in the middle of the city. In order to do this you will need to gather slime to unlock the path ahead. All the usual freemium trappings are here but it is an interesting game.

The game is broken into three main gameplay areas. You have your base, where you set up your team, research and equip new items, the map from where you pick your battles and the final area, the battle screen. Battling against ghosts is done in real-time and you direct your team members by touching and dragging a path to where you want them to walk to, or what you want them to shoot at, or heal. It's a simple but effective method, however your team-mates often end up on top of each other and this can be quite confusing and irritating, as you try to get them to do the right thing.The battles can be rewarding though and when you do win a difficult battle you know it was due to your skill. Lord knows the AI does it's best not to help.

One of the most disappointing things about the game is that it costs you $5.49 just to buy in and you don't get very much for that. I think one dollar would be plenty and we've already seen that cheaper games sell better than do the dearer ones. The game did unexpectedly crash on me twice and there are some general graphics bugs like ghosts not being pulled into the trap and instead wandering around.

What you do get in this game is the fun of playing a ghostbuster. It has the music like you remember and the original members of the team are available for purchase. It's cool to research new equipment and items but all of these things take quite a lot of time. Unless you are willing to spend a lot of money on this game it is the kind of title that you play for a bit and then put down and move on to something else.

Ghostbusters is really for the fans, if you're not interested in the series the little niggles in the game will probably stop you from playing. Even the fans probably won't play it for long but as it's free it's well worth a look 7/10.

Stick Cricket [Android, iOS, Flash]

Stick Cricket exists in many incarnations on the phone and as a browser based flash game. It has been around for sometime but has recently been updated to fit the iPhone 5 screen. A relatively simple game, you just bat and that is all but it's simplicity is part of the fun.

On the phone, the free game gets you the Academy to practice, All Star Slog limited to 5 overs, some but not all of the World Domination matches and two player mode (but only if it is hosted by a Pro Pack owner). Pretty decent for free, though it does come with the added "cost" of ads. The Premier League pack will get you an extra tournament for AU $0.99 and the Pro Pack will unlock all of World Domination games, extra All Star Slog games, the ability to host your own two player games and remove ads. for AU $2.99. I think it's a bit tight that the dollar doesn't get rid of the ads., though having said that, three dollars isn't exactly a lot of money.

If you play it in your browser however, you get all kinds of games for free, obviously with ads. and you also get 3 button controls. Whereas the phones only have a simple two button interface, the browser version adds block/drive, which mixes it up a little. The browser version is very slow to load and at least for me, mostly played blank ads. which was a little boring.

So what are you doing in this game? Basically trying to crack as many sixes as you can. It boils down to a very simple timing game, yet somehow it comes across as being a bit of a simulation of cricket. It lacks a lot of the complexity of other cricket games, with no bowling or fielding but who cares? This is just about quickly blasting runs. There isn't a huge amount of depth to this game, there are about 6 different bowlers that you will face and they follow patterns due to their style, however I find it a great way to spend the time whilst you are waiting for a rained out match to come back on and subsequently be cancelled.

Stick Cricket has some problems, such as a bug that won't let you access the menu, though this is intermittent and hardly game breaking and it's general lack of depth but it makes up for it with it's greatest strength which is that it is quite challenging in an addictive way. If you don't like cricket you won't love this, oh no, but for those who do it's worth a bash 7.7/10.

Epoch [iOS, Android]

Epoch is an Australian made game by Uppercut Games utilising the Unreal Engine. Set in an apocalyptic future you play as a robot who is charged with guarding a princess and the game plays out much like a shooter version of Infinity Blade.

Gameplay-wise the game is a cover shooter. It sees you hiding behind the refuse of a destroyed world, rolling and backflipping your way to save the princess. To fire your weapon you just select which enemy to target and it automatically fires for you. This system actually works quite well and is a lot more fun than it sounds. You also get missiles and grenades to make the game more exciting plus an option of which auxiliary device to take, such as a healing device, a device that makes your shots more accurate or even one that slows down time. Defeating a level will give you experience, money and an upgrade torn from your vanquished foes. There is a huge amount of upgrades to choose from and of course you can buy extra in game money through micro-transactions. I still dislike this method as I think that it makes the upgrades harder to get than they should be and the game is costing you $2.99 to start with. Having said that though the upgrades are quite cool and varied and Uppercut Games have already added extra content to the game.

Graphically the game is everything you would expect from the Unreal Engine, detailed high res polygons dancing across your screen. This game would run great on any dual core machine but on my original iphone 4 on hard difficulty and above, the game chugs. There is just too much action on screen. I can't imagine this game running very well on the 3GS either.

It's quite a cool game and I enjoy the combat more than the Infinity Blade system but it's not without it's problems. Overall the game is too short and sees you repeating areas just with a harder difficulty, again something borrowed from Infinity Blade. It's gonna chug on anything other than a dual CPU system when you get into the harder difficulties but there is plenty of fun to be had, plus it's an Australian made game. I bought it on Australia day for $0.99 and at that price it is hard not to recommend 8/10.

Cover Orange [iOS]

Cover Orange has been described as Angry Birds in reverse and it is quite a fitting description. Instead of knocking down walls and objects, you build them to protect your oranges. The game has it's origins as a flash game which is still available to play for free online, so if you don't have an iOS device you don't have to miss out.

The aim of the game is to stop the evil cloud from raining upon your oranges. The game features a huge number of levels and for the most part you are smashing through these levels quite easily. Every now and then a level comes a long that is a bit trickier and keeps you on your toes. At first this difficulty spike seemed a little arbitrary but I quite liked it as you felt like you were getting a lot accomplished without feeling like you weren't challenged. The level designs can be quite elaborate though at times you can simply bypass what you are meant to do and just stick a couple of blocks on top of your orange and away you go.

Artistically the game is fairly terrible. It has some of the worst sounds and music in any game I have ever played. The graphics are rudimentary but get the job done. I suppose some of these things can be overlooked because it is aimed at children who either don't care, or perhaps even like the terrible sounds etc. in the game.

It's all about the gameplay for this game and I think you'll agree once you've played through your first 50 levels you'll wonder if you can ever put this game down 9/10.

One Sentence Reviews

Super Jump World [iOS] Shameless rip-off of the Mario games that lacks the finesse of the original series 4/10.

Sword & Sworcery EP [iOS] One of the most overrated games in history, if you are looking for a good album, I recommend Making Mirrors by Gotye 6/10.

Restaurant Story [iOS] If Stalin were alive today he would erase the creators of this game from history 2/10.

One Sentence Reviews

Lego Minifigures [iOS] - Teach your kids how to gamble in this unrewarding pokey game; for die hard Lego fans only 2/10.

Turbo Grafx [iOS] You can play the demos for free but they expect you to pay for the full untranslated versions -1.69/10

Dictionary! [iOS] Does what it says on the tin and is free but has ads, also unneccesary exlamation marks 7/10.

Infinity Blade [iOS]

Could it be that all of those last  few lame posts were really a build up to this review? Perhaps, perhaps. Infinity Blade, the tech demo of the Unreal Engine for iOS, is one of the most talked about games on any hand held device but does it live up to the hype?