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.

Creating Music for a phone game.

So a friend and I are currently developing a game for the iPhone and hopefully, if it receives even modest success, Android too. It is going to take a long time for us to finish this project as we are only doing it in our spare time, so I won't go into too much detail just yet. What I want to talk about now is a song I have recently created for it. If you just want to hear the song, scroll down to the bottom.

The Setup

iMac mid 2011
Logic Pro 9.1.8
MOTU 828mkII A/D
Newer Technology miniStack v3 (explained below)

The Instruments
Korg Microkey 25 key USB keyboard
Roland TD 15

The Cables
1x (Extra Long) Firewire 400
1x MIDI
1x USB, type A to type B
1x Firewire 800 (explained below)

The Music Creation Process

It's hard for me to say how I create music, because I don't think I really have a technique per se, it's more that I just blurt something out and then I begin working with the mess I've created. This whole song began because I was testing out a Christmas present, the Korg Microkey. I just wanted to have some fun with it and out came this riff. I used some sneaky short cuts to help me create this song. There is the obvious copy and paste of sections but also copying and pasting sections into different instruments to help me get an idea of the sound. Then I would take out unneeded notes, lengthen them or move them as necessary. Once I had finished using the keyboard and editing notes in the piano roll I moved onto the drumkit.

The Problems

Some of you may notice straight off the bat that the 828mkII uses firewire 400 and the mid 2011 iMac only has firewire 800. So to fix this, I used my powered portable hard-drive/hub, which handled all my connection issues. Next we come to the latency issue. I've never really noticed any latency issues with anything but drums in Logic and of course I wanted to record some drums, via MIDI in this project. I switched on Low Latency Mode in the options, which did nothing. So I Googled and read manuals and tweaked this and that to no avail. Turns out you have to switch the button in the arrange window, the option in settings does nothing. I guess it's a feature.

Mix for Mono

The first thing I noticed about my mix was that it sounded terrible through the tiny iPhone mono speaker. The combination of a stereo mix and the heavy bass sounds of Logics instruments meant I was getting some problems with sound going out of phase. To correct this I changed to a monophonic mix and I tweaked every sound I used. Mainly I needed to take out the bass, pretty heavily but on some sounds I had to cut some high frequency and adjust their volume/compression levels. After nine mixes I was happy to say it was listenable on that tiny iPhone speaker.

Read Before Listening: A Warning

Because Google are not the masters of the internet we thought them to be, mp3s are quite difficult to load into Blogger, so I have uploaded a video instead. I decided to use some footage I had taken with my iPhone at MONA and a gig I went to.

Warning: The video contains strobe lighting that may be dangerous for some viewers. Also it is of such poor quality it is recommended that you close your eyes and simply enjoy the song.

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

Theme Park [iOS] The classic original reimagined by EA, i.e. soulless, money-grubbing and without the fun 4/10.

Triple Town [iOS] This game is great, however it is labeled as free when really it costs $4.49, which is what kills it 7/10.

Hero Academy [iOS] It's a cool game idea but it's really not worth waiting this long to take a turn 6/10.

Tiny Wings [iOS]

There has not been a game so obsessed with curves since Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, however, in this case it is in a completely innocent way. You play as a bird with, you guessed it, tiny wings and you must use hills as ramps to launch you into the air. All you have to do is touch the screen when you want the bird to stop flapping its wings and basically become heavy so you can slide down a hill, then when you are going up you release your finger and let the bird start flapping again. It is quite simple but it requires a lot of concentration and the game keeps you sucked in by the nest mechanic. The higher level nest you have the more points you earn but in order to to get a new nest you have to complete a set of objectives. Some objectives are as simple as fly to a certain number island, which is something you are doing anyway but they can be more complicated such as achieve fever mode five times in a run and they are made all the more difficult by the fact that you are in a race against night time. As soon as night hits your bird falls asleep and you must start all over again, flying particularly fast however lets you push back the night and enables you to keep going.

The game's style is very cutesy and if you don't like cute games this is not the game for you. Part of the charm is the cute noises the bird makes and the unrealistic (but cute) size of its wings. The cute style hides the addictive nature of the gameplay which will have you playing for hours. The game could have been made more addictive if the coins you collected did more than just add points to your score. An upgrade store would have been very cool.

It's not without it's problems though. The game gets a bit of slowdown when you cross over an island which seems very odd for such a graphically and physically simple game. When game centre boots up it will cause slowdown as well and sometimes you will swear you did a perfect slide on a hill and it will punish you, other times you will mess it up and be rewarded. Some of these have received work in patches but it never really completely resolved them.

All in all it is a great game and one that is worth challenging your friends to. It does have some problems but they are not game breaking and the simple fun that you get from it is well worth it 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.

Temple Run

Run away from monkeys! You've stolen their idol! Presumably. That sums up Temple Run pretty well. In this game you'll be swiping left and right, up and down, all whilst using those annoying tilt controls.

The controls aren't that bad although the whole tilt mechanic will always remain a bad choice. Do you want to get comfortable whilst playing a game? Well no, you can't, coz now your phone is tilted. In general the controls are actually quite responsive and they even give you a little bit of room for error, at least early on. One thing that did bug me though was there were a number of times where I went to swipe to the right and the game thought I was trying to jump to my doom. Which I promptly did.

The game features a store and here you can get all sorts of upgrades using the coins you collected in game (or purchased of course). This is truly the hook of the game, sure what you are doing is repetitive but you are doing it for a goal. To upgrade that magnet that you stuck to your arse! Or to go invisible which lets you pass through things (someone should really explain the concept of invisibility to these guys) and so on. As well as a store, Temple Run has objectives, which increase your bonus multiplier as well as act as achievements.

The graphics are really quite good for a game of this genre. No 2D stuff here, it is all chunky 3D polygons which are nicely textured and certainly good enough for a game that happens at high speed.

Although it is quite a simple game, it has a lot of addictive qualities and the simplicity coupled with the more complex elements of the store and objectives make this game something worth playing 8/10.

One Sentence Review

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer [PC] This game is just like real war and just like in real war, you are in danger of losing your life 10/10.


Battlefield 3 Singleplayer [PC] Press space to enjoy cutscene 7.5/10.


iGun Pro [iOS] Shoot guns, feel like a pro, who shoots fake guns off of an iPhone and doesn't take the time to edit the wiki articles he rips off 6/10.

Squids [iOS]

Squids is a turn based RPG for the iPhone with versions for the iPad, Android, Mac & PC platforms planned. Squids is a little different from your average turn based RPG, as it incorporates an action element, in that you drag and fling your squids to attack.

There are four classes of squid: scouts, who have the ability to dash, healers who can heal, shooters who get to fire a long range shot and troopers who have a radius attack dealing damage to all foes in a circle. The classes are simple, yet varied enough to keep the game fun and interesting. You also earn bonus pearls (the in game currency) for doing things like bouncing off a wall then hitting an enemy and hitting multiple enemies etc.

Graphically the game looks great. It has a cutesy style that blends 2D and 3D together.  When your characters are not in the action they will watch little sprites (the magical kind) fly past them or perhaps yawn impatiently. Little animations are taking place all the time for example, the seaweed and starfish will sway lightly in the currents.

The game is currently selling for AU$0.99 and Game Bakers are claiming that this is 50% off. This is really the price point it should be at when you consider the game is also using micro-transactions. You can buy extra in game pearls which are used to level up your characters and purchase items. You can also pay to buy a fish that grants you a multiplier on the amount of pearls you get per level, which comes in at AU$0.99 on its own. As you can tell this means you are a little shorter on pearls than you would like to be. This is a little ridiculous and although it's not enough to detract from the rest of the game, it does bring it down a notch.

The game is still plenty of fun and with the extra halloween content that was brought in (some of which is quite difficult) it is a hard title to skip. It blends together turn based and action, beautiful graphics with great animation, silliness with an interesting (though clichéd) plot and really brings out a winner 9/10.