PT Guides: Faeria 101 - Deck-Building & Themes

Welcome back to the short strategy series, Faeria 101! Last week, we talked about how to best use the board to your advantage. Today, we’re here to talk about deck building. Specifically, building around a theme. Themes in card games can take on a few different faces, but today we'll be focusing around a few basic keywords that provide benefits and opportunities for combos.

Your Theme Is Your Strength

Faeria has a wide array of cards, and it can be hard to know where to start when you want to build a new deck. The __game provides some useful templates that can be unlocked by advancing in solo mode, but what do you do if you haven’t gotten those cards? What if you want to build your own deck from scratch?

The most important thing to remember when building a deck is your theme. Sure, you can throw all of the most powerful cards you opened into a deck and play that, but chances are you can have a stronger deck if all your cards are working toward the same goal, supporting each other.

There are a lot of different themes you can build around, but today I want to concentrate on some of the more obvious themes—and the key cards within them—you can build around. As you improve within the game, you can discover some of the more complex and trickier to play themes. Remember, complex doesn’t always mean better.

Last Words/Gift

This deck takes advantage of the keyword mechanics Last Words and Gift on cheap creatures that are then sacrificed to other effects to quickly gain an advantage over the opponent, usually by creating giant creatures to replace those that died. The strongest colours for this deck is probably green and yellow, but there are a few cards in blue (gain mana/transform creatures) and red (deal damage) that can work in the theme. No matter how you choose to build it, I’d strongly recommend green as a starting point since it has the most creatures for this theme.

Game Plan: Play cards like Voice of Hunger, Death Walker, and Shaytan Assassin to sacrifice cheap creatures like Elderwood Hermit or Bloomsprite to gain an advantage. If that doesn’t win the game, a late Soul Eater or Spirit of Rebirth should finish the job.

Green cards to consider:
Feed the Forest
Voice of Hunger
Soul Eater
Eredon, Voice of All
Bloomsprite
Elderwood Hermit
Spirit of Rebirth
Any Tiki card

Yellow cards to consider:
Demon Wrangler
Death Walker
Shaytan Assassin

Red cards to consider:
Bomb Slinger
Blazing Salamander

Blue cards to consider:
Failed Experiment
Stormspawn
Aurora, Myth Maker
Spring Mochi

Neutral cards to consider:
Village Elder
Plague Bearer

This is a sacrifice deck supported with blue. Here’s a competitive green and yellow deck.

Combat

This deck takes advantage of the keyword mechanic Combat on creatures—as well as other creatures that give you a bonus when attacking—to gain an advantage over the opponent. This deck has multiple variations, but the strongest is probably an aggressive yellow and red deck. Blue has very little to offer this type of deck. I’ve included a few cards that could help, but you’re better off skipping it altogether. Green doesn’t have a lot to add in terms of actual combat abilities, but is a great addition if you want to boost your creature’s health to keep them alive.

Game Plan: Play lots of creatures with combat abilities, keep them alive for as long as possible, and use their abilities to slowly beat down your opponent. The more times your creatures can attack, the better off you are.

Green cards to consider:
Ruunin’s Messenger
Any card that boosts your creatures’ health

Yellow cards to consider:
Khalim, Sky Prodigy
Zealous Crusader
Oradrim Sagittarius
Oradrim Monk
Flash Wind

Red cards to consider:
Gift of Steel
Herald of War
Underground Brigand
Flame Thrower
Grim Guard
Seifer, Blood Tyrant
Scourgeflame Specter

Blue cards to consider:
Aurora, Myth Maker
Frogify

Neutral cards to consider:
King’s Guard
Tax Collector

This is a basic aggressive red combat deck, and here’s a powerful red and yellow version.

Ramp

This deck attempts to get additional special lands and mana via spells and creatures before laying down powerful creatures to finish the game. This is most powerful as a green and blue deck, but replacing blue with yellow will allow you to build a more aggressive version of the theme. Red has some great cards to help finish the game, but little to help you get extra lands or mana.

Game Plan: Play early spells that create special lands, then play a game-ending creature.

Green cards to consider:
Primeval Colossus
Apex Predator
Oak Father
Seed Sower
Wood Elemental
Wild Growth
Earthcraft

Yellow cards to consider:
Khalim’s Prayer
Soul Pact
Oradrim Sagittarius
Lord of the Wastes
Azarai, Wrath of the Desert

Red cards to consider:
Crackthorn Beast
Garudan, Heart of the Mountain
Hellfire
Fire Elemental

Blue cards to consider:
Forbidden Library
Spring Mochi
Water Elemental
Windfall

Neutral cards to consider:
Cartographer
Magda, Queen of Meroval

This is a basic green and blue version of a ramp deck. Here’s a crazy version utilising Three Wishes.

These are three themes you can build around and find reasonable success with, although there are many others with slightly more complex combos that I’ve also seen do well. Don’t be afraid to experiment; just remember the more your cards work together, the stronger your deck can be!

Got any other decklists or keyword combos you want to share? Let us know in the comments below! The final article in this initial series will launch same time next - please do give us your feedback on these articles, as it helps us determine what direction we go with things like this.

Review: The Elder Scrolls: Legends

You can never have too many collectible-card games, right? Ok, no…that's not right. The CCG market may be huge but it won't support every __game that comes in search of a piece of the pie. It is accurate, however, to say that you can never have too many quality CCGs. Not everybody likes Hearthstone, after all, and it is good to have alternatives. The Elder Scrolls: Legends recently launched on PC and iPad—with releases for Mac, Android tablets, and phones on the way—and aims to be that alternative. It has a lot going for it. Legends is set in a known universe and filled with characters and places that will be familiar to fans of games like Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. It's backed by Bethesda, a top-tier gaming company, and developed by Dire Wolf Digital makers of the Eternal card __game and home to esteemed Magic: The Gathering player, hall-of-famer, streamer, and personality Luis Scott-Vargas.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends, like most CCGs, is free-to-play and as such this is going to be less of your standard game review. You can easily try it and get some quick impressions that will doubtlessly be more valuable to you than anything I can say here. Instead, my intent is to cover what differentiates Legends from its competition and therefore makes it worth your time to try, how viable it is to play without paying, and what it takes to get to a reasonably competitive deck.

What’s Different

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That must have been a mantra bandied about by Bethesda and Dire Wolf when designing The Elder Scrolls: Legends. The game feels a lot like playing Magic: The Gathering, more so than Hearthstone and certainly more than Faeria, and this is a good thing. Legends has the same "hey this is cool" factor that has sucked so many people into Magic over the decades. You'd play half a game of Magic and be hooked and out buying packs at your local game store the next day. It appealed to casual players who could throw together a deck to have fun right up through the super competitive crowd who like to tune decks based on metagame trends and revel in identifying and executing the correct line of play in any situation. Legends has all of this going for it as well.

Unlike Magic, however, Legends was designed for digital and is not burdened by the stack, passing priority, or tying digital cards to paper ones. It is a much smoother digital experience. It differentiates itself from Hearthstone, the king of the digital CCG world, in several important ways as well. First, the battlefield is split into two lanes. When you cast creatures, and some other spells, you must pick a lane. Creatures can only attack foes in their own lane. Adding to this, the right lane is called the "shadow" lane. Creatures cast there cannot be attacked by opposing creatures for one turn, though they can be the target of spells and creature-based abilities. So if you have a creature you'd really like to survive until your next turn, the shadow lane is your best bet. Overall, the double-lane battlefield creates a layer of decision making that is fun and compelling without bogging the game down in unnecessary complexity. It adds a lot more to the game than I expected going in.

Another difference is life-loss milestones, called runes, and prophecy cards. In Legends you start with thirty life. Every five life you lose (so at 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5 life) a rune shatters and you draw a card. If that card has the "Prophecy" keyword you can play it for free. This is huge. Not only do you gain cards to help dig yourself out of what is likely a bad board state, but you also might get to play those cards instantly and for free. It cuts the other way as well, if you're in the lead pulling a strong Prophecy card can be the nail in the coffin. There are a great many cards you'd love to see come up as a Prophecy. Cast Out lets you unsummon a creature (ideally a big expensive one that hasn't attacked yet), Lightning Bolt deals 4 damage (I've won games targeting my opponent off of a prophetic bolt), Healing Potion allows you to gain 5 health, Piercing Javelin destroys a creature, Ransack deals 3 damage and gains you 3 health, and Midnight Sweep summons a creature with Guard into each lane (you must attack creatures with Guard, same as Taunt in Hearthstone). As you can no doubt tell, runes are a major tactical component of the game and gives rise to many interesting tactical and deck building considerations.

A third big difference from Hearthstone is the minimum constructed deck size of fifty cards. This is much closer to the sixty cards of Magic than the thirty of Hearthstone and opens up some more interesting deck design space. In Hearthstone decks looking to be consistent will often just figure out the best ten playsets of cards to include, legendary singletons notwithstanding, but in Legends there's an opportunity to include several more playsets and therefore pursue different themes. Cards are organized into attributes—Agility, Endurance, Intelligence, Strength, and Willpower—rather than color and each attribute has its own identity. Intelligence features a lot of direct damage and favors trickery over brute force, for example, and Endurance cards are meant to build up your mana reserves, while Strength features creatures that hit for a ton but are relatively easy to kill. When you build a deck you pick a class, which is able to use two attributes. A Mage is Intelligence and Willpower and an Archer is Agility and Strength, for example. Calling them classes sounds like Hearthstone but it plays out much like the Magic color wheel without being a direct copy of it. The attributes and classes support a lot of different playstyles and provide lots of deck building opportunities despite what is still a relatively small card pool.

The Freemium Path

Time to address the usual free-to-play CCG question: "Can I play for free or is the game pay-to-win?" Short answer is that you can play for free and reliably build up a collection. As with any CCG, it's a matter of patience. Playing through the tutorial and finishing up Story mode provides a bunch of cards and other rewards to get you started. You level up as you go and leveling provides cards, gold, and other goodies throughout your time in the game.

Elder Scrolls: Legends also has the usual daily quest feature, worth 40 to 50 gold each. A pack is 100 gold so you can earn one pack every couple days from questing alone. Quests can be fulfilled in either Play mode (casual or competitive games against other players) or the Arena draft (both solo and against other players). Most are not focused on winning, but things like playing creatures, equipping items, and the like. This makes it possible to complete them even with less competitive decks. Taking on other players in Play mode also yields 15-35 gold and a card (with a slight chance at scoring a pack) for every three victories which can speed up the pack-acquisition rate.

Legends also awards soul gems (dust) for playing against the AI in Practice mode. There are three levels of difficulty that earn an increasing amount of gems per victory: Novice (5), Adept (10), and Expert (15). It sounds like you can earn up to 300 gems a day this way, though I didn't grind that much to confirm. To put that in context, a common card costs 50 gems to craft, rares are 100, epics are 400, and legendary cards cost 1200 gems to craft. It's a slow-and-steady route to be sure, but Practice mode is also a good way to quickly test and tune new decks.

Last but not least is Arena play. Arena is Legends' draft mode and comes in both solo (AI) and versus (other players) mode. In solo arena you must play and defeat eight AI opponents before facing a boss. In versus arena you play seven human opponents. In both cases you continue until you've won nine or seven games or accrue three losses. It costs 150 gold to enter the Arena and prizes scale based number of wins. If you get to seven or nine you'll earn around 150 gold (so your entry back), three packs, and a rare or better card. Two wins, on the other hand, is worth 50 gold, one pack, and a rare—roughly breaking even. If you are good at drafting this is a really good way to build a collection quickly.

If you're willing to do some grinding you can expect to earn anywhere from several packs a day (assuming you are good at drafting and have the time to play that many matches) to a pack every two to three days. The alternative method, of course, is to just buy packs. There are a couple decent deals as well, including a one-time get-you-hooked package of ten packs and some other cosmetic stuff for $5.

Picking Up Playsets

The next question for any CCG is "What does it take to be competitive?" At this point, I have opened thirty-five packs. According to Legends' collection tracking metric that is 54% of the game's Core Set (and only set to date). That's just single cards, however. As any CCG veteran can tell you playsets, in this case three of a card, drive consistency and consistency is what separates good decks from mere collections of cards that sometimes get you the win. Here's where I'm at with playsets:

For commons I included cards where I had two copies because it is relatively cheap to craft a common and I wouldn't think twice about completing a set if needed. I do have two copies of another 33% of the rares, but crafting one requires 100 soul gems—a good chunk of my total—so I did not count these as having a playset. For legendary cards I assumed having one was a playset, although this is only true for unique legends—there are many where you can play more than one copy in a deck.

As you can see, I have just over half the cards but only 27% are playsets…what does that mean in terms of viability? I experimented with a great many deck classes and ended up gravitating more toward classes with Intelligence and Willpower—two attributes with solid common removal cards. The fifty card deck limit, rather than the thirty you find in Hearthstone, opens up deck-design territory but makes it harder to field a consistent deck with a limited card collection. My decks either used playsets of common and some rare cards or made due with groupings of similar cards—two mana creatures with roughly the same stats that can defend early or five-to-six mana mid-game threats, for example.

I found these decks to be decent but not great. They were able to beat the Practice mode AI on novice and adept difficulties regularly but struggled at times on expert where the decks are stacked with playsets of strong rare, epic, and legendary cards. Facing other players offered mixed results. Against other newer players with similar collections I was able to hold my own and then some. But when I ran into a player who clearly ran sets of epics and many legendary cards I would get run over.

The bottom line is that 35 packs just doesn't do it. In every single deck I've built I long for more of the cards that work well and better cards to replace the ones that are sub-optimal. This is a familiar sensation, because, of course, it is also very much like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone. My guess is that another 25 to 30 packs and associated crafting would be enough to get the right playsets to build in consistency and effectiveness in a some decks, especially if you were to focus on a few of your favorite attributes.

All the Platforms

As I mentioned earlier The Elder Scrolls: Legends has launched on PC and iPad and is slated to arrive on Android Tablets in April, Mac OS in May, and on Mobile Phones in early summer. This is significant because not all CCGs have opted to support phones due to the difficulty in providing a quality experience on a smaller screen, among other reasons. It's pretty unlikely I'll play many Legends games on a phone, no matter how well the app is designed, but I do like the option to build or tweak a deck while I have a few minutes somewhere. I'd also wager grinding out gems in Practice mode on a phone will be more than doable.

I've played extensively on both the PC and iPad versions of the game and am very happy with both. I haven't run into any bugs or even annoying UI decisions, which is saying a lot. The iPad app is very good and has all the same functionality as the PC version. Legends looks and plays great on my iPad Pro, and unlike Faeria and even Hearthstone, I prefer it to the PC version.

The Verdict

There is a good freemium path in Legends. It isn't quite as easy to build up your collection as it is in Faeria, but it does feel easier than in Hearthstone, especially if you are good at drafting in the Arena and are willing to grind out some games in Practice mode. I estimate that once you get to the 60 to 70 pack range you should have the card collection necessary to field some strong, consistent, and competitive decks. What's more, I really like the game, how similarly it plays to Magic, and how it differentiates itself from Hearthstone and other digital CCGs through lanes, runes, deck size, and attributes. If you like Magic: The Gathering and are looking for an alternative to Hearthstone, The Elder Scrolls: Legends is definitely where I'd put my time and money.

Review: Tokaido

Five years after Tokaido’s original release, its digital analogue is finally here. This __game was designed by Antoine Bauza, of Ghost Stories, Hanabi, and 7 Wonders fame. The game’s namesake and setting both come directly from the fabled road leading from Kyoto to Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Anywhere from three to five travellers brave the four-day journey on Tokaido, represented in-game as a linear path with six different location types. As both the game’s paper rulebook and app tutorial have rather ornately put it, the players “will pass through magnificent countryside, taste delicious specialties, purchase souvenirs, benefit from the virtues of hot springs, and have unforgettable encounters”.

Players move along Tokaido, stopping each turn at various spaces that represent the enriching experiences while keeping a close eye on their dwindling coins. Three inns along the way will offer them a meal. More to the point, the travellers collect and score points in a variety of categories mainly involving set collection. First, each player is dealt two of the ten possible travellers, each representing a unique player power. To offset the varying utility of their asymmetrical abilities, travellers also have different amounts of starting coins. Players pick one of the two travellers and the initial turn order is decided randomly.

Each turn, the furthest back player moves forward to a space of their choosing. Farms (yellow) give three coins; Panoramas (green, white, and dark blue) offer sketches of an idyllic scene that scores increasingly greater points as it nears completion. The first part of a sketch is worth 1 point, the second 2, the third 3 and so on. Each colored panorama space represents a different scene (rice paddy, mountain, ocean). Temples (red) allow players donate one through three coins to the shrine, yielding as many points right away. At the end of the game, players are ranked by the generosity of their donations, scoring a bonus 10-7-4-2 points in order of largesse, with friendly ties. Villages (black) sell three Souvenirs, each priced anywhere from 1 to 3 coins. Souvenirs come in four varieties: foodstuffs, small objects, clothing, and art. Each set of souvenirs scores depending on its diversity. The first type is worth 1 point, the second 3, the third 5 and the final one 7 points. Hot Springs (light blue) give either two or three points. Encounters (pink) usher players towards a chance meeting with a random benefactor, providing one of several beneficial effects. Inns break up the __game into fourths, with one at the end of each quarter of the game. There, players buy a dish, priced 1 to 3 coins and worth 6 points. Once everyone reaches the final space, bonus points are awarded for various achievements and the aforementioned temple contributions. Highest scorer wins.

As you might have guessed from slogging through my slavish description of the rules, almost anything you do nets you points. It’s a bit like sitting in the audience for a taping of Oprah or Ellen that way. The game presents a few tactical decisions over an average playtime of twenty-five minutes, with a dash of randomness to keep things interesting. Money is always tight, and the final scores are always close. Despite this, the game is neither very cutthroat nor demanding. Its limitations for clever play are not necessarily a drawback so long as you have healthy expectations for what the game is, and can provide. The boardgame is a solid light gateway game, and the app reproduces many of its original virtues along with some new advantages.

It’s impossible to give a full evaluation of Tokaido without at least nominally praising its looks. Tokaido is a game with presence and restraint. A virtual sea of white surrounds anywhere you look. The frames which actually contain colors show them to be relatively placid. The shapes are soft and rounded, the animations cutesy. There are no edges or borders. Fortunately, these aesthetic choices dovetail nicely with the game’s mechanical and thematic trappings. Characters are, well, full of character as they putter across the screen, giving a little bow after each move, for example. And the locations you visit look piquant and inviting, from the trio of hogs romping across a farm space, the furoshiki and konpeito for sale in the village spaces, to the baboons soaking in the thermal springs.

Best of all, the app presents and collates its dry information in a clean, accessible way. Clicking on another player’s portrait pulls up a summary of their collection, breaking down points by general categories and the specific items therein. In short, the app succeeds in presenting Tokaido as a journey because it devotes so much space to the road and its characters. It does this without giving the game short shrift, too, by niftily tucking away and compressing the necessary dry game tidbits. This follows the trend of other digital game adaptations like Sushi Go or Patchwork by prioritizing a sense of place and presence over literal reproduction of analogue tokens, dice, or cards. Tokaido was a golden opportunity for such streamlining, which makes the flaws of its implementation harder to bear. It nailed the big stuff but is lessened by a few bugs and the omission of some must-have features.

First among these faults is the lack of any kind of save feature. I can forgive the app for being memory-intensive; pretty hurts, after all, so when my processor runs a little hot on my lap I just pretend it is a miniaturized kotatsu. What I can’t forgive is how exiting an in-progress game for more than a few seconds means abandoning it entirely.

This cardinal flaw is exacerbated by the game’s second misstep. While the AI provides a decent challenge, there is no way to speed up or eliminate the animations. So the bulk of time spent during the game is unavoidably concerned with watching the models walk. If you’re in a scenic mood or want to check another player’s scorecard, then fine, but there is zero possibility of a quick game or a series of decisive, exciting back-to-back turns. Ditto for online mode’s synchronous-only play. 

Lastly, on-release the store page listed its compatibility with pretty much every iThing under the sun, which has led to a bevy of grumbling reviews from consumers struggling to run it on older devices. It wouldn’t run at all on my first-gen iPad mini, and encounters a niggling but not deal-breaking bug on the iPad 4. (If you can’t exit a Panorama screen, for example, you need to touch the OK button repeatedly for up to a half-minute until it exits to the main map) This is a very nice game which needs a workhorse to run smoothly, and should be advertised as such.

Conclusion

If someone took the linearity of Candy Land, added smart decision points, traded its kitschy artwork for a modern, spare look, bleached its jewel tones, and blanketed it all with enough negative space to make a whiteout blush, the result would look and feel like Tokaido. But is the gameplay equally as blissed-out? And if so, is that such a bad thing? To both, I’d answer no, not really. It is a gentle stroll of a game, incredibly soothing to gaze at passively. It almost goes without saying, but to really enjoy Tokaido, you must really enjoy the journey.

News By Numbers - March 27th, 2017

Welcome to the latest edition of News by Numbers, where we highlight some of the can't-miss mobile gaming news each and every week.

Hades' Star: 3 month alpha

Hades' Star, a science-fiction mobile MMO with a great deal of promise, has completed a 3-month alpha testing period. The __game has launched on Android in Canada and will do so soon on iOS as well. This will serve as a beta for the __game and depending on how things go the game will head to other countries thereafter. Players in the US and larger European countries may have to wait some time to get to exploring, but we'll keep you posted.

Wartile: 4 diorama battle boards

Wartile, a game on our 2017 watch list, has cleared alpha testing and is now out on Steam Early Access. It's a real-time tactical combat game where bands of miniatures battle it out on beautiful, hand-crafted, dioramas. There are four such dioramas in the game now along with three unique Viking classes to choose from and many different figurines to collect and customize. This one is coming to mobile eventually, and I can't wait to see it on my iPad Pro.

Fighting Fantasy Legends: 6 second snippet

Nomad Games, makers of various Talisman digital offerings and the forthcoming Smash Up! , teased the name of a new game via a very short video. Fighting Fantasy Legends is the name, and that's about all we know at this point. Nomad will reveal more at EGX Rezzed in London this week. Legends will fight, though, that you can count on.

Warhammer Quest 2 The End Times: 7 classes

Warhammer Quest is getting a sequel, aptly named Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times. The original was developed by Rodeo Games which dissolved and reformed as Perchang, makers of the game by the same name. Perchang announced the making of End Times, with a release for iOS and Android in the Fall. Not much is known about the game, though it's a safe bet it'll be a turn-based dungeon crawler. The screenshots on Perchang's site are pretty impressive in 3D as well. The original had seven playable classes, four to start and three unlockable, we'll see what options the sequel has in store. Oh, and there's some talk about a prophesized cataclysm, the end of the world, and forces of chaos…or was that in the news? One of the two.

Card Thief: #9 paid iPhone app in the US

Card Thief, the stealth-based Solitaire-style follow up to Card Crawl, released a week ago and was heavily promoted by Apple as part of their Indie showcase. As a result, the game went as high as the number 9 spot on the US App Store chart (so far). According to Arnold Rauers, the developer, Card Crawl peeked at 37 in the United States. What a difference Apple's support can make. The success is well deserved and you can check out Michael's five-star review.

Also: @cardcrawl 's all time top paid iPhone apps (US) best was 37. on the 13th of March 2015 - @cardthiefgame is at 25. right now.

— TiNYTOUCHTALES (@tinytouchtales) March 21, 2017

iPad: 9.7 inch

Apple revealed some changes to its iPad lineup. The Air brand is to vanish and be replaced by a 9.7 inch iPad with the faster A9 processor called simply the "iPad". This entry level iPad comes in 32GB (pretty laughable today) and 128GB storage sizes and costs $329 for the 32GB option, which isn't bad, or $429 for the storage upgrade (pay the storage tax if you can). The new iPad is available now. There's also a 9.7 inch iPad Pro on the way with an improved A9X processor and a 12-megapixel camera. Do people take pictures with their iPad Pros? Seems awkward.

Super Mario Run: $10

Super Mario Run launched three months ago after what felt like many more months of hype and prime App Store positioning. Nintendo went the surprising free-to-try route with a $10 IAP to unlock the full game. Players used to freemium revolted and the reviews were pretty merciless. Now the plumbers are out on Android with the same pricing model. This time, they have included the following very early in the game's description, "Super Mario Run can be downloaded for free and after you purchase the game, you will be able to play all the modes with no additional payment required. You can try out all three modes before purchase: World Tour, Toad Rally, and Kingdom Builder." There are still a pile of one-star ratings, but considerably more five-star ones to offset them. Lesson learned?

Age of Rivals: 12 characters

The collectable-card and civilisation building genres collide in Age of Rivals, a fast paced, two-player card drafting game that plays out in about 10 minutes. Throw in the history theme and it's a lock for me to give it a go. The game is out on PC and Mac (via Steam) now and will be on iOS and Android in a couple months. You can also play it free on Kongregate if you're willing to enable Flash.

Hearthstone: 18 new elementals

The Journey to Un'goro expansion is bringing a new tribe to Hearthstone: elementals. Mike Donais, Hearthstone's game-design big wig, discusses the new tribe in this article, including their synergistic strength. Playing an elemental leaves some latent energy swirling about which other elementals can use via Battlecry abilities the following turn.

A whole slew of elementals are joining the game when the expansion drops and 18 existing cards are being converted into elementals. All of the cards with "Elemental" in their name—Water, Frost, Fire, Earth, Rumbling, and Unbound—for starters along with obvious converts like Dust Devil, Fireguard Destroyer, and Ice and Magma Ragers. Some big names are joining the tribe as well, both Ragnaros', Al’Akir the Windlord, Baron Geddon, and Neptulon are now elementals.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends – The Fall of the Dark Brotherhood: 25 missions

The Elder Scrolls: Legends just launched on PC and iPad and a new expansion is already on its way. The Fall of the Dark Brotherhood includes 25 new story missions where you can earn playsets for 40 new cards featuring members of the Dark Brotherhood. The story is linked to the journal of Cicero, the mad jester from Skyrim and the new cards are spread across all five of the game's attributes. The story is broken up into three parts, each of which can be purchased in game using cash or gold, and all three will be available for $20. The Fall of the Dark Brotherhood will be available April 5th.

Vainglory: London's O2

Some esports news for you - Super Evil Megacorps have announced the venue for their new 'Unified' Spring Championship tournament for their mobile esport Vainglory. The top six teams from both North America and top six from Europe will compete until there is only one champion, with the winning team automatically qualifying for the 2017 World Championship later in the year.

This will be the first big tournament to take place after the 2016 World Championship, and is heading to London's O2 on May 19th - 21st. This will make it the biggest mobile esports tournament to have been held in the UK so far. You can visit the official Eventbrite page for more information and ticket prices.

That's it for this edition of News by Numbers. If you've got a news item worth sharing send it my way on Twitter @MrVigabool and it may show up in a future edition.

Out Now: Thieves, Cannibals, and Legends Edition

The mobile gaming mantra for March is undoubtedly "so many games, so little time." Apple continued the deluge of awesome indie games through last weekend and into Monday, including the much anticipated Card Thief. Add to that the release of CCG-market contender The Elder Scrolls: Legends, an iPad port of the Lovecraftian Sunless Seas, AND a digital version of the popular boardgame Tokaido, there are plenty of worthy titles for your consideration this week. Let's take it from the top:

Card Thief (iOS)

After the awesomeness that was, and still is, the Solitaire-style dungeon crawling __game Card Crawl anything TiNYTOUCHTALES makes is definite Pocket Tactics fare. The studio's latest, Card Thief, launched on iOS last Sunday and is the official follow up to Card Crawl. In Card Thief you play as a sneaky thief out in search of treasure to steal in various castles and homes of well off fancy-pants lordly types. Card Thief features Solitaire-style play as you swipe a path through a grid of cards—snagging bags of gold, dodging guards, snuffing torches, and ultimately securing the treasure chest along the way. As you clear cards more are dealt from the heist deck and when you get to the bottom of the deck, the exit is played. If you get to the exit with the treasure in tow, you win, but you'll be back for another run as Card Thief is a high-score chaser.

There are four different heists to play, each with various enemies and traps, and successfully completing them will unlock 12 upgradeable equipment cards. The __game is fast and a lot of fun when you get the hang of it—the learning curve is a bit steeper than with Card Crawl. Card Thief is coming to Android "in about a month" and will be free to play with video ads and a $2 IAP to remove the ads.

Make sure you read new writer Michael's 5-star review for a better overview of the game.

Tokaido (iOS and Android)

Tokaido is a laid back game about getting the absolute most out of an adventure. The gameboard is filled with places to stop and do things like buy a souvenir, soak in a host spring, admire and paint a stunning vista, meditate at a temple (and make a small donation to the monks therein), and grab a meal. Doing these things get you victory points. The soak-it-all-in approach is rewarded by a gameplay element where the player furthest from the end of the journey getting the next turn. At the end of the game all of these various experiences are tabulated and the player with the most victory points is, well, the victor. There's some light strategy in this one and a lot of beautiful art.

The digital version, out on iOS and Android, does a great job capturing the beauty of the game. The single-player game is also faithfully represented and should satisfy Tokaido fans, and new players looking to see what it's all about. Unfortunately, the online multiplayer leaves something to be desired. You can either join an existing game waiting for players or create a new game table for 3, 4, or 5 players but there is no way to add friends or play a private game. If you create or join a game and switch apps or your device shuts off to the lock screen you might lose connection to the game. Tokaido will try to reconnect but is sometimes not successful. This matters less if there is a large player population looking for a game, but if there isn't, it might make multiplayer largely unusable.

Full review coming soon!  

Trilogic (iOS)

Apple's indie showcase offered up plenty of great puzzle games for gamers over the last couple weeks. I highlighted several in last week's Out Now and have another, Trilogic, here today. In Trilogic your goal is to use the classic elemental advantage mechanic—in this case leaf drinks water, water extinguishes fire, fire burns leaf—to clear colored squares from the game board until only one color remains. Each square indicates how many spaces it can expand and the trick is to figure out the right order of operations to clear a level. Gameplay is a bit like the excellent KAMI and is very fun and relaxing. There are 180 levels and an IAP for bypassing levels if you get stuck, though most won't need that. 

Sunless Sea (iPad)

Sunless Sea, a terrifying tale of exploration and survival, has cast off into the App Store which means you can now play it under your covers, with the lights off...if you dare. With a tag line, "Lose your mind. Eat your crew. Die," you may not want to though. Sunless Sea is by Failbetter Games and set in the same Victorian gothic world as another of their games, Fallen London. In it you captain a steamship and head off into a very Lovecraftian unknown. It's all about exploring, learning a little bit more about how to play the game, dying, and then having another go. Matt's review for this one is already up and he gave it 4 stars, so check that out for more on the game. 

Pavilion Touch Edition (iOS)

Another alumni from Apple's indie showcase, Pavilion is a beautiful three-dimensional puzzler with a fourth-person narrative, which means you control the environment rather than the player. There's no tutorial or instructions in this one and you're left to poke around and explore to see what's what. Pavilion's main character is a guy in a suit and tie who is clearly out of place in some bizarre ancient ruins. Your goal is to be his surroundings and cajole him onward to explore by enticing him in a certain direction, or scaring the inaction out of him. The game is a mix between a mystery-adventure and puzzle game and worth a look if you're interested in something fairly unique. 

Typeshift (iOS)

Zach Gage, maker of Really Bad Chess, Spelltower, and Sage Solitaire (all really worth a look), is back with a new word game for iOS called Typeshift. The game is a new take on an anagram puzzle where you search for word combinations in three to five words that have been scrambled around and stacked one atop the next. You move letters up or down to try and assemble words in the center row and keep going until you've used every letter at least once. Your efforts are timed, so it's you against the clock. There are other crossword like puzzles that offer several lines of clues and you have to find specific words. There's a daily challenge where you can match word-smithing wits against the world and the puzzles get progressively harder as the week marches on. Typeshift is free-to-play with the occasional easily closed ad though it very deviously seeks to get you to buy additional puzzle packs, which also remove ads, by being super fun to play, a good challenge for word-game fans, and exceedingly clever. 

The Elder Scrolls: Legends (iPad)

A second major collectible-card game has graduated from beta this month. The Elder Scrolls: Legends is now available on PC and iPad with additional releases to Android Tablets (April), Mac OS (May), and Mobile Phones (early Summer) on the way. It joins Faeria in a quest to become your alternative to Hearthstone in the lucrative CCG market. The Elder Scrolls has quite a bit going for it in its bid. Like Hearthstone, it's based in a well-known and much-beloved universe with the ability to roll out faces and places that will be familiar to many. It's also backed and brought to us by Bethesda, a gaming company with more than a little experience bringing successful games to market and, potentially, the resources to make a proper go of it.

The game itself plays a lot like Magic: The Gathering, more so than Hearthstone and certainly Faeria. A primary gameplay difference is the battlefield is split into two lanes and you have to decide which you want to cast creatures into. It seems like a simple thing but it adds a compelling tactical wrinkle without bogging the game down in a lot of extra complexity. Cards are grouped by attributes—Agility, Endurance, Intelligence, Strength, and Willpower—rather than color and each attribute has its own identity. Endurance cards are meant to build up your Magicka (mana) reserves, for example, and Strength creatures hit for a ton but fall hard when attacked themselves. When you build a deck you choose a class like Archer, Monk, or Warrior. Classes are a combination of two attributes and when you build a deck you can choose cards from one or both attributes, a Monk is Agility and Willpower for example. It sounds like Hearthstone's classes but again, is more like the Magic color wheel without being a direct copy.

The game seems pretty stable on iPad. I've built a deck, played some games, and navigated around without issues. I played on my PC for about a week before the iPad launch and as far as I can tell thus far, there isn't anything you can't do on the iOS version. A full review is coming soon!

That's all for this week's update. Seen anything else you think deserves a mention? Want to share some gemeplay impressions on the above? Tell us in the comments below! If you'd like to see your game included in future editions, please email in or tweet us @mrvigabool or @pockettactics. Enjoy your weekend!

Review: Card Thief

Before playing Card Thief, I was in the pink of health: now, I stand before you ravaged and thoroughly enthralled. I am red-eyed, bleary, wan, and yet grinning ear-to-ear. Sleep is precious to me but commonplace, especially when compared to the advent of a genuine surprise, so when I found the __game had surpassed my expectations, high as they were given the studio’s pedigree, it was an easy choice to make. I’ve spent the past days shotgunning the __game and can happily report back to you that it has innovated many of Card Crawl’s mechanics and served up a whole new bag of tricks. Suffice to say that Tinytouchtales’s latest is a delight, and well worth your time. It is a definitive entry into the canon of modern solitaire games

Mastering the Shadows

Our intrepid blackguard must navigate his thieving self through a deck of fixed elements, sneaking past guards, torches, sundry traps, braying dogs, watchful owls and the occasional two-headed ogre while lining his pockets with treasure. You must keep the thief’s stealth points high by manipulating the order and position of your enemies, as well as the scarce resources you have to refresh strength. To survive, the thief must cycle through the entire deck, pick up the chest which drops halfway through the card count, and then make way to the exit that appears after the deck is exhausted.

Each turn, you must move the thief at least two spaces on a 3x3 grid, clearing any cards you happen to move through. Usually this means spending valuable stealth on enemies or torches; treasure and stealth cards are free to move through and increase your gold score and stealth points, respectively. What makes Card Thief such a volatile, exciting caper rather than a bone-dry arithmetic puzzle is the dynamic and interactive nature of the many various card types.

Torches light orthogonally adjacent squares, potentially making you visible to guards, who will sound an alarm and increase their base strength if you step in front of a illuminated card they can see. (Perhaps one of the few ironclad tips I can offer is to eliminate dark enemies rather than lit ones whenever possible) Torches also make illuminated stealth cards worthless, though they paradoxically make treasure more valuable. Enemies will increase their strength if they detect you, presenting tougher obstacles in the future.

You can manipulate their attention, however, by moving to a presently un-surveyed card adjacent to them, which makes them turn to face the noise. If you sneak up directly behind a guard’s gaze, you backstab him, clearing the card for free. As if this weren’t enough to track, some cards have up-arrows on them which, when cleared, increase the ‘path difficulty’ by one. The path difficulty is multiplied by each card’s base value to give its current threat. What this means is one turn’s path could take you through five one-cost enemies, while a different route on the very same layout could end in a failed run through those selfsame enemies.

Managing light and enemies is the bulk of the game but involves so many cantrips and edge-cases that it makes my head spin just thinking about it. The game’s tutorial is perfunctory and tells no lies, but falls short of teaching well. I could spend the rest of this review trying to impart some limpid overview of the rules system. I would inevitably fail, as I respectfully believe the game’s tutorials have failed. They have given the player a list of simple things that are straightforwardly true about the game and left the larger implications and strategy, even the contours of a comprehensive picture, to the wit of the player. (Spoiler: the only rule that was deliberately kept secret in the tutorial is a whopper: clearing all of the grid in a single successful move will restore your stealth to 10 at the end of it. It feels like a casino jackpot.)

Shining and Silent

Such a minimalist, hands-off approach is refreshing and mature. If anything, I’m overstating the issue here. The game is forgiving, especially in the earlier stages, but it is also laconic in the extreme. No one is telling you explicitly how to thrive. Its display reacts clearly to each path you sketch, enabling you to toy with various layouts before committing to the best one. This detailed audiovisual feedback makes experimenting easy and intuitive. In turn, this means the best way to learn is by iterating, refining your technique and understanding over many runs while mastering the combos and interactions that pay off big.

To this end, the game’s quest and loot system serve dual roles as juicy incentive and dour gatekeeper. There are four castles to loot, a daily challenge, and twelve pieces of equipment. At the end of a successful run, you open the chest for a chance to reveal insignia, which accumulate and unlock harder castles and more sophisticated equipment at certain thresholds. Each piece of equipment, too, can be upgraded to a higher value in exchange for fulfilling unique quests. One quest wanted me to backstab two enemies in the course of one path; another asked me to hide in the barrel only once reaching -15 stealth; a third insisted I pickpocket a warden-type enemy worth 10 coins. Each of these encourages lateral thinking and exploration of those vexing edge cases I keep prattling on about. If the developer’s past work and statements are any indication, future updates will likely add even more equipment to tinker with.

Plunder and Wonder

David Parlett, author of the Penguin Book of Patience, heartily praises the benefits of good bout of solitaire as “the mental equivalent of jogging: its purpose is to tone the brain up and get rid of unsociable mental flabbiness”. Card Thief does this and more. It is difficult but fair. It respects your time and intelligence, and is as compelling to this reviewer as other thoughtfully designed mobile classics like Hoplite and Imbroglio. The playful art style and music score make for a distinct atmosphere that renders even failed runs more charming than they have any right to be.

Moreover, the presentation and core mechanics of Card Thief combine successfully to evoke the tension and fantasy of stealth. Even after unlocking everything, I find myself still curious about an untested combo, still learning a better use for equipment I dismissed as sub-optimal. It is a numbers game that encourages audacity and creativity, even self-expression. The handful of crashes I experienced are the only negative I can think of, and even those might be chalked up to my dated hardware. Maybe that old song is right and the best things in life really are free; regardless, Card Thief can be had for the price of a song and is spectacular.

Review: Sunless Sea

"A __game of two halves" is a thing you'll sometimes hear people say. Most often they'll be talking about football. But if they're pale, or squint-eyed, or perhaps dead and wrapped in moth-eaten bandages, they might be talking about Sunless Sea. And they'll be right, because it feels like a amalgam of quite different games in more ways than one. Sticking genres together has the potential for interesting results, so long as the artificer has the skill to cover the join lines.

At first, Sunless Sea looks very much like a fancy, well-written digital gamebook. There's lots of text and plenty of options for the player to choose. How they pan out is often dependent on the skills and items you have, just like classic Fighting Fantasy. Beneath this, though, you'll quickly spot some modern contrivances bolted on to the ancient edifice.

Certain options only unlock once you've progressed to other parts of the story and returned. And there's an economic system, too. You start out in a small boat, with a tiny canon and a sluggish engine. At the docks you can buy fuel for your boat, supplies for your crew and a selection of bizarre items to sell at other ports. With any luck, you'll turn a profit which you can put toward bigger boats, canons and engines.

Launching lurches you into the second half of the game: a real-time rogue-like. Here you steer your boat around a gloomy undersea ocean. The map is semi-procedural. Most ports and islands appear in the same vague area each time. But there's easily enough variety to keep each exploration engaging. Especially since running out of food or fuel, which you can only reliably get at port, are the quickest ways to perma-death.

Here, the seams between the genres show. Traversing the ocean is at once fraught and rather boring. The ship chugs along too slowly to be interesting, all the more so when you're sailing waters you already know. Something you'll want to do a lot early on, to build up a coffer to upgrade your ship and ensure essentials don't run out.

Combat isn't that frequent, and isn't that much fun. Enemies are dumb, maneuver is limited and most battles get decided by the health and weaponry of the protagonists. It's worse on this mobile port than on the PC version. The touchscreen controls feel odd, because they change direction depending on where your ship is pointing. It takes some getting used to, and never gets to be entirely comfortable, even with practice.

So it's a good job that the controls aren't the only odd thing about Sunless Sea.

The __game is set in the same universe as Failbetter's browser-based game Fallen London. This is where you'll find the second join. The concept is a bizarre combination of occult horror and fairytale whimsy. Cannibalism and necromancy walk hand in hand with dry puns and taking Guinea-pigs. It shouldn't work, yet it does.

What papers over the cracks between the two is some of the best writing I've ever seen in a game of this style. The sense of place it conjures seems effortless, though I doubt it was anything but. Even the place names - Gaiden Mourn, The Iron and Misery Funging Company - sound oddly real and both fascinating and repellent. Between these ports you can weave a grand plot, although the precise details vary with each play. They depend both on random chance and the choices you make.

You might think that a game so dependent on writing and story would get boring after a play or two. Yet the setting is so well drawn that it matters less than you'd imagine. You remember the writing, like the flickering candles and sinister voices of the Chapel of Lights, each time you visit. The random events ensure you'll get enough different options every time to keep you on your toes.

And as the game progresses, you'll find that it's mechanically rather richer than it first appears. There is no easy money in Sunless Sea. Everything that looks like a rich boon at first you'll end up paying for later. Additional scores like terror, nightmares and the officers you recruit need watching just as much as fuel and food. Whenever you think you've hit a groove, peril and permadeath tend to be round the corner. So the more time you pour into the game, the higher the tension ratchets.

Sunless Sea is not a great game, but it's a very good and very unusual one. In truth, it's a better game with a controller or a keyboard than a touchscreen. But if that's the only route you have to taking passage on the Unterzee, learning the clumsy controls is a price worth paying.

PT Guides: Faeria 101 - Board Basics

Welcome! New CCG-on-the-block Faeria may have had a bit of rocky launch on iOS, but it's already captured the hearts & minds of many, including new writer Brendan! Starting today, we're going to be running a series of articles looking at the __game more in-depth so that newcomers can get into the __game quickly. This will be a three-part run to start with, but if you want to read more do let us know in the comments below. For now, I'll let Brendan take it away with this introductory guide to board basics.

When I started playing Faeria upon release, I instantly felt that the game could (mostly) be summed up as a beautiful hybrid of the two largest CCGs of all time—Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone—with one obvious outlier: the “living board”. This digital playground alters your strategy in a way nothing in either of those two games does. Not only do you need to pay attention to what cards your opponent could play or what answers you might have remaining in your deck, you need to constantly be planning for those scenarios with your land choices. Play out too few of a land type or fail to move toward a well at the right time, and you may find yourself between a rock and a hard place in future turns.

Today we're going to talk about the basic concepts and strategies you need to be aware of when it comes to interacting with your board, from wells & land, to trying to land that killing blow on your opponent's orb.


Faeria Wells

If you’ve studied chess theory at all, you might be inclined to head straight for the center of the board and spread out from there. While that strategy might work for a strong rush deck, it’s going to fail for almost every other type of deck in Faeria. Why? Faeria wells.

Getting three faeria per turn is helpful, but the most powerful decks (and cards) want a lot more than that. There are a few competitive decks (and cards) that can gain you a lot of faeria without much help from wells, but in general, wells are the most important points on the board. Think about if you were to start a game by heading straight for the center of the board, while your opponent went for their nearest wells. By the start of turn 3, they might already have a three-faeria advantage over you, increasing by two every turn you fail to secure a well. That’s an extra turn of faeria on turn 3!

What are some general rules to live by when it comes to wells?

1. Try to keep a creature at your orb’s nearby wells whenever possible.
2. Deny your opponent access to their nearby wells so long as you’re not spending a ton of effort. Have a 2-damage spell in your hand and they have a 2-life creature by their well? Take it out! In general, putting pressure on their orb will achieve this as well.
3. Don’t let your best creatures linger by an orb when they could be better used elsewhere on the board. Sometimes, it’s better to give up the extra mana in order to have a worthwhile creature enter the fray.

Lands (and Other Actions)

Laying lands in Faeria is a whole strategy by itself. There are a multitude of tactics available to you, and few of them are wrong 100% of the time. To go back to the chess comparison, the strategy of laying lands feels a lot like chess theory: there’s an early game, mid game, and late game. I’m not sure there’s enough data to formulate more than speculative mid and late game strategies this early in the game’s life, but there are some clear early game tactics that are used consistently.


A Rush strategy is where a player will ignore wells in the early game and start by laying as many lands down as possible in a direct path for the opponent’s orb. This strategy has two weaknesses that you want to consider when attempting it. First, in order to get at the opponent as quick as possible—and give them as little time as possible to block—you usually want to lay down neutral lands, hindering your ability to play your element-aligned cards. This is best offset by creatures that create a land with a Gift ability. Second, it restricts you to three faeria per turn for almost all of the early game. The easiest way to solve this problem is to play cheap cards, but the weakness is one that’s meant to exist for rush decks and will always be there.


A defense strategy in its purest form would probably look similar to a diamond connecting your orb, two closest wells, and the center of the board. It would not get you near your opponent, but for decks that don’t care about that, this might be worth trying. The key is to prevent your opponent from setting lands within two spaces of your orb. Personally, I don’t think there are many times where this is a strong strategy because it allows your opponent access to all four wells and puts little pressure on their orb. However, a red deck trying to deal damage to your opponent from spells and abilities rather than cards seems like one way to do it.


The third, and most popular, early strategy I’ve seen is when you lay lands to gain access to your two closest wells and then attempt to move toward your opponent along one side of the board. This strategy gives you faeria while allowing you to be flexible in how you interact with your opponent. If you want to engage them directly, you can lay lands on the same side and go to war. Or you can lay lands on the opposite side and attempt to get near their orb. This strategy also requires less early expansion compared to the other two, allowing you to play more elemental lands for your cards.

The additional two actions (draw and gain one faeria) are handy, but best used late in the game once you’ve established a board presence. Use them too early, and you risk giving your opponent the upper hand.

Orbs

When you first start playing, there is a natural urge to surround your orb with lands in an attempt to ward off your opponent. This is okay if you’re playing a purely defensive deck that doesn’t wish to attack your opponent’s orb with creatures, but otherwise, it is a waste of resources for little gain. Every deck has tricks, and your opponent will eventually use theirs to get to your orb. In addition, if your opponent is playing any sort of card like Blood Singer, where they can directly affect your life without hitting your orb, you will have no way to reach that card on the board.

The most important goal is to fill the two spaces on either side of your orb so that you can readily summon defenders when needed. Beyond those two spaces, fill in as you are able, but don’t do it at the expense of advancing your board position in other ways. (i.e. contesting a well or pressuring your opponent)

The board of Faeria is complex once you start playing, and there are so many ways to develop your strategy over the course of a game. Some depend on your deck, some depend on your opponent, and others are just a net positive in most situations. I’ve attempted to cover the general situations you might find yourself in, but please let me know in the comments or on Twitter (@bweisko) if you’d like a more detailed analysis of laying lands and the board.

What have been your common board strategies? Let us know in the comments below! We'll be back with another Faeria 101 article next week, so stay tuned!

Review: The Deep Paths: Labyrinth of Andokost

First person perspective dungeon crawlers are enjoying a bit of a renaissance of late with the likes of Legend of Grimrock and The Quest HD receiving universal praise. Next to venture into the darkness is Deep Paths: Labyrinth of Andokost, a dungeon exploration __game that pays homage to the likes of the genre defining Dungeon Master.

Any doubts that Deep Paths is going to be anything but old school are cleaved asunder as early as the first screen. It is here that you have to create your party of four adventurers by randomly rolling and re-rolling for their statistics. Ok, you aren’t strictly rolling because this is a digital __game and you don’t have to go squabbling under the table for errant dice shouting “take it” – but you know what I mean.

There are only three character classes to choose from, namely, fighter, rouge and mage. Conspicuous by their absence is the cleric who was probably left behind for being a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. Without a first aider in tow your party has to rely on collecting various reeds and blending them together to make potions. In keeping with this streamline approach your characters only have four statistics, being strength, dexterity, intellect and vitality, there are no fancy skill trees or career progressions.

It turns out that a devastating earthquake has levelled the market district of the city of Theraborn, uncovering an underground labyrinth built many years ago by Archmage Andokost. Your party of well-travelled adventurers has been chosen by the city council to investigate and identify any potential threat. For a bunch of supposedly seasoned adventurers our heroes turn up for dungeon delving surprising ill-prepared. Much like a remiss husband who has forgotten his wife's birthday and makes a quick trip to the local service station in the search for something vaguely resembling a pressie, our heroes spend the first part of the game rummaging around a warehouse in a last-minute hunt for supplies. At least this gives players a chance to learn how the game plays as otherwise you are thrust into the thick of the action without a word of explanation let alone a tutorial.

Start playing and you will soon realise that the dungeons of Deep Paths are hard and unforgiving. In most games the obligatory giant rat means easy experience points. Here however, in the twitch of a whisker, a single rodent can tear you a new one, sending you slinking back to your last saved game point. Even lurking in the back row only offers scant protection from attack. However, this toughness never feels unfair and every encounter feels like a genuine challenge and not just a way of grinding up levels. This leads to a real sense of tension as you stalk the dimly lit corridors trying to locate the source of that ominous shuffling sound. Characters will take a few seconds to recover after attacking, during which time the whole party cannot move. These mobility restrictions mean that picking off a target from a distance or trying to outflank them becomes a frustrating exercise - serves me right for being cowardly, I guess. After combat, your characters gradually recover, which means that sometimes the sensible if dull thing to do is to kill time rather than monsters.

No dungeon crawler would be complete without a range of devious puzzles and here again Deep Paths leaves a positive impression. The game doesn’t stray too far away from the usual formula of hitting switches, activating pressure pads and running like the clappers to get through doors before they come crashing down. Yet, the puzzles escalate in difficulty at just the right pace, illustrating the designer’s skill in producing a challenging but fair game.

One design decision that I am not so keen on concerns the way that Deep Paths handles navigation around the dungeons. The game does not have an auto-mapping function. There is a map to discover on each level but even when you find it, which isn’t always easy, navigating is still awkward as the map disconcertingly rotates to match your party’s facing direction. Worse still, there is no way of knowing at a glance which areas you have explored or any way of adding notes to the map for your own reference. Interior design obviously wasn’t Andokost’s strong point as everything looks very similar, which makes finding your way around even more difficult. Thirty years ago when I first played Dungeon Master, I didn’t mind mapping out dungeons with a pencil and a pad of graph paper. However, things have moved on, nowadays is it too unreasonable to expect the game to do the hard work, mapping out the level as you explore?

Another worry is the awkwardness and inconsistencies of the user interface. For instance, some items you can just tap to add to your inventory whilst others need to be dragged. To open a locked chest you have to first open the inventory screen, then double click on your lock picks then close your inventory and finally click on the chest. Why not just click the chest and automatically use you lock picks? The movement buttons can be a little unresponsive at times too, which certainly doesn’t help matters when you are trying to solve one of the many time sensitive puzzles. There is nothing game breaking, just a number of little niggles that chaff away at your patience.

Deep Paths does away with many of the harsher features of those early dungeon delvers - there is no need to worry about starvation, or losing health by walking into walls. Nor is there a need to trouble yourself managing your supply of torches to avoid being plunged into darkness, as the lantern in Dark Paths seems to have an unlimited supply of fuel. Yet in other ways it is stubbornly old school, which may be a little too much for more mainstream gamers to enjoy. The good news is that the designer is obviously open to improving the game, he has already released an update with an option to make the monsters easier to defeat. A bit of time polishing the interface and introducing an auto-mapping function would really help Deep Paths appeal to a wider audience.

Review: Shardlight

I cannot recall ever having played a __game with as bleak an opening as Shardlight. Within minutes you discover that Amy, the central character, has a potentially fatal disease. If that wasn’t bad enough, she is soon being pleaded with to perform a mercy killing by shooting a crossbow bolt through an unfortunate guy’s head. You soon realise that although the __game is a traditional point-and-click adventure, it is an extremely different beast to the light-hearted Monkey Island.

Shardlight is set in a near future dystopian post-apocalyptic world, twenty years after World War III. When the bombs dropped, the sun became obscured and the main source of light is now provided by shards of uranium glass that bathe the world in an eerie green glow. The few survivors live in fear of green lung. This is not a local government scheme in which scrawny trees are planted on busy traffic islands as a token gesture to save the environment, but a nasty respiratory disease that leads to certain death. The good news is that there is a vaccine, the bad news is that supplies are controlled by the ruling self-titled Aristocrats who operate a ruthless oligarchy. They hand out regular supplies of vaccine to the rich and powerful in return for their continued support, whilst the rest of the impoverished population are forced to carry out dangerous and unpleasant jobs in order to earn tickets for the vaccine lottery.

This is the predicament in which we find Amy at the start of the game - as you may have guessed she has contracted the deadly green lung disease and has accepted a government job to fix an unstable nuclear reactor to try and win a supply of the vaccine. This is where she encounters the unfortunate guy with terrible injuries who first tells her about a secret underground movement before begging her to put him out of his misery. So begins Amy’s quest to work with the underground movement and discover the Aristocrats’ dark secret.

Amy herself is a really strong female character, a whiz with a screwdriver; she can turn her hand to fixing almost anything. She gamely battles the disease that has claimed her family and when at certain points in the game she suffers a coughing fit, you really feel death knocking impatiently at the door and the ever-pressing need to find a cure before it is too late. Interestingly, this is not a game of good against evil - Amy has to make her own moral decisions and like in real life no major decision is without its consequences. This all sounds a bit heavy, but thankfully the game still manages to introduce a host of intriguing supporting characters and lashings of dark gallows humour to lighten the mood. Indeed, the excellently scripted characters and superb voice acting is one of the game’s real highlights.

The Aristocrats themselves are an odd bunch with a fetish for lavish uniforms. They parade around the place with their powered wigs and flintlock muskets looking like they have escaped from an eighteenth century costume drama. Their leader Tiberius is especially strange, what with his creepy porcelain mask and husky voice.

At first I found the early 1990’s style graphics to be a little jarring on the eyes, they certainly aren’t going to appeal to everyone and unfortunately they do make some background details and objects hard to make out. However, the style soon began to grow on me, with the spooky green glow and mysterious red-eyed ravens giving the game a real distinctive atmosphere. At least the pixelated graphics ensure that the more gruesome scenes (and there is a lot of blood spilt in Shardlight) are not too gratuitous.

The game has a real tense focus and is tightly plotted, which means that thankfully there isn’t much wandering back and forth, as every scene is set over just a handful of locations. In addition, your inventory never becomes cluttered to the point where you are just aimlessly trying to combine and use items in the hope that something will happen. The puzzles themselves are a nice blend of object manipulation, prising information from the varied cast and some clever code breaking that adds an extra interactive element. Inevitably, most of us are going to get stuck at some point but the puzzle solutions never feel illogical or too obscure, indeed the writers have done a wonderful job in ensuring that the player never feels overwhelmed or directionless.

The game has made its way over from the PC unscathed, the unobtrusive interface being uncluttered, responsive and really easy to use. A long tap on the screen will highlight all of the features that you can interact with and then tapping on one of these will display two icons allowing you to examine or interact with the object.

My main concern is that the game is quite short, I would guess at around eight hours for someone reasonably experienced in this type of game. In a game that is on the whole excellently paced, it is a little disappointing that the ending feels a little rushed and doesn’t build up to the kind of climax that I was expecting. You can always go back and play the game again with the vocal commentary turned on. This is a really nice addition for anyone with an interest in game creation, as at various points in the game, the inspiration and thinking behind various aspects of the game are discussed by the designer, producer, artist and musician. A word of warning though, the commentary can sometimes give away clues and certainly takes away from the immersive atmosphere so I recommend leaving this feature turned off on your first play through.

Shardlight is constantly striving to build a real sense of tension and mystery, which is reinforced by an excellent understated soundtrack and the constant announcements that boom over the PA system in true Orwellian style. Who is behind the nihilistic death worshipping Cult Of The Reaper? Why is the place swarming with red-eyed ravens? What is that thing in the jar that Tiberius the leader of the Aristocrats keeps talking to? Hopefully all will be revealed before Amy succumbs to the dreaded green lung.

News By Numbers - March 20th, 2017

Welcome to this week's edition of News by Numbers, where we highlight some of the can't-miss mobile gaming news each and very week.

Sentinels of the Multiverse: version 2.4

Have you played Handelabra Game's hero driven digital boardgame Sentinels of the Multiverse? Did you think it was too easy? If so, the game's most recent update is for you thanks to the introduction of a challenge mode. It looks like the idea is to let villains cheat. Here's App Store update info:

"So you think Sentinels is too easy? Now, each villain gets another “twist” to their rules, adding that extra delicious layer of strategy to spice up your Sentinels game. And for those who want add even more fire to the flames, Ultimate Mode allows you to play with both the rules from Advanced AND Challenge Mode at the same time. Grand Warlord Voss isn’t being cutesy anymore, oh no, he’s playing the top card of his deck every time he flips. Think you can show him a dose of justice? Or how about The Matriarch who has made all her domain cards indestructible? Or Spite, gaining an unlimited amount of HP? They dare you to try and stop their nefarious ploys!"

Bottom of the 9th: 3 outs

Speaking of Handelabra, it seems they are hard at work bringing the tabletop __game Bottom of the 9th to digital devices. As the name suggests, the __game is focused on the bottom of the ninth inning in a baseball game. There's strategy, adjusting your lineup based on player abilities, as well as luck in the throw of the dice. I've not played the game, but it's fairly popular on BoardGameGeek. No word yet on release date but we'll keep you posted.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: 4 interesting sales facts

I always find it very interesting when developers pull back the curtain and provide some insight into mobile game sales. Tin Man Games did just that recently on Twitter in regards to their digital recreation of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. One tweet revealed that there may have been some debate about supporting iPhone as well as iPad.

Interesting analytic. 50% of Warlock buyers bought it on an iPhone and 50% on an iPad. SO PLEASED we ended up pushing for an iPhone version.

— Tin Man Neil (@TinManGames) March 9, 2017

Three more tweets give a little more insight on the breakdown of sales on Steam…

Fun fact: Linux accounted for 1% of our Warlock of Firetop Mountain sales on Steam. Mac was 6.5%.

— Tin Man Neil (@TinManGames) March 14, 2017

And on iOS versus Steam…

Fun Fact No. 2: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain has been downloaded almost as many times on iOS as it has on Steam, in a much shorter time.

— Tin Man Neil (@TinManGames) March 14, 2017

Worth noting that the lower pricepoint on iOS will have contributed to that. 12% of iOS buyers went on to buy extra in-app heroes.

— Tin Man Neil (@TinManGames) March 14, 2017

D&D Beyond: 5th edition digital tools

At PAX East Wizards of the Coast announced the development of D&D Beyond, digital tools for their latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons. D&D Beyond will provide a rules compendium with official content and the ability to homebrew your own, character builder, and digital character sheets and promises high-quality tools on any device. It sounds good, especially the "any device" part, but given Wizards' track record with digital tools and applications seeing will be believing. You can sign up for the beta here if you want to help bring the toolset to life.

Faeria: 6 new cards

Faeria just launched on Steam and for iPads, but ABRAKAM seems keen on making their plans to expand the game known. A new expansion named the Adventure Pouch is coming this summer and will be adding a new co-operative campaign where you will work with friends or an AI ally, co-op boss fights, and new cosmetic items and daily challenges. The Adventure Pouch is available for pre-order at a discounted price between March 15th and May 9th and those that take advantage will get 6 new cards that have been added to the game's core set as well as a special card back. The pouch's promo video is worth a laugh, but probably not in a way they intended. Faeria is out now on Steam and iPads and will be launching for Android tablets in about a month.

Battleheart 2: 16 classes

Mika Mobile provided a quick update on the development of the latest game in the Battleheart franchise, Battleheart 2. At this point they're working on the art and animation for the game's heroes and enemies. Their goal is to launch the game with at least 12 but preferably 16 heroes, four of each major archetype (tank, support, melee, and ranged dps). It's too early to peg a release date, though Mika Mobile is aiming for 2017. They've long been touting this one as a return to the magic of the original Battleheart—with the addition of cooperative multiplayer—and if so, it'll be well worth waiting for.

Rome Total War Barbarian Invasion: 28th of March

Last week I talked about the imminent invasion of Rome by barbarians. This week, we have a launch date. Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion is coming to iPad on March 28th. In it, you can play as the Roman Empire or the barbarian hordes. Will it be as great on iPad as Rome: Total War? We will know very soon.

UK mobile games industry: £995.1 million in 2016

The UK mobile games industry is large and growing. UKIE, a trade organization for the UK's games and interactive entertainment industry, recently stated that the industry was worth £995.1 million in 2016, and increase of 16.9% from 2015. The mobile industry makes up about a third of the £3 billion game software industry. UKIE also stated that the future may be less bright thanks to Brexit, with 40% of game studios at least considering a relocation.

That's it for this edition of News by Numbers. If you've got a news item worth sharing send it my way on Twitter @MrVigabool and it may show up in a future edition.

Pocket Tactics Presents: iOS Guide 2017

2016 was an awesome year for gaming and I sure hope that trend continues into 2017. What follows is a number of intriguing titles that make me very optimistic about the coming year in mobile gaming. There are a lot of games in development of course, but these are the ones I am most looking forward to. As the year rolls on it is our intent to add to this preview as games of particular interest are announced—so bookmark this page and check back often!

Note: This is our iOS guide. The Android guide removes the confirmed iOS-only games and can be found here.

Antihero

Antihero is a forthcoming turn-based strategy __game where you control a thieves' guild and vie for dominance of a seedy underworld. You'll recruit and equip thugs, saboteurs, assassins, and urchin and bribe, blackmail, and murder your way to success. It conjures thoughts of Scott Lynch's entertaining Gentlemen Bastards series of books for me. Antihero will feature both single-player and asynchronous multiplayer modes of play, and is currently testing a real-time multiplayer option as well.

Armello 

The King of the animal kingdom is dead and the battle for his crown has begun in Armello, a digital boardgame that's been nominated for all kinds of awards since its 2015 release to PC , Mac, and consoles. You play as the hero of one of the great animal clans, each a claimant to the throne. The __game combines elements of card and board games with the depth of an RPG.

You can explore the world, duel and scheme against other players, and eventually storm the palace to become the newest ruler of Armello. The world is 3D and fully animated and quite frankly looks like something Disney would make. Armello looks great and sounds amazing and I can't wait to get it on my iPad. Watch this video and see if you don't agree!

Ashworld

One of the best games of 2016 was Space Grunts, which brilliantly made a turn-based roguelike game feel much more like a tense action-adventure title. Next up from Orangepixel is a Mad Max inspired game titled Ashworld.

This one will be much more of a fast-twitch shooter but with the same great graphical attention to detail. Pascal, the indie dev behind these games recently commented that he "increased the size of blood particles and improved all explosions and debris effects (stuff now bounces all over). It’s hectic, chaotic, and possibly a bit over the top.. just how I like my games!" Sounds fun doesn't it? Ashworld should hit your mobile device in Q1.

Card City Nights 2

Card City Nights cleverly blended a deck-building, collectable-card game within the context of a single-player adventure. Ludosity, the developer, recently announced that a sequel has not only been in the works since last August but is ready for beta testing. They also announced that Card City Nights 2 will include a feature the original did not: online multiplayer.

Card Thief

Beta testing is in full swing for Card Thief, the latest game from TiNYTOUCHTALES—the maker of Card Crawl and ENYO. In Card Thief you drag your finger across a 3x3 grid of cards to chart the course of a master thief. Your thief must move stealthily, extinguish torches, and dodge guards all in a quest to steal as much loot as possible. Your ultimate goal is to steal the treasure chest card and return it safely to your lair.

Duelyst

Duelyst is a grid-based CCG where you not only play cards to cast spells and summon creatures but also move those creatures around the gameboard to battle opposing combatants and defeat your opponent. Think Hearthstone meets Hero Academy. Managing both cards and miniatures makes for challenging tactics-heavy gameplay that rewards skill over luck. Duelyst is live on PC and Mac and already well known for its huge cast of 16-bit generals and minions. It has a definite shot at siphoning players from Heartstone and building a big player population when it hits mobile devices this year.

The Elder Scrolls: Legends

The Elder Scrolls: Legends is a digital collectible-card game set in the universe that has served as the setting for many role-playing games, including Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. The game explores the characters, deities, and mythology of that universe. Legends is up and running on PC and plays a lot like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, but with an interesting lane dynamic that really looks to differentiate it. You can read some early impressions here.

The game board is split in two and you must pick a side when playing a card. Cards can only affect others in the same lane, so it forces the player to manage what is essentially two different games. There's a lot of buzz that this twist, along with a recognizable IP, puts The Elder Scrolls: Legends in a position to take on Hearthstone when it releases to mobile devices later this year.

Faeria

There's a third exciting CCG coming to mobile in 2017: Faeria. Like the others, Faeria offers a twist from the Hearthstone model and has incorporated a dynamic, "living", game board that players shape by playing their land cards. Each type of land—Forests, Mountains, Deserts, and Lakes—is a different color with unique spells associated with it. You play lands, harvest Faeria, and summon creatures to defeat your opponent. A primary goal is for the game to be fast paced and the developers have said the average game takes 11 minutes. Faeria is currently on STEAM early access with very positive reviews and a mobile beta due to start up soon.  

Exiles of Embermark

Exiles of Embermark first caught my attention last year with their tagline, "fantasy RPG multiplayer in one minute." It is a tactical head-to-head combat game built specifically for mobile and meant to be played wherever, whenever, in action-packed bursts. Gameplay is turn based where each player picks an action—attack or cast a spell—and then rolls initiative to determine who goes first. The goal is to drop your opponent first and there will be a ton of different abilities and gear to customize your warrior with an optimal build.

This isn't just a fighting game, however. The goal of the developers is to bring the setting to life with vivid maps and an immersive narrative for a single-player campaign. To this end they secured the involvement of prominent writer John Scalzi to help develop the game world.

Exiles of Embermark will be free-to-play on both iOS and Android and will feature Hearthstone style IAPs to speed progress so what remains to be seen is how these freemium mechanics affect gameplay.

Hades' Star

Hades' Star is a game of galactic exploration and colonization with aspirations to become a great mobile MMO. I wrote about the alpha version in depth here and believe the game shows great promise for multiplayer fun—particularly in terms cooperative and competitive feature. The open beta, which will also serve as a soft-launch for the game, is starting soon(ish).

KAMI 2

I love puzzle games and KAMI, by State of Play Games, is one of the best out there. It's a simple, relaxing, and enjoyable game based on the folding of colored paper across intricate designs with the goal of reaching uniformity of color in as few moves as possible. KAMI 2 is coming in 2017 and will include over one-hundred new levels of paper-folding challenge. There will also be a daily-challenge mode and a feature that allows gamers to make and share their own levels.

Strike Team

Wave Light Games, the indie developer who made Demon's Rise 2–our 2016 RPG of the year—is working on a new turn-based tactical RPG. Rather than fantasy, this one will have a sci-fi flavor and is inspired by games like XCOM.

You'll still assemble a crew of fighters from a slew of class options. You'll run your team through super-realistic tactical combat encounters that make use of the morale system and terrain effects the Demon's Rise games are known for. You'll definitely take on some alien baddies. Strike Team is due out in Q2 of 2017 and is definitely one to watch if you like combative role-playing games.

To the Moon

To the Moon is a heartwarming role-playing game about two doctors who travel through an old man's memories in order to make his deathbed wish come true. Released on PC in 2011 this indie game garnered critical acclaim and has an overwhelmingly positive reputation on Steam with over twenty-seven thousand reviews. Not only is To the Moon coming to mobile devices this year, but a sequel named Finding Paradise is slated for release on Mac, PC, and Linux this summer.

Warbands: Bushido

Warbands: Bushido puts you in control of a squad of fighters from medieval Japan. It is the first of two games on this list with an artistic style meant to evoke a tabletop miniatures game. Your fighters come in miniature form and can even be painted and customized, though no magnifying glass is required. Warbands' combat features a deck of cards that represent special powers and bonuses and winning multiplayer fights earns you currency with which you can acquire more miniatures and/or more cards.

The game is currently available on Steam Early Access where only player-versus-player skirmish mode is operational, though the developer intends to add a single-player campaign mode with a dozen stories, each 20-60 missions long. Sounds like some serious content. ETA for Warbands on iOS is unknown at this point, but my fingers are crossed for a 2017 look at this one on my iPad Pro!

WARTILE

WARTILE is a real-time strategy game where you command a band of miniature figures in a medieval campaign brimming with mythology, or against another player in battle mode. The game takes place on intricately designed diorama battle boards. Each mini has special abilities that work well in concert with others. Combat makes use of tactical concepts like high ground, flanking, and reach and is quite challenging. The dioramas are very realistic and are meant to represent real-word locales, like mountains in Norway and the English coast. Each board features quests, achievements and secrets to unearth.

WARTILE is currently in alpha testing for PC in advance of a Q1 release with future releases planned for Mac, tablets, and consoles. I've played it on Windows and must say I'm looking forward to getting it on tablets as well. The developer is trying to make that happen in 2017 but there's no guarantee at this point.

Got a game you're looking forward to that wasn't mentioned here? Let us know about it in the comments!