Let’s get the bad Hearthstone news out of the way first: Hearthstone is still coming to iPhone and Android phones, but not for “a couple months”. Now, we’re talking about Blizzard here, so when they say “a couple months” that’s actually much better than their usual “when it’s done”. So, even the bad news today isn’t so bad.
The good news, however, is pretty fantastic. Blackrock Mountain is the latest expansion for Hearthstone and it’s coming in April. Similar to last summer’s Curse of Naxxramas, this expansion will focus on PvE content and feature 5 wings that are released one per week. Each wing will cost 700 gold or $7, but that price can be reduced if you buy the expansion as a bundle instead of wing by wing. Also similar to Naxxramas, this expansion will include class challenges for each class and will feature a Heroic mode with super tough bosses once the regular bosses are defeated. At the end of finishing all 5 wings, you’ll have 31 new cards added to your deck.
While the expansion is launching in April, you can preorder it starting on March 19 which will get you a special card back.
Remember when Owen compared the graphics to mini-golf? That was a long time ago.
Vietnam ’65 has the distinction of being the App Store’s version of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, with the difference being that Vietnam ’65 is releasing today whereas Terry Gilliam’s pet project isn’t scheduled to release until next year. Since last summer, Vietnam ’65 has been submitted to the App Store with a scheduled release date, and then pulled before its release while a new publisher was sought. Eventually, Slitherine took the reins, updated the graphics and, finally, tonight we’ll see the fruit of their labor.
Vietnam ’65 is a different kind of war game, one in which you need to control not only the strategic aspects of fighting a war, but also the political aspects and trying to keep the locals on your side. It looks pretty nice, too. Vietnam ’65 will be for iPad, but I can’t find a link so I’m not sure of a price. Guess we’ll find out tonight.
More of what we can expect on tonight’s App Store after the break.
Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic has one of the greatest trailers ever. Or it might be one of the worst. I don’t know, but I can’t stop watching it. That said, actual information about the game is pretty light. Who cares, though. I’m going to go watch it again.
Egad, that was fun. Anyway, back to Pixel Heroes. This is a rogue like RPG in which you build a party of characters from over 30 different classes. When a character dies, however, they’re gone for good. Sounds a bit like an 8-bit version of Darkest Dungeon, with a sense of humor and without the over-the-top narration. It’s been available on Steam for awhile now, with good reviews, so this is one that will definitely be getting picked up. It will be available for iOS Universal and should run somewhere in the $5-$7 range (it’s $9 NZD).
Twilight’s Last Gleaming is the digital port of Decision Games board game of the same name. TLG puts you in the shoes of the Americans or British during the pivotal battles of the War of 1812. There are 5 tutorial missions and 10 regular missions which you can play as either side. The game offers a ton of different troop classes from infantry to British rocket units. Give the trailer a watch; there’s something about the look of this game that intrigues me. Everything is sharp and crisp and it just looks better than most of the hex war games I’ve seen. Then again, it could just be me. I’m on my 2nd pot of coffee. Since lunch.
Twilight’s Last Gleaming is coming out for iPad and costs $10.
RAD Boarding isn’t normally the kind of game we would talk about here at Pocket Tactics; it looks to be an endless runner in the same vein as Tiny Wings. That said, watch this trailer. Sure, the game might not be our cuppa tea, but can you resist that shredding guitar? Did I mention the giant bear? Seriously, give the trailer a look and then try to not download RAD Boarding at midnight. It appears to be both free and radical, so why not?
“That’s a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as robot individuals.”
Over the weekend, Mode 7 posted a video with a big, meaty update to their turn-based sci-fi football sim Frozen Cortex, which has been available on PC early access since last year. The creators of Frozen Synapse (our 2013 Multiplayer Game of the Year) have made positive noises in the past about eventually bringing Frozen Cortex to mobile as well, and I wanted to know how likely it was that we’d see robot cyber-football on our iPads this year.
So I talked to Mode 7’s Paul Kilduff-Taylor, and here’s what he told me.
Originally announced as Frozen Endzone back in 2013, Mode 7 have always planned on bringing their followup to the wildly successful Frozen Synapse to tablets. “What we’re finding with the iPad version is that there is a market for deeper games,” founder Paul Kilduff-Taylor wrote for us back then.
A couple of years on, and Kilduff-Taylor is still gung-ho about mobile as a platform for core gaming. “Frozen Synapse has done really well on iPad: definitely above expectations,” he told me yesterday.
See? Bullish. Er, until we talk about phones, anyway. “However, [Frozen Synapse] hasn’t done well on iPhone, despite other similar titles having good results: we honestly have no idea about why that is. It’s a great version of the game and we’ve had a lot of positive feedback from it: it just doesn’t sell.”
But Mode 7’s plans for a port of Frozen Cortex to tablets is moving right along, and Kilduff-Taylor urges other indie devs to follow in his wake. “I definitely think tablets are a great place for strategy games: you can even do fairly well with a pay-once (ie non-F2P) title, if it’s the right thing. I would definitely urge other devs to look into tablet versions, particularly of 2D strategy games, as there’s certainly an audience out there.”
Mode 7’s slow-but-steady approach to development means that we shouldn’t expect to be playing Frozen Endzone on tablets for a while yet, but you can follow its progress on the game’s website or on Mode 7’s Twitter account.
If you’re like me, when you heard that the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire won’t be hitting bookstore shelves in 2015 a small part of you died, and in anger you swore off the entire damn series. Then, the trailer for the upcoming season caught your eye and you’re right back in like Michael Corleone in that one Godfather movie that doesn’t exist. Damn you, George R.R. Martin for making me care in the first place!
Well, this isn’t going to help. Telltale Games has released a new trailer for their Game of Thrones adventure game, this one for episode 2, “The Lost Lords”. As usual for a Telltale trailer, if you’re invested in remaining spoiler free, I’d steer clear of watching the video until after episode 2 is in your rear-view mirror.
The new episode will be going live this Thursday for both Android and iOS. Trailer after the break.
It’s the Super Bowl tomorrow, and after last year’s surprisingly accurate Super Bowl prognostication, we asked Kerry Batts, creator of our favourite indie pigskin sim Pro Strategy Football to come back and do it again.
Coach Batts has run 24 simulations of the championship and according to PSF’s sinister gridiron AI, Seattle beat New England in 18 of those matchups. Details after the jump.
Here’s what Batts has to say:
I went ahead and simulated 24 games, and Seattle won 18, so this time it’s Seattle 3:1! Average score across all games was Seattle 27, New England 20, so Seattle’s defense held New England down.
Here’s a random shot, and show’s Seattle dominating the play clock and a great running game.
Up-down-up-down-left-right to enable Belicheat.
PSF thought last year’s Seattle-Denver matchup would be a lot closer than the blowout it turned into, but who the hell could have predicted that, anyway? So there you have it — there’s still plenty of time to call your local sportsbook.
Batts recently released PSF Career, a version of Pro Strategy Football that lets you manage a team for multiple seasons. If you haven’t seen the game before, check out our review of last year’s version. It really is one of the most hardcore football sims available on any platform, not just iOS.
