Tag: Mobile Gaming

03/14/15

GrogHeads Reviews Twilight’s Last Gleaming

Reviewed by Michael Eckenfels, 14 March 2015

Developed by Hexwar for iOS (iPad)

OVERVIEW

Twilight’s Last Gleaming first made an appearance almost 20 years ago as a board game by Decision Games, one that rates just below a somewhat above average 6 on BGG’s website. Hexwar’s recent partnership with Hunted Cow Studios has brought this title back into the gaming limelight, but playable on either a Mac or an iPad, and with many more battles to fight than the board game ever offered (three battles from the board game, and ten in this electronic version).

TLG-001

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02/18/15

GrogHeads Reviews 80 Days

orderhex-80days
80 Days is a highly addictive, highly replayable handheld game that combines steampunk and historical trivia into a fun and challenging game. GrogHeads is pleased to induct 80 Days into the Order of the Hex for its excellence in mobile addiction.

Jim Zabek, 18 February 2015

Developer: inkle Ltd

Click images to enlarge  

Once in a while a game emerges that is so simple that the writing of a review of it is far more complicated than the game itself. 80 Days is one of those games. In a nutshell it’s a game for a handheld device where the player takes on the role of Passepartout, the valet to Phileas Fogg – the same person in Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days.

As with the novel, the player’s goal is to make it around the world in 80 days, but the story has been updated. 80 Days is set in a steampunk world and this updates the game in a spirit that I would think Jules Verne would highly approve. The game is peppered with encounters with historical figures and is driven by the player’s interaction with the and others.

 

80 Days_conversation

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01/3/15

GrogHeads Reviews The Longest Day for iOS

The Longest Day invades your iPad.  Michael tells you where you’ll find all the sand afterwards.

Michael Eckenfels, 3 January 2015

click images to enlarge

The Longest Day is a second effort by the makers of Frontline: Road to Moscow, a game which I’ve heard of but have not played. If you’re looking for comparisons between the two, keep on looking because they ain’t here.

Instead, what you’ll see here is how Slitherine has created a fairly basic and AI-timid romp through the hedgerows and beaches of Normandy. It is June 6, 1944 (at least, on your iPad when you fire this up, like me), and you’ll find yourself in control of several Allied units looking to wrest control of Utah Beach from the occupying Germans.

However, before you get there, there’s a bit of confusion. The app itself is called “D-Day: The Longest Day,” but when you touch the icon, you get a mish-mash of images on a screen, including infantry storming a beach, but there’s no game title.

The giant in the background seems unimpressed.
The giant in the background seems unimpressed.

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12/5/14

GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #59

With the impending arrival of the annual GrogHeads Holiday Buying Guide and/or List Of Things Your Family Will Never Get You™, we took a slightly different turn on GARPA this time, and tried to cover a variety of different bases, without repeating categories…

 

The wargame:  Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection (GMT Games)
P500, $57 pre-order, $82 MSRP – made the cut!

So the real question everyone has with the 4-headed COIN game set in the AWI is this : How do the French win?!  The latest COIN game brings in Indian raids, brilliant strokes, and the usual 4-headed multi-player madness that occasional devolves into players bribing each other with beer during the game.  The map might not be the prettiest of the COIN maps, but it does have one different feature – the cities of the colonies are called out as separate spaces distinct from the overall territories of the colonies themselves.  Many of the cards are named after historical actors in the AWI, and when the French enter, there’s no trumping it.  Check out their p500 page to get your pre-order in while they’re still taking them.

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