Strategic Mind: The Pacific
I really wanted to like this game. I really liked the graphics initially and my initial impression on game play wasn’t that it wasn’t bad. But then I realized you get the same graphic if you bomb or torpedo a ship. I mean shouldn’t you use the time you spent making useless swimming sharks to make different graphics for each?
As far as game play goes, your planes die quickly and inflict the same or less damage as a destroyer. And Japanese planes seem to have nearly unlimited fuel. I destroyed all of the Japanese carriers in Midway and five turns later his planes are still attacking my ships and troops. But if I go more than three turns without landing I seem to run out of gas. Worst of all the AI turns take forever.
– Real player with 332.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Turn-Based Tactics Games.
I have a rule of saying that if a game is fun, the other things are just the icing. Bad visuals? Corny sounds? Bad controls (note: non-real-time games only)? They can be overlooked.
I have found the game that is the exception to my own rule.
So, to get this out of the way first: This game is a turn-based-strategy game, with a point-buy system for your units, persistent-army mechanic, Hex-grid battlefield, and a basic system of “supply” for ammo, fuel, and repair to damaged units on a turn-by-turn basis.
– Real player with 104.9 hrs in game
Unite
Unite is a two-player board game based on Lines of Action (a game created in the 1960’s). Players take turns moving (with some unique rules for movement), trying to connect their pieces. The single-player mode provides 7 difficulty levels against the AI. Or play online against an opponent over the network. Choose from 4 different board types.
Mahjong Classic
Steer clear of this game, the devs promise updates but never once actually release updates. They are all too happy to take your money, but don’t go and fix the bugs that prevent you from actually progressing throughout the story. Until the devs actually take notice of every single other oak that’s upset with the bugs and fix it, I honestly can’t recommend this piece of trash.
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Board Game Casual Games.
broken game, bug at level 23, all players stuck there and support do not fix it since 2 years !!!
– Real player with 4.7 hrs in game
Stratego - Single Player
Stratego is addictive mindless fun and has been a great cure for childhood nostalgia. I would echo a lot of the other reviews out there in saying that the computer is not aggressive and spends a lot of its time just moving its pieces back and forth. The difficulty level is reflected by adjusting the strength of your army, not making the computer any smarter. The game is barely scratching the surface of its potential. Randomizing the location of the pieces when one starts a new game would be a significant enhancement. However, for only $7, I am satisfied.
– Real player with 538.5 hrs in game
To answer the Big Question… No, the AI is pretty poor and similar to the version that came out years ago but they’ve improved the graphics. I’ve played well over a hundred games and win about 90 % and that only because I goof around with tactics and purposely give it an advantage, elsewise, it would be closer to 100%. I don’t see any difference between the three skill levels… one star, two star or three star and seriously can’t figure which end is the smartest, the one star or three star??… maybe it’s because it’s dumb, dumber and dumbest. The AI ‘shuffles’ it’s pieces in circles for most of it’s moves and is not aggressive; you can wipe out one half of the board and it’s over on the other side going ‘back and forth’ while I’m killing his guys; easy to make the AI ‘flinch’ by passing a high ranking piece by his little guys… like shooting fish in a barrel… only occasionally will it strike and mostly at the beginning of the game; minors hardly ever go for a bomb… even if it’s the last piece on the board. Sure, if it knows you’re a lower rank, it’ll come after you (oh no!)… but like a chicken brain, it’s easily sidetracked. The Campaign is similar in all respects… goes pretty fast, playing both levels in a matter of hours; only at the end of the second campaign does it present any sort of challenge.
– Real player with 250.3 hrs in game
Starforge
StarForge is a port of the strategy board game where you will take the role of a race in growth: the Terrans, but in the depths of the galaxy, an old enemy emerges from oblivion: the Goo! They are back and seeks dominance over the entire galaxy. Through the choice of tactics, building ships with gradual improvements and conquering worlds to obtain resources, you must stop the spread of the Goo, protect your home planet and the entire galaxy in the process. Help them, you’re their only hope!
Tharsis
Elder Sign and Alien Frontiers' ugly baby
Tharsis is basically a cheap, space-themed copy of Elder Sign . I’m not giving this thumbs-down because it’s difficult and sometimes you’ll lose just because of bad luck. I liked Elder Sign enough to buy each one of its overpriced expansions (on the iPad version), because although Elder Sign does a piss poor job of explaining how the game works, it’s actually FUN and gives you enough control over the chaos to be satisfying. In contrast, Tharsis feels more like the Iraqi version of Wheel of Fortune: https://youtu.be/Cz8cSpRmowM?t=1m1s
– Real player with 32.3 hrs in game
I love board games, I don’t hate dice, I usually like a good strategy challenge, and I think space & Mars are cool - So I can recommend this to people like me when it is on sale for at least half off. YOU SHOULD KNOW: I’d ignore reviews before August 2016 because a patch was added with a better tutorial, bug fixes, and some missions - All of which were significant additions to the game (at least for me). If you expect something more than a turn based board game, you’re gonna have a bad time. Also, I strongly encourage doing the Training missions before or after beating Easy as well as picking crew abilites that best main reasons for losing a game - Without these I could’ve rage quit before beating Normal mode. Now for a full breakdown that I haven’t seen anyone else give like this, followed by exactly what turns consist of:
– Real player with 24.8 hrs in game
Chickamauga Battles
Nice to see another HexWar game!
Very nice and easy to pick up and play turn based strategy game
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Covers the Chickamauga campaign of the American Civil War. Gameplay is as most HexWars games. Decent array of scenarios. If you are comfortable with HexWars style, recommended.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Lithoi - Trials of Memory
A relaxing casual Memory game, where you choose the challenge level yourself. There are 3 challenges you can apply to any stage you play, that are not mandatory to finish the game. So play as you please.
The game has 3 different matching modes and one extra upon completion. The final one is called ‘Apeiron’ and has a more smooth and fast pace. Also the progress there, places you on the Leader boards (for those who want to be more competitive).
Overall a nice casual game, for you to enjoy some relaxing and stress free gaming time.
– Real player with 20.3 hrs in game
Lithoi is a Match-two game with unique visuals for the genre. It is casual, allowing the player to take its time and enjoy the process. The mechanics are simple, with the addition of some spell/powers as helpers. I would recommend this game to any, casual or not, gamer and any achievement hunter as well.
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
Nyheim
Fun single player dice-based board game.
RNG can be brutal if you get unlucky, very strong early enemies can present unbeatable obstacles. Fortunately that doesn’t happen too often. Also food, which lets you reroll your dice, is scarce early on. These two factors may combine to make it seem more frustrating than it is.
You can mitigate these a few ways: you can tweak your starting character’s dice so they have more balanced results, you can rush your first 2 quests to get 2 more people (for more dice to roll), and you can spend a few early turns on a food-rich square to stock up. You can still end up totally screwed, in which case just chalk it up to bad luck and restart.
– Real player with 30.8 hrs in game
Allright, this game is surprisingly great!
Its price may even be too low, although music and maybe graphics are not that great (but who cares about the latter when the gameplay is great)
The game is based around luck with dice. You can be against this kind of game, but in this game, I believe it works. I have played 2 games now and I even won the 2nd already. I must have had lots of luck or… In any case, I will certainly play again, I had great fun with this game and I got my money’s worth!
P.s. I bought this game after seeing that the developers added a release for Linux in less than two weeks after just one person asked for it. These devs are great and should be supported!
– Real player with 18.1 hrs in game
Raygun Chess
Raygun Chess is a Early Access free VR game that is very bare bones right now. It worked on my HTC Vive system, looked ok, played ok, sounded ok. There are only 6 boards at the time of this review and they are part of the tutorial. The tutorial worked. Nothing else you can play at this time. There is no multiplayer at this time. Sort of interesting take on battle chess.
Not sure how to play the big board with the 4 players. Looked like a tech demo at this time.
Maybe come back to this game sometime Next year.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
There is a very good reason no-one has come up with a game to take over from chess and that is because chess is the perfect game! But that doesn’t stop ‘Raygun Chess’ from giving it a go. In short, it is chess, but with rayguns. So you have a handful of pieces that move in certain directions and amounts and if they get close enough to an opposing piece they will shoot it down. To be fair the models look good and so does the sparse, but oddly peaceful space setting! But when it comes to gameplay I just couldn’t get into it. The grabbing mechanic of the pieces hardly worked at all and when it did I found that there wasn’t a lot of strategy involved, in fact, you can win all the levels by simply moving your shooters over to the enemy as fast as you can. But hey! Someone might like this and it is at least free, so I will give it the thumbs up with a note that if I could have given it a neutral rating I would have. But it didn’t deserve the thumbs down because it is free after all.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game