Operation: Eradicate - SKEJO STUDIOS

[justln]

Originally Posted by LordGek

I'm still just learning the basics myself but should at least address the elephant in the room.

This game is pretty much the popular board game Pandemic with the viruses replaced by zombies.

While not normally one to whole heartedly endorse something that seems like such a sleazy move, Greg's story, as he had discussed back on the BGG forums, makes this fairly justified.

I'm sure Greg could explain this better, but from what I understand he was commissioned to make the official iOS Pandemic game and, after some sort of change of management/ownership of the actual board game licensee, this then completed iOS project was aborted.

Was he supposed to just suck it up and move on? So after a lot of soul searching I gather he went through the game changing the art assets, theme, and name so the result is only a game STRONGLY INSPIRED by Pandemic now.

Nope, Greg/Skejo Studio isn't the person Z-man screwed over. That would be Henry Truong.

Article on how he decided not to release/reskin his app.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Henry...t_To_Clone.php

Operation: Eradicate is a cash-in on the Pandemic genre of boardgame, similar to what Zgyna did to Tiny Towers with their Dream Heights. I guess a better comparison would be the recent Battle of Gundabad, a Dominion clone that took mechanics straight from the boardgame and gave it a reskin.

Demo video of the aborted Pandemic game.

Youtube link | Pop Up

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by Greg_SkejoStudios

To resolve some confusion.

To Trade resources: Both players must be in the same city as the resource to be traded.

To Stabilize a Region: You need 5 of the same type of resources, and go to ANY city with an airfield. You don't need an airfield in that region. Any airfield will do.

What a Stabilized Region doe?? Nothing on it own, except get you closer to victory.

You need to kill all remaining hordes in a region (Eradicate a region), for them to stop coming back again.

Yes, we are making a few of the buttons bigger for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Our play testers must have gotten too used to them to notice the diminished size. Our apologies.

-Greg, Skejo Studios

PS @LordGek, the story of the cancelled Pandemic was a different developer. But we too did try to work with the Pandemic people, but we brushed off, and there is still no news six months later of an official release of Pandemic. Operation: Eradicate was inspired by Pandemic, but has been changed in numerous ways, and built with commissioned hand-drawn artwork, new UI interfaces and other planned unique expansion modules.

Oh, okay, I didn't know there were multiple folk involved, fair enough.

Doesn't stabilizing a region make it easier to fight the remaining zombies in that region and stop the spreading in that area? Sure, you still need to mop up, but I thought it actually has some in-game effect?

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by justln

Nope, Greg/Skejo Studio isn't the person Z-man screwed over. That would be Henry Truong.

Article on how he decided not to release/reskin his app.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Henry...t_To_Clone.php

Operation: Eradicate is a cash-in on the Pandemic genre of boardgame, similar to what Zgyna did to Tiny Towers with their Dream Heights.

Demo video of the aborted Pandemic game.
YouTube: video

Doh, my bad. Well then I just hope, Greg, in upcoming expansions, you take your game a bit further down your own direction so as to make it more of its own thing.

[trundley]

Also, how come we cant freely trade between our commanders? Every time i go to trade it ends up just being allowed to trade 1 resource in one direction. I want to be able to choose, and trade more than one!

Maybe you should add the ability to build trade routes between cities/towns?

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by trundley

Also, how come we cant freely trade between our commanders? Every time i go to trade it ends up just being allowed to trade 1 resource in one direction. I want to be able to choose, and trade more than one!

Maybe you should add the ability to build trade routes between cities/towns?

This aspect is pretty consistent with other games of this type like Forbidden Isle so I think it might really unbalance stuff to change that aspect.

The only clear glitch I've seen a couple of times is when the "Use Special Resource?" question at the end of a turn and the "Zombie Outbreaks" screens overlap on each other rending the option to perform special actions impossible and the zombie outbreak message unreadable. This is thankfully pretty rare like 1-2x a game.

My tweak request:
How about having an alternative Commander skin for the higher res devices where the current circle dot icons are replaced by colorful icons of each specialist. The Transporter could have a little plane, the Researcher could have a microscope, the Logistics guy could have a crate, the Engineer a wrench, and the Assault guy some sort of gun. I think this would be a lot more clear than the current 1-4 dots.

[Greg_SkejoStudios]

Originally Posted by LordGek

Doh, my bad. Well then I just hope, Greg, in upcoming expansions, you take your game a bit further down your own direction so as to make it more of its own thing.

Yes, that is exactly what we planning on. We think of this effort as forking and will now grow in new directions. Having this base game on iOS will now allow us to add new play modes, and new roles and resources quickly. We hopefully will have something in three or four weeks.

Also, as for the icons, we thought of such items, but thought it cluttered up the map, though updating the role representations on the map is a high priority.

[Greg_SkejoStudios]

Hello, I wanted to let you know that the update has just been released that includes the zoom and pan feature. This will greatly increase the playability for the game for iPhones and iPod Touches.

[Appletini]

Originally Posted by CerenPL

*the location "cards" or tokens are unreadable,
*class names are unreadable
*options also have too small font
*even on the biggest zoom I'm still having problems with reading the names of the cities - they are blurry
*buttons are too small
*numbers showing up in the upper left corner are unreadable
If you can't be bothered with a working UI for the i-pods I can't be bothered with paying for something like this. Refund requested on itunes.
Tested on ipod 3g 8gb. This thing is simply unplayable. Also, options do not work, when i click in the menu i get a BIG ASS TUTORIAL on my screen and nothing else.

Almost all of your issues stem from the fact that the game is designed for Retina displays, and you're playing it on a 3rd generation iPod Touch, which doesn't have this feature. The description in the store covers this, although it could probably stand to warn people with outdated devices away from the game, rather than just say it works with "less clarity" if, in reality, the text on these devices is literally unreadable.

The "Options" screen does have a bug at the moment, as the menu options appear to have been scaled up, and only a few letters of each fit on the screen. The tiny confirmation/close window selections in dialogue boxes really do need to be made larger on smaller devices, too, as it usually takes multiple attempts to get these to register.

[Spatzi]

I agree that the fonts are much too small and hard to read, even on the ipad 2, and it is difficult to click anything precisely. My wife was getting fed up with continuously not activating something because of not hitting the very small touch area of a symbol clustered round a city.

City names are very blurry on zoom. Is this really difficult to fix? I can't imagine how hard it was to play this game before the zoom feature was added.

Also, it is too difficult to win on easy. I will have 2 spreading infection counters and then within one turn it goes up to eight and game over. Definitely harder than pandemic. Have had three games on easy and only once did I manage to stabilize ONE zone, never mind four, before losing the game. I played plenty of pandemic so not unfamiliar with how this works.

...if this game's inclusion of 'retina graphics' has already outdated an ipad 2 and this is the reason city names are blurry on my ipad 2, you need to consider who your audience is. Not everyone rushed out to buy an ipad 3.
if a year old device is already obsolete for giving me readable graphics i will stop buying games completely.

Another thing that would help is if the buttons that indicate your action choices would light up when one is available. If i have two people in the city that can trade cards, the 'trade' icon should light up.

[LordGek]

They just released an update with a new mode with items/tools...sounds intriguing but I'm not sure what is meant here.