Thunderstone Gateway - by Zabu Studio

[crunc]

Originally Posted by sapphire_neo

You must add Codito to that list. They have Through the Ages almost ready as well, should be out next month or in October at most. Their work on Le Havre, Puerto Rico, Tigris & Euphrates and others is exemplary.

Puerto Rico is half decent, but their efforts before that are pretty poor. Still Puerto Rico is an improvement and at some point maybe I'll give them another chance and pick up Le Havre and/or Tigris & Euphrates. But still the polish is not there. Puerto Rico is still a bit clunky.

I like San Juan a lot, which is a much more polished game - too bad those folks didn't do Puerto Rico for them. San Juan is missing async, but then I'm a bit turned off to async now anyway. I'm playing an async game of Puerto Rico and it is *dull*.

[sapphire_neo]

Originally Posted by crunc

Puerto Rico is half decent, but their efforts before that are pretty poor. Still Puerto Rico is an improvement and at some point maybe I'll give them another chance and pick up Le Havre and/or Tigris & Euphrates. But still the polish is not there. Puerto Rico is still a bit clunky.

I like San Juan a lot, which is a much more polished game - too bad those folks didn't do Puerto Rico for them. San Juan is missing async, but then I'm a bit turned off to async now anyway. I'm playing an async game of Puerto Rico and it is *dull*.

You need to compare Puerto Rico and Le Havre to other euro worker placement apps to really see their worth. Caylus is not nearly as accessible as either of those. Agricola will be the real test for Playdek and the real challenger for Le Havre, which holds the euro throne for me right now. Through the Ages might displace LH before that though. Agricola will face some very stiff competition.

Don't compare Codito's work on deep euro worker placement titles to stuff like Ascension/Nightfall/Carcassonne/Ticket to Ride/San Juan etc. These are card/tile games, worker placement games require much more information to be presented to the user and with Le Havre Codito has done an incredible job of making that information available to the user at all times, at least on the iPad. It's a miracle they were able to create a functional interface for smaller devices too.

[MustardCowboy]

Originally Posted by peilei

You can apparently buy upgrades via Facebook and use them in active games using the iPad app per user reports.

I was so disgusted with the app, I setup a site to publish my review of the game. Wasted hours...

Creating an entire website to write one review? Now that's hardcore! In this game's case, however, I think the review (and the website) were warranted. I gave your review a 'like'.

BTW, you may want to consider writing reviews for some of the other IOS board games, both good and bad. I found your review both useful and well-written.

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by peilei

You can apparently buy upgrades via Facebook and use them in active games using the iPad app per user reports.

I was so disgusted with the app, I setup a site to publish my review of the game. Wasted hours...

I agree it was well written and made its points beautifully...but you realize at no point in your review did you discuss the game itself.

Basically you summed up nicely why it is a piss poor implementation of Thunderstone that goes against the very mindset of what apps in the Appstore should be, which I'm sure was the primary point of your review, but shouldn't you describe the game of Thunderstone itself in there somewhere?

[peilei]

Originally Posted by LordGek

I agree it was well written and made its points beautifully...but you realize at no point in your review did you discuss the game itself.

Basically you summed up nicely why it is a piss poor implementation of Thunderstone that goes against the very mindset of what apps in the Appstore should be, which I'm sure was the primary point of your review, but shouldn't you describe the game of Thunderstone itself in there somewhere?

Thanks guys. In truth, I plan to review other iOS boardgames in the future.

I agree, I didn't delve into Thunderstone gameplay (which is excellent and would have been much improved by an app taking care of counting numbers such as attack/light/gold and shuffling cards). That's definitely a shortcoming of the review. I was so upset with the crappy implementation, it basically took over the review...

I will be incorporating that into the structure of future reviews.

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by peilei

Thanks guys. In truth, I plan to review other iOS boardgames in the future.

I agree, I didn't delve into Thunderstone gameplay (which is excellent and would have been much improved by an app taking care of counting numbers such as attack/light/gold and shuffling cards). That's definitely a shortcoming of the review. I was so upset with the crappy implementation, it basically took over the review...

I will be incorporating that into the structure of future reviews.

Cool. Even if a quick little paragraph in the rest of the article.

[Baracus]

Originally Posted by peilei

Thanks guys. In truth, I plan to review other iOS boardgames in the future.

I agree, I didn't delve into Thunderstone gameplay (which is excellent and would have been much improved by an app taking care of counting numbers such as attack/light/gold and shuffling cards). That's definitely a shortcoming of the review. I was so upset with the crappy implementation, it basically took over the review...

I will be incorporating that into the structure of future reviews.

I understand you passion Peilei. Now I'm REALLY worried about Dominion :/

[Artfoundry]

Originally Posted by Baracus

I understand you passion Peilei. Now I'm REALLY worried about Dominion :/

Goko has a message posted to their site now saying they apologize for the misstep on launch, and that they're now back in beta to fix their backend.

[Baracus]

Originally Posted by Artfoundry

Goko has a message posted to their site now saying they apologize for the misstep on launch, and that they're now back in beta to fix their backend.

Thanks for the tip.
I could have told them HTML5 wouldn't work and saved their backers 8 million dollars! Sheesh!
Madness I say!

[LordGek]

Originally Posted by Baracus

Thanks for the tip.
I could have told them HTML5 wouldn't work and saved their backers 8 million dollars! Sheesh!
Madness I say!

Some of the more cynical out there say the real point of this was to simply lock up all of the rights to these board game IPs even if the product itself was nearly vaporware.