I think it's safe to say there's more than just "casual" games on smartphones and ipads these days. And even if a game is "casual", it's not by any means bad. So what's your favorite? Is it something mainstream and simple, like Angry Birds? Or have you found a more niche (perhaps more challenging) game for download?
Personally, I'm nursing an obsession with Starbase Orion. From the creators of the Masters of Orion games comes an IOS version. I haven't played the original games, but based on my experience playing it, and the research I did deciding to pay its hefty (for an IOS game) £5 price tag, it doesn't seem dumbed down at all.
With updates, the game now features the ability to fight up to seven enemy empires at once. Custom race builds are still in there. Apparently the game runs closer to Masters 2, rather than 3. Apparently a good thing, but I wouldn't know.
It's a huge time sink for me, and features inter-device multiplayer, as well as Pass and Play. The universes and planet names are randomly generated, and while choosing difficulty and amount of opponents, the player can choose the size of the universe. As colonization is time consuming (construct ship, send it to star, land firs colonist on habitable planet) it takes judgement, as you really need to use the most beneficial places. The stars are colour coded based on whether its planets are liable to be good for colonization, or tougher, but with rich resources, completely perfect, or all around crap. That said, it's not set in stone, and you can still find the occasional low resource high colonization value planet on a white star system, for example.
Advice I would offer to new, less experienced players is focus on feeding the population (build hydroponics centers quickly to free up colonists for other jobs) getting a research centre on at least a couple of planets, but most importantly, get your ship numbers up as quickly as possible (but don't just binge on frigates) because the first time I played, and encountered another empire, they had me way, way outgunned.
Overall, my only gripe is that it can be a little unresponsive to button presses, but once you get into the habit of giving it an appropriately firm jab, the touch screen adds to the sci fi feel of it all
Huh. Turned into a bit of a review there. That wasn't what I intended. If it had, it would have been more critical, and better structured. I'm a writer, after all.
So, favorite smartphone/ipad games?
Edit: every time I've said "universe", I meant galaxy. Silly little error on my end. Those would be some small-ass universes...
Personally, I'm nursing an obsession with Starbase Orion. From the creators of the Masters of Orion games comes an IOS version. I haven't played the original games, but based on my experience playing it, and the research I did deciding to pay its hefty (for an IOS game) £5 price tag, it doesn't seem dumbed down at all.
With updates, the game now features the ability to fight up to seven enemy empires at once. Custom race builds are still in there. Apparently the game runs closer to Masters 2, rather than 3. Apparently a good thing, but I wouldn't know.
It's a huge time sink for me, and features inter-device multiplayer, as well as Pass and Play. The universes and planet names are randomly generated, and while choosing difficulty and amount of opponents, the player can choose the size of the universe. As colonization is time consuming (construct ship, send it to star, land firs colonist on habitable planet) it takes judgement, as you really need to use the most beneficial places. The stars are colour coded based on whether its planets are liable to be good for colonization, or tougher, but with rich resources, completely perfect, or all around crap. That said, it's not set in stone, and you can still find the occasional low resource high colonization value planet on a white star system, for example.
Advice I would offer to new, less experienced players is focus on feeding the population (build hydroponics centers quickly to free up colonists for other jobs) getting a research centre on at least a couple of planets, but most importantly, get your ship numbers up as quickly as possible (but don't just binge on frigates) because the first time I played, and encountered another empire, they had me way, way outgunned.
Overall, my only gripe is that it can be a little unresponsive to button presses, but once you get into the habit of giving it an appropriately firm jab, the touch screen adds to the sci fi feel of it all
Huh. Turned into a bit of a review there. That wasn't what I intended. If it had, it would have been more critical, and better structured. I'm a writer, after all.
So, favorite smartphone/ipad games?
Edit: every time I've said "universe", I meant galaxy. Silly little error on my end. Those would be some small-ass universes...
