Game-related ramblings.

Month: January 2017

I Have Apparently Chronicled The Godslayer In Ascension: Chronicle Of The Godslayer

As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

I started playing Ascension after seeing a recommendation somewhere on the internet. If I recall, the recommendation called it the best game available for Android devices. It’s a digital adaptation of the card game of the same name, which I had never played before. As a deckbuilding game it owes much to Dominion, the game that popularized (and possibly invented?) the concept: a game in which players begin on equal footing but must build their decks of cards over the course of the game to gain advantage over their opponents. Compared to earlier collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering, which require that players build their decks ahead of time from a pool of cards they’ve purchased, Dominion is a one-time purchase and no players are given an advantage due to a bigger collection of cards. This made it quite popular. I’ve played Dominion and enjoyed it, but quickly tired of it. I’ve enjoyed my time with Ascension more, but I’m still not sure whether I’ll stick with it.

I Found Earth In OPUS: The Day We Found Earth

As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Except, I didn’t really. More on that later.

OPUS: The Day We Found Earth generated a lot of word of mouth, primarily because it’s a different prospect than most games avialable for iOS and Android (it’s since been ported to PC as well): a story-focused experience. While most mobile games fall into similar molds — puzzle games, word games, limited actions on timers with microtransactions, etc. — few emphasize a linear story. Conventional wisdom says that such a game could never succeed in the mobile marketplace, where the only way to make money is to ensure players keep playing as long as possible and keep wanting to pay for convenience or vanity. A game that players will purchase once, play through, and then never touch again could never make enough money to break even, especially since the price points for mobile games are so low (typically less than $5, often as low as $1 or $2). OPUS: The Day We Found Earth seems to disprove these ideas, and for that it deserves praise, even if the actual story it offers didn’t really grab me.

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