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Athenion might not have the pedigree of some other deck-building card games available for mobile, but that shouldn't put you off. This is a game that's packed full of bright ideas, fresh new gameplay modes and enough content that you can lose hours of your life to.

Battles take place on a 4×4 grid, and see you taking it in turns with your opponent to lay down cards. You draw up to five cards from your deck of forty at the start of every turn.

These are the units you're playing in the fight, and they range from hulking monsters to flighty fairies, from magical trees to fearsome undead dragons.

Your cards have arrows on them that you show you which direction they can attack. You'll also notice a bunch of other numbers on the cards. These let you know the hit points a card has, how powerful its attack is and how many soul points it grants you.

Those soul points let you attack your opponent and they're the key to victory. The first player to lose all of their own hit points is the loser.

There's a lot more going on than that though. For one thing you need to pick from one of six different factions before you even get to the fights.

These factions have different strengths and weaknesses and figuring out which of them best suits the way you want to play is the first step of a pretty long journey.

Different factions have different special moves as well. Some let you link together cards to make them more powerful, others are all about sacrificing weaker units to create pockets of dark magical energy. One lets you build giant rock walls that you can use to protect some of your units or power up others.

There are single-player challenges, regular events and much, much more as well. You're never short of something to do in Athenion, and the pace of the matches lets you get a lot of them in in a single setting.

The Good

There's a staggering amount of depth to Athenion. It's going to take you a good while to get to grips with the basics and once you've done that there are layers and layers to peel back. Every time you win you'll figure out a new strategy and every time you lose you'll be trying to find a way to right that wrong.

The game looks amazing too. The cards all sport a brilliant anime art-style and you'll want to collect all of them just so you can check them out. The speed of the fights is a massive plus too – they deliver huge chunks of tactical action in the sort of short-blast sessions that are perfect for mobile play.

On top of that there's a brilliant community to the game, and you never have to wait long to find an online battle. There are a number of different modes that let you practice with different decks, take part in intriguing events and fight it out in ranked and casual multiplayer matches.

The Bad

There's a pretty steep learning curve here, so if you're not in for the long haul then you might be better finding your card-based fun somewhere else. Even when you've got the basics down you've still got a lot to learn and it can be punishing to come up against an opponent who knows more than you do.

There are also a lot of currencies, crafting materials and other rewards to figure out. The game does tell you what they do, but the tutorials are pretty brief and you're left on your own for a lot of the time to try and get to the bottom of things.

Overall

Athenion might not be the easiest game to understand, but once things start clicking it becomes something really rather special. There are some brilliant ideas here and they're woven into a bright tapestry of gorgeous visuals and wonderfully paced mobile play.

It won't be to everyone's taste, and it's fair to say that some players are going to put it down before they've even got to the good bits, but this is one CCG that it's well worth sticking with.

8.2

OVERALL

Replayability 8.1

Game Controls 8.2

Graphics 8.7

Sound/Music 8.2

Gameplay 7.8

FREE

Athenion: Tactical CCG

ZERO-bit Company Limited

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Old Man's Guilt ($0.99) by Yugeun Song is a puzzle platformer about an old man who had only one particular reason for coming to a deserted island. If you enjoyed other games like Umiro and Old Man's Journey, then you may like Old Man's Guilt. No, it's not related to Old Man's Journey, so don't get them confused.

These days, I feel like things are just moving way too fast for me to handle. When you have a lot of things going on, this is just natural. That's why I just want to take some time to myself and unwind with some games on my iPhone, as it helps me forget about my worries. I'm a fan of puzzles that keep my mind stimulated, and I also love platformers since I grew up with them. So of course, these two put together are the perfect kind of game, right? When I saw Old Man's Guilt on the App Store, I was intrigued, as I love puzzle platformers.

$4.99

Old Man's Journey

Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH

$2.99

Umiro

GHI Media, LLC

Visually, Old Man's Guilt carries a retro aesthetic, thanks to the 16-bit graphics that are reminiscent of titles like Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery. The backdrops are pretty simple, with transitional layers to make objects appear farther off in the distance, and the foreground is pretty detailed and textured, even with the pixelated style. The colors in the game are mostly muted earthy tones with some darker hues as you progress in the story. It sets the overall tone and theme of the game, which I thought was nice. However, I noticed some of the text appears fuzzy and not crisp on my iPhone 8 Plus's Retina HD screen, which irked me. There's also a rather slow transition animation for dialogue text that you can't speed up or skip, which is also annoying. There's not much of a soundtrack to the game, but it's full of sound effects to mimic the feeling of being on a remote island, which is relaxing and nice to hear.

Even though Old Man's Guilt is a puzzle platformer, it's not really a game where you pick and choose which stages you want to play, and there are no stars to earn. Instead, players go on a narrative journey to discover the reason behind the old man's presence on the island. He first arrived on the island in a much younger state, but he grew old and now needs help to get to his destination. That's where you come in. Players must help guide the old man through a series of puzzles and avoid traps and dangers, all to discover his reason for being there.

Controls in Old Man's Guilt are simple and work out alright, but could be more responsive. In the bottom left are two directional buttons for having the old man move left and right. The bottom right corner has a button for jumping, and another for interacting with environmental objects like ladders, switches, and more.

My biggest issue with Old Man's Guilt is the fact that the old man is, well, super slow. I suppose this is due to the fact that he's an old man and doesn't move like he used to, but for a game, I consider slow movement a hindrance. It feels like forever for him to get a running start, and I end up worrying about whether or not I'm going to make the tiny jump over a spike in the ground or not. It probably goes against the whole premise of the game, but I wish the old man would move just a tad faster.

It gets a bit tiresome when you're still trying to figure out the game and end up dying, only to have to try again from the beginning. And when you move that slow, it just feels like forever. I think a checkpoint system would also help, at the very least.

Since the game is more of a narrative experience, there isn't a way to go back to previous levels and replay them. This makes sense though, since you don't get anything for finishing stages anyway, so there's little reason to go back. But if you get stuck, there are also no hints or a way to skip a level, so you'll just have to keep trying until you get it.

A pixel art based puzzle platformer.

The Good

Old Man's Guilt is an interesting game, as the story behind the old man is the hook. The graphics are pretty decent, and the sound is realistic and relaxing. The controls are basic and do a decent enough job, and the puzzles can be rather challenging.

The Bad

There are a few issues with Old Man's Guilt that I'm having with the game in its current state. For one, the fuzzy text needs to be fixed, as it's quite painful to see these days when everything is optimized for Retina HD and Super Retina screens. I would also like to be able to make the dialogue text transition faster, or skip it entirely.

And while I understand that the main character is an old man, the slow movement speed doesn't translate that well to a puzzle platformer, at least in my opinion. It ends up being more frustrating than anything, even more so when you die and have to start over. The game could use some checkpoints, at least, to help ease the pain of one small mistake.

The verdict

I wanted to like Old Man's Guilt, but with the current issues I'm having with the game, it's more frustrating than anything. I hope to see improvements made in future updates, but for the time being, this one is going on the back burner.

If you think you'd have better luck with the game, you can find Old Man's Guilt on the App Store as a universal download for your iPhone and iPad for just $0.99.

7.0

OVERALL

Sound/Music 8

Game Controls 7

Graphics 7.5

Gameplay 7.5

Replayability 5

$0.99

Old Man's Guilt

YUGEUN SONG

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews