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Games being ported to iOS is nothing new, but games being ported over from the Playdate–a tiny handheld featuring a crank on the side of it–is not something I necessarily expected. Generations from Scenic Route Software is exactly that, and the game itself is is a perfectly fine and meditative matching game.

Making babies

Generations is a puzzle game that takes place in a cozy living room setting. Above the couch is a 6×3 grid that you place icons that appear on the side tables onto. Your goal is to match these icons to form new ones while reducing space on the grid and progressing like that until you run out of room to make matches or place new icons.

Mostly, the icons you are placing on the grid are people of various ages, though the starting icons tend to be a stork with a parcel that matching three (or more) of creates a baby icon. Each icon when matched “ages up” to become a slightly older version of the people on the icons that were matched and if you match three or more of the oldest icons together they disappear off the grid and age up every icon remaining on the grid.

Life's little moments

There's not a whole lot more to Generations than this basic matching gameplay, but there are a bunch of little details that make the game both more challenging and charming. From a puzzle design standpoint, the matching in Generations has a few key rules you have to keep in mind at all times. Icons can only match if they are touching along orthogonal sides and condense into the new icon at the location of square used to complete the match, for example. The other key principle is the fact that you can't place icons anywhere you want on the grid. You can only place icons next to icons that have already been placed.

Outside of the game rules themselves, Generations has a few nice touches that give it a bit more life than it might otherwise have. The living room shows signs of life (including a cat you can pet), there are fun achievements to discover, and there are special icons you can unlock after learning some of the hidden rules around getting icons to appear on more than one of the side tables.

Perfect from Playdate

In terms of the actual port job, the iOS version of Generations plays perfectly, so much so that I can't tell how the original Playdate version is supposed to play. The touch controls are about as intuitive as you can get, and all of the art looks totally natural despite the original game not having color. All told, if no one had told me this was a game on a different platform I would have assumed this was a game developed specifically for iOS.

That said, Generations isn't exactly a deeply involved puzzle game. You can compete to beat your personal best or against others on the leaderboards, but otherwise there aren't additional modes or unlocks to uncover here. I prefer that to having a game laden with in-app purchases, currencies, or meaningless upgrade mechanics, obviously, but at the same time Generations can feel a little threadbare at times.

The bottom line

It's clear that Generations is made with a lot of love, and that translates into this beautifully colorized iOS version. It's a fun puzzle game, but it is a very modest package. A few added touches certainly add to its appeal, but I wouldn't bank on Generations holding your attention for more than sporadic play.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/scenic-routes-generations-review/

Apple Arcade has proven to be a pretty underwhelming service despite the fact that some standout titles debuted there. One such title is Roundguard, which has re-released on the regular App Store and is a creative mix of dungeon-crawling and arcade pinball action. Do yourself and pick up this stellar title.

Loot then bounce

Roundguard is a sort of pachinko or pinball game that is most reminiscent of something like Peggle. You launch a ball from the top of your screen down onto a series of pins and try to hit as many of them as you can to net a high score. Roundguard styles itself after classic dungeon-crawlers and role-playing games though so your ball is actually an adventurer and all the pins in a level are treasures, potions, enemies, and more.

At the bottom of the room are dungeon spikes that can chip away at your health if you're not careful, so the crux of the game revolves around balancing scoring and surviving, and Roundguard gives you a lot of tools to allow you to manage that beyond aiming your shots and hoping for the best. Each character in the game has unique abilities and gear that you can upgrade and swap out across a run that–if played right–can take you through several different dungeons and give you a run at posting a new high score.

Game of chance

There are a few different ways to play Roundguard. In the game's primary mode, you choose a character to play as before going on a standard dungeon run that has branching pathways allowing you to choose mini-bosses to fight, treasure rooms to explore, etc. (though you do have to aim well to choose the room you want to go). There are also daily and weekly challenges though that have pre-select your character and their gear and often push you to play the game in a different way, like managing constant poison, no gravity, or other strange modifiers.

This variety is what keeps Roundguard feeling fresh. Between all of the different kinds of gear, trinkets, game modifiers, etc. it's not often that a run in Roundguard feels exactly like one you've played before. The fundamental idea of aiming shots to try and maximize score stay the same, but the ways in which you do that can and do change often and sometimes drastically.

Chill, but not casual

If you ever played Roundguard while it was on Apple Arcade, this new standalone version of the game syncs perfectly with your Game Center account and retains all of your progress and scores from the subscription version. This was welcome news for me in booting up this new version of the app since I did not want to start from scratch on unlocking new encore modifiers or relics.

I didn't want to start over because Roundguard has over 200 items and trinkets in it that switch up the experience. I enjoy unlocking and optimizing combinations of these items to try and maximize my scoring potential, but the nice thing about Roundguard is you don't really have to do that. The game has a ton of depth if you want to explore it, but it's also just a relaxing little pinball game that rewards you even if you don't try to bend everything it has to offer to your will.

The bottom line

Roundguard repackages the dungeon-crawler in a way that is relaxing and perfectly suited for mobile. I wasn't too keen on recommending folks to buy into a subscription just to enjoy this game and a handful of other gems, but now that I don't have to I heartily recommend Roundguard to anyone wanting a fun, charming, and deep dungeon-crawler on their phone.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/roundguard-review/