Wow! I’ve been waiting years for this! Thanks!
I’ve played a decent amount of Dawnmaker on Steam and enjoy it. Each individual round feels like playing a city builder. The “empire” part of it comes through getting to upgrade your deck across multiple rounds in the campaign. Felt like something I’d play a ton on mobile, so I’m psyched for the port.
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Damn you both. Downloading Townsfolk now.
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Give us some impressions!
I’ve finished I think 5 of 7 tutorials, and it’s taken me maybe 45 minutes. Which, I mean—it’s not that complicated a game yet, but everything involves setting up a series of processes which take real time to play out. Even when fast-forwarding, that’s not so fast you’d be likely to miss much in a tutorial-sized world, so it just takes a while. Plus, some of the things they’re teaching inherently require you to build up to them, or experience unexpected events. But it feels like stripped-down Civ without explicit units (just a general “people” resource), which is kind of promising. I rarely play Civ 6 on my iPad, though it’s good, because it feels like starting it up takes a while, I’d need to relearn a complicated set of mechanisms, and it eats battery. I could see this being a more format-friendly option.
Also, the new expansion to Ascension might be my favorite yet. Lots of multicolor cards, and color matters in a new way. So it feels like there are more concerns to balance and effects to trigger, and it feels like it’ll play more nicely with other sets than is usually the case, because the quality which makes the new mechanic trigger was already present on cards from other sets.
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Townsfolk has a turn-based mode! I am baffled that this isn’t the default; it’s basically “fast forward until something happens, and then pause”, which seems like the obviously desirable setting. I’ve now played all of the tutorial, and a weekly challenge. Overall, I think the game is fine. My only real gripe is that there are a LOT of adjacency relations— never expect to learn them all—so it’d be sensible for those to be communicated in a sidebar for whatever tile you click, rather than requiring a dive into the compendium. But, even with turn-based mode, games take a while, and I’m not sure I want something on my iPad that takes longer than half an hour without being a well-regarded board game adaptation. Even that, I want pretty rarely. So I might get more into this one, but might not.
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I’m not sold on Dice of Kalma yet, perhaps because I’ve been spoiled by Balatro and this is just a very light version. I don’t mind the switch to dice but a couple of things are lost in the translation - first, since you re-roll everything after each play you don’t have that decision making where you need to figure out what is worth playing versus what is worth holding in hopes of being useful in future hands. Secondly, some of the jokers - I mean, skulls - are a bit obtuse; getting +2 mult for having your first two dice equal half the sum of the last two, or whatever, is not worth the brainpower or the odds. Finally, there is no progression. Unlocks were a huge part of Balatro, but this one has nothing on that front.
The basic gameplay is ok and a run here and there is fun, but I’m not seeing the depth or longevity, either.
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Apparently there is an app version of King of Tokyo now? It’s by a solo developer with no other titles, it looks horrific, and it costs $7…what’s going on with this?
Is it officially licensed? There’s no mention of the board game publisher anywhere in the description on the AppStore. And I can’t imagine they would allow a title screen that didn’t include Richard Garfield’s name.
It does say “the official app version of the award-winning board game.”
But I’m also skeptical.
Also it reads as though it is online only and multiplayer only. No mention of AI.
Bit of a no bueno for me.
The app description says it’s official but it really doesn’t seem to be. I expect this to be gone soon.
For those on BGA, I’ve really been enjoying Living Forest which was a game I had never heard of before seeing it mentioned on that site.
Nicely-themed deck builder + push your luck + race to win. Enough brain power required to keep it interesting but simple enough to play async without feeling like you need to take notes for next turn. A bit of competition but again in a way that works with async, and the turns are short but generally satisfying too (you almost always feel like you are making progress unless you push your luck too far.)
Happy to accept BGA friend requests from anyone here, of course! 
(I’m Codington on BGA as everywhere…)
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Acram’s Dawnmaker just released on iOS. It looks right up my alley but I’m currently next deep in Dragon Quest III, so I’m holding off for a bit. If anyone plays it and has any impressions, let us know.
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I preordered it, love to support them, and it looked up my alley as well. About to fire it up and I’ll report back.
eta: very pretty. Randomly crashes on me when I build my… center building? to level 2. The tutorial isn’t very robust and I lost my first few games due to not understanding how to level things up. So far it’s ok… not sure how much play time it will get but I do need to give it more time.
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Love it on Steam, preordered on mobile, haven’t had a chance to play but it sounds like it’s buggy at the moment. Willing to give them lots of runway to get this one right, though.
Quick edit to add: my initial experience was very similar to @js619 in that it takes a few plays to figure out how/what to level up. Stick with it; I think the game’s a lot of fun once it clicks.
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Steam Winter Sale is live until Jan 5.
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what new level of addiction hell have my children wrought upon me? It’s as if Tetris met frustrating physics and had a crack baby. Play it a few times before you judge me.
also available as a paid version, 2.99 usd, for those without Apple Arcade
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2020:
fled to the Switch from my overbearing Steam-Backlog grown out of many Steam sales/Humble Bundles.
2025:
It happened, I have to delete stuff from my Switch library because I ran out of space…
Scrolls furiously trough a miles-long-switch-library…
h
History sure does like to repeat itself!
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I am really enjoying Dicefolk. It took longer than it should to warm up to, but I am starting to see it play out and through.
Some of the power is hidden - and the sequencing is important.
great recommendation - probably my new game of 2025 winner!
1 Like