Dominion Review

Barrier to Entry

For the base game, you can play through a nice tutorial to get the basics down. I knew the game going in, but the tutorial seems thorough enough to get new players acclimated quickly. Each of the expansions get their own set of text rules explaining the new aspects they add to the mix.

Most board game players will be very familiar with the concept of deck building, but even those who are not should have no trouble jumping in given the teaching tools in the app.

Look and Feel 

No complaints in the department. The game looks great, with everything managing to fit onto a phone screen quite well. The game is drag-and-drop and moves at a lightning page. One great wrinkle is that when playing against AI, you are allowed to take your turn as the AI opponent's cards are being laid out. A very minor touch that lets you save seconds on each turn, it's the kind of attention to detail which puts TGG's product at the top in this space.

Once you get used to the touch controls for zooming vs playing vs discarding vs trashing, which should only take a game or two, you will be all set here. There is an undo button as well. This is an incredibly slick implementation all around.

On the settings side, you can customize your games to an impressive degree. There are a few presets under the "Strictness" menu, but you can also create your own combination of settings. You can chose what level of Undos to allow, what scoring information is public, public or private deck contents, and whether or not to show a full game log. A common point of contention in the digital tabletop world is what information should be public. This mostly comes into play in async games, as when you play live on a table you will likely have an idea of how many points your opponent has grabbed because you see them being grabbed, but if you only play a few turns a day, you are likely to forget. These settings allow you to play how you want, which is always a welcome addition.

Multiplayer

Temple Gates Games has industry-leading online play in my opinion. The asynchronous game loading time is insane, you will go from your device's home screen all the way through finishing your turn in a matter of seconds. All of that amazing work on their other titles carries over here and it works just as well. It's quite an accomplishment and I think every other company developing games in this space need to license out TGG's online system (I know how impossible that actually is, I'm just trying to make a point here, okay!) Oh, and they also added awesome new features!

Games can be started via a lobby, matchmaking, or invite/private systems. Matchmaking allows you to specify an Async Enrollment number. This lets you select the number of async games you wish to be playing at any given time and when one game ends, you get placed into another to fill the spot! You can also use matchmaking for ranked or unranked games. The lobby games can be specified to the specific settings you want (of which there are many) down to the detail of exactly which cards are in the Kingdom. 

There is also a Daily Challenge mode which pits you against a single AI opponent with a common Kingdom setup for the day. You get to choose the AI difficulty. There are stats at the end and TGG has an active Discord server (linked in the app) where people discuss their strategies.

The game does have local pass-and-play.

Single Player

Temple Gates Games has always has strong AI and there is no exception here. The single player games can be played against one to five AI opponents, each of which can be assigned one of four difficulty levels. Very Easy, as its name implies, will play mostly blindly and most players should quickly graduated to a tougher opponent. From there, the AIs scale up well and provide different challenge levels for players to try out.

The aforementioned Daily Challenge mode will provide a fun excuse for players to open the app every day, this is a strong source of engagement in the app as well as an online discussion point. This is not the first app to do so, but it is a feature I hope to see more and more apps add.

What Else?

The big one here are the expansions. There are 15 of them in the app. At the time of writing this review I do not know how much the expansions will cost (Update: the all-in bundle is $99.99 on iOS and Android, Steam will put a 15% discount on them when you them all). I do know that they have a bundle options for ALL of them, and they have periodically put individual expansions on sale throughout the multi-year long beta the app has been under. There will likely be some sticker shock on the "buy everything" option, but remember that the big box expansions (which comprise most of those 15) each have as many cards as the base set. You could play this game 100 times a day for the next 100 years and never see the same Kingdom twice if you have all of the expansions.

Everyone has their own personal value proposition equation and I can't attempt to tell you what is "worth it" when it comes to buying digital tabletop games. What I will say is that the app lets you dive in as deep or shallow as you want, and that's all you can really ask for. If you want absolutely everything; it's there. If you want the base game; it's there as well.

The Wrap Up

This is a classic game and the right company was selected to finally give it a proper digital implementation. I recommend this app wholeheartedly to anyone who is interested in the game. Diehards will be there for everything, but more casual players can dip into an expansion or two if they wish. Regardless of your level of commitment, the digital implementation is top notch so everyone will have a great time.