Welcome to our Review Roundup. This is an article on our site which we will run quarterly to help you catch up on all of the recent new releases you might have missed in the digital board game world. Our intention is to highlight all of the games that came out, link you to our reviews, and tell you a little bit about them. In the case of Steam-only games, we will include them here even if we haven’t reviewed them. We hope this is a useful column and look forward to continuing it going forward.
Titles are intended to be listed in release order, we will likely goof up one or two of these as going back and finding an exact date can sometimes be difficult, but that probably won’t annoy anybody but ourselves.
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Platform
Android, iOS, & Steam
Developer
Brain Good Games
Solar Settlers is an original digital board game. It borrows from a lot of familiar Euro-style games to create a very fun solo challenge. Players must prove a new solar system to be inhabitable by humans before time runs out and they are lost forever. This is done with a combination or route optimization, city building, worker placement, and other classic mechanics. The game scales the difficulty based on your performance and uses procedural generation of levels to come up with an appropriate challenge each time you start a new game. Solar Settlers is a great entry point for a solo Euro-style experience, there is a lot of depth in the game and it is sure to remain difficult over the long haul.
Platform
Android, iOS
Developer
Asmodee Digital
Ever want to zone out and mow down dozens of zombies for a while? Zombicide has you covered! The app is inspired by the physical game, but has a handful of key changes, many involving the combat system. The game takes place over 40 scenarios, most of which are fairly short, with a few that will take you near, or over, an hour. The game uses between-scenario progression to upgrade your characters and weapons, giving the game a light RPG feel which is a nice addition. The scenario design is a bit uneven at times, but I still had a blast killing all of the zombies, finding new weapons, upgrading, and doing it all over again in the next scenario.
Platform
Android, iOS, & Steam
Developer
Temple Gates Games
Shards of Infinity wants to be your new go-to attack-based deck builder. The game is from the designers of Ascension and features many of the classic deck builder tropes. The game winds up fairly similar to Star Realms, but with some distinct twists to allow it to stand on its own. The app it phenomenal, featuring incredibly quick load times for online games and really great AI to play against offline. If you are tiring of Star Realms/Ascension or haven’t tried either, Shards of Infinity is a great place to look for something new in the genre.
Platform
Android, iOS, Steam
Developer
Playdek, Inc.
Go head to head as the Unionists or Secessionists in this politic area control game set in the lead up to the US Civil War. Play cards tied to historical events or people in order to exert influence over specific areas across a few major tipping points. The game mixes strategy and tactical moments well, and plays quickly enough that the more random/luck-based factors can be forgiven if you’re dealt a bad hand. The game features online play with a wide range of timeout options so you can play at the pace you like. Fort Sumter is a great choice if you want a lighter take on political struggle as played through area control and hand management mechanics.
Platform
Android, iOS, Steam
Developer
Bearwaves
Feud is a fun, innovative take on chess. Each player gets eight pieces, each with hit points and abilities. A turn is simply swapping one of your pieces with an adjacent piece and then using an ability. The goal is to isolate all of your opponent’s pieces so they have no legal moves, or to kill the king. It’s simple and looks great thanks to some eye catching design. Best of all, the app is free across all platforms, so you should probably go ahead and check it out immediately.
Platform
Android, iOS, Steam
Developer
Handelabra Games
No, we’re not crazy. We realize this game was released in 2018, and remember handing it out Game of the Year award. However, until May 2019, the game was only available on Steam and tablets. The team and Handelabra reworked the UI to make things work on phones and that is the update we’re referring to here. If you shied away from this game because you couldn’t play it on your phone, now is the time to take another look. It’s a rougelike dungeon crawler where you must battle your way past various enemies and traps through a few levels of a dungeon before a final boss showdown. The game is incredibly difficult, but the app offers a progression system which allows you to improve your heroes even after defeats. There is an impressive amount of in app purchase content on top of the deep base game, so you could be busy for a while with this one.
Platform
Android, iOS, & Steam
Developer
Nomad Games
We did feature this last time, but that was only a Steam release. The Android and iOS versions hit this quarter, so it shows up again. This is a card crafting game which twists traditional deck building by allowing you to upgrade individual cards rather than adding new cards to your deck. Cards improve over time to allow you to get even better upgrades and score more points. The game also features a fun push your luck element which will allow you to draw more cards on a turn, but risk busting and losing it all. The app is really well made and the game gets better as each new expansion rolls out and adds just a bit more to the gameplay.
