Here at Forevergeek, we regularly try to paint a picture of the multitudinous aspects of geekiness. From science fiction to video gaming, from comics to cosplay. Sometimes, these different paths of geekdom coincide into a central nexus making things so much more fun to report. In this case, it’s when board games and video games come together. I’m about 95% sure you’ve heard of the classic board game Ticket to Ride. It’s an all-American best selling board game that’s easy to learn, hard to master and totally addicting to play with friends. The magic of Ticket to Ride is that it appeals to both the board game veterans and casual party gamers. I have to note that Ticket to Ride has been out for quite a while on iOS. Sadly, Days of Wonder did not release a universal version and have two separate versions for the iPhone and iPad. The game is worth mentioning now however because Ticket to Ride Pocket Edition is being released for FREE. If you don’t have it yet, I highly suggest you pick it up. You have nothing to lose. Do note that the original board game can set you back by around USD $30.00 so that’s huge savings already by grabbing this deal.

DOWNLOAD Ticket to Ride Pocket [FREE]
DOWNLOAD Ticket to Ride iPad [$6.99]

This is the trailer for the iPad version, although the game elements are now very similar save for screen optimization.

The objective of Ticket to Ride is very simply. You need to connect train routes to score points. Routes are created by joining train cars matching the color of the route on the screen. Strategy comes in when you need to made decisive moves of blocking opponents from completing their routes, completing your own routes and drawing train cards.

Ticket to Ride comes with solo play, local pass and play multiplayer and online multiplayer capabilities via the Game Center thanks to the latest update. The game truly hails from the original Ticket to Ride save for the messy board. No setting up or cleaning up afterwards required. Go ahead, tell your friends while it is still free!

The popular deck building game, Ascension is no stranger at Forevergeek. So when we fond out that a certain Alan Gerding planned an Ascension Wedding Proposal to his girlfriend Crystol Shelton, we were absolutely delighted.

Alan contacted Justin Gary’s crew asking for help. He wanted to do an elaborate wedding proposal during one of their gaming sessions. It appears that Ascension was the all time game of choice between the couple. For those unfamiliar with the game, we’ve done three features here:

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
Ascension: Return of the Fallen
An Interview with Justin Gary, Creator of Ascension

Watch the proposal below. Alan caught everything on his Flip camera. The video is hilarious because Crystol was too stunned to even notice the ring.

Alan wanted to surprise his girlfriend by having a special card constructed which he was to shuffle into the deck. The guys from Gary Games were glad to oblige and they developed a card, illustrated by Eric Sabee himself, a staple artist throughout the Ascension series. He was able to capture Alan and Crystol’s faces into the card.

Ring of Gerd was the card they developed under Alan’s careful guidance. It’s crafted in the style of the Lifebound faction (makes sense) with their faces captured in Sabee fashion.

The flavor text is romantic-geeky: “Crystol, life is but a game. As long as we have one another, we shall never lose.” Ring of Gerd gives infinite LOVE and can never be discarded or banished.

Gary Games also created a promotional card for actual play called Ring of Life which will be made available this February at Game Day Locations.

As a card, Ring of Life is especially useful if you build your deck around Lifebound cards. Not only does it give you one extra white for casting, it also becomes useful for drawing more cards when used in tandem with the new Unite ability in Storm of Souls. If you go Lifebound, you’ll be able to draw through your deck much faster while gaining Victory Points / whites when you draw cards like Lionheart and Starchild. The ring converts all heroes into Lifebound heroes allowing you to expand your casting pool and gaining points. You’ll definitely steamroll through you deck.

Once again, congratulations to Alan and Crystol!

A couple of days ago I found a link to a video of a college student who was recreating the popular Arkham Horror board game for the PC. It wasn’t an official release by Fantasy Flight Games, but rather a graduation requirement for school. Her plan seems to be pretty solid. Since this is a school project, EU law covers this as fair use and she intends to present this post-grad to the guys from FFG and see if some partnership can be struck.

In the meantime, Andi needs your help. She’s looking for beta testers till Feb 5 2012. You may be an Arkham Horror fan — or a fan of board games in general and getting a free download definitely won’t hurt. The game looks epic. One of the things I never liked about Arkham Horror was that there were just too many expansions to play and I got into it pretty late. The game’s setup is also pretty tedious as you’ll need about 3 square meters of space to get this game really going. This digital edition solves everything.

It must be noted that this isn’t just a direct port of the game. It’s a “3D interactive” version of Arkham Horror where you actually walk around the board and do stuff.

The game is currently only available on the PC with support for old school LAN. VoIP support for multiplayer to be added in the future. But as of now, let’s give Andi our full support to make this game a reality!

To the SCUBA geeks out there, you might be a tad excited to know that Patima has released a “pro level” underwater housing for Apple’s iPhone 4s. Similar in construction to most cases, Patima’s casing is made of stainless steel and aluminum making it negatively buoyant. The case comes with four buttons, three to interact with the touch screen and one to push the home screen.

Patima’s case for the iPhone / iPhone 4s will set you back about USD $300 online. To be fairly honest, you can totally opt for a much better deal if you consider the opportunity cost. A $ 300.00 housing is enough to get you a decent case from Ikelite to fit into your JVC or Canon S95. But I guess the main selling proposition here is the sheer novelty of being able to bring your iPhone underwater. The phone functions won’t work of course — not just because signal gets lost at about 30 ft max, but also because you won’t have any way of pressing the other buttons. The three buttons control the camera functions — shifting from video to photo, taking snaps and entering the gallery. I also don’t see any way you can unlock the phone from sleep mode with these buttons. Try it yourself. Try unlocking the phone by pressing onto the start, middle and end of the slider. You can’t do it. So it really baffles me as to how you’re going to keep the phone always active underwater. Add the fact that by leaving it on, you’re going to be generating a lot of heat underwater which will definitely fog up the housing. Sure, silica gel can solve the problem, but I’m still boggled as to how you’re going to unlock the phone from inside.

Nonetheless, if you’re up for a barebones case and want to take your iPhone down, then nobody is stopping you. You’ll probably get decent shots till about 20-30ft where there’s still light, but deeper than that you may have to carry LED lights when you record or shoot. The Patima housing doesn’t have any provision to attach these lights so everything is rather DIY.

Patima iPhone 4s Case [~ USD $300.00]

Inception has made its mark as one of the most thought provoking films ever made in recent history. What surprises me is that Inception’s IP isn’t being milked for what it’s worth. Call it respect for the franchise or something much deeper. I don’t know. Nonetheless, when I read about a card game based on INCEPTION from planet China, I was intrigued.

Yes, that’s serious trademark stuff there. But that’s not stopping it from being way epic. The art is amazing. The gameplay — well I really have no idea how it plays but I can surmise that the game has the following components based on the subtexts and captions:

a. You can either play as one of the Extractors that needs to get into the final dream level or play as the Mark that needs to prevent the Extractors from achieving their goal

b. Winning the game entails getting through all four stages and opening the “safe” to unlock the secret of the Mark. Extractors typically work together but there can only be one winner. If, by the time the draw pile is finished the mission isn’t accomplished, everyone wakes up and the Mark wins.

Looks pretty straightforward. Well ,the mechanics are. But the character cards start to boggle you after you do an initial look through. In fact if you take a look further, it goes farther away from INCEPTION and puts familiar characters into play: Nicolas Cage from Lord of War, Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Ezio from Assassin’s Creed, a hybrid of Joker / Sith Lord (with matching lightning fingers!) .. and a couple more.

Mind-boggling. It’s a total fan mashup that makes use of Inception’s plot to bring forth game mechanics that don’t seem to suck.

[SOURCE]

For those unfamiliar, MAD Magazine The Board Game, or simply put, MAD was a once in a lifetime 1979 release (there were no reprints) that was quite similar to Monopoly except that instead of buying properties and winning the bank money, MAD’s objective was to lose money!

Such a classic board game cover with Alfred E. Neuman and various art from all MAD contributors including Don Martin!

In the similar Monopoly fashion players would have to tour the board game tiles performing actions that allowed them to gain or lose case. Instead of a Jail tile, MAD had “Tough Luck” where if a player landed there, he or she would have to collect a stockpile of money that players would deposit throughout the play time.

The game was made even more interesting because players could switch seating arrangement (and thus switch money), perform party stunts to lose money, and, if anyone was caught rolling the dice with the right hand, everyone had to give that person $500 in play money.

Perhaps the most hilarious item in the game was the green One Million Three Hundred Twenty Nine Thousand and Sixty Three Dollar Bill. It wasn’t used in-game but, as the sly kid I was in grade school, I’d always tell my friends that the goal of the game would be to gain the most money, just like in Monopoly and my friends would gladly take the green bill. Of course, the joke would be over after I tell them the real objective of the game.

This retro classic is, as I said no longer in print and you’ll probably be able to find a copy at a garage sale where there were kids born in the 80′s.

MAD Magazine: The Board Game isn’t going to win any awards in the gaming scene, but it sure had a special place in my childhood as a huge nostalgia trip. It was perfect for its time.

I got what I wanted for Christmas. I’ve always been curious about a 2011 re-issue of Battleship but my mind was blown when Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast took the classic game I used to play when I was a kid and added a lot more depth into a foray in outer space.

Battleship Galaxies: The Saturn Offensive is a tabletop miniature game that pulls you into a player vs player game of Battleship with a twist. Though it’s fit for two players, there are prepared scenarios for two teams for a total of four players.

The contents consist of a several well built miniatures (themed for two factions), stands, two hex-based boards and action cards which players draw at the start of every turn. As a bonus, the game comes with a graphic novel detailing the backstory. And it’s quite a read as it is made by IDW.

Just like in the original Battleship, the ship miniatures are divided into classes. The difference here is that just like in Warhammer, you’re allotted a set number of points at the start of the game and you can consume these points to launch ships. Better ships cost more points. And, just like in the classic implementation, the game comes with two well made dividers to hide your ship roster from the enemy.

[Photo above c/o BoardGameGeek]

Battleship Galaxies is fairly easy to learn. You draw cards, launch ships, consume energy points to perform actions and destroy enemy ships to win the game. Yes it’s pretty straightforward but the strategy involves a lot of energy management to accomplish objectives (your entire fleet shares the same energy pool, which makes it rather difficult to micromanage) and positioning your ships to flank your opponent.

As someone fond of house rules, Battleship Galaxies is easily mod-dable and theoretically can scale pretty well if you play with two or more sets. This would consist of expanding the playing field and setting starting energy levels a lot higher per turn (you only gain 10 points per turn which isn’t a lot considering it takes about 15 points to launch your capital ship — and that’s just to launch it!)

All in all, Battleship Galaxies isn’t anything like your old school classic. In fact you don’t need to have previous knowledge of any of its iterations to learn this game. It’s quite a standalone and pretty new (released middle of this year). If you’re up for small one on one board games, Battleship Galaxies is something you need to pick up.

Battleship Galaxies: The Saturn Offensive
BUY NOW — USD $ 40.00 – $55.00

We’ve seen case mods for the XBOX 360 everywhere. From turning the whole console portable, to injecting it with a nitro-cooler, to paint jobs that are just so crazy-awesome. This, however caught my eye as a marine enthusiast and diver: a total conversion of an XBOX 360 into a nano-reef. Yep, that porcelain crab you see up there isn’t living out in the open. That’s actually magnified by a lot and it’s living inside a gaming console.

What is it: It is a custom build XBOX 360 nano-reef.

What’s a nano-reef? Scientifically speaking, marine tanks (sea water) operates very differently from fresh water tanks. The latter cab ne summarized with a gold fish bowl with water and things can actually be fine. Salt water tanks are different. You’ll need to delicately keep water current flowing, temperature monitored to roughly 24 degrees celcius depending on what types of coral you want to grow, lighting to simulate moonlight and daylight and a lot of other “behind the scenes” tanks to generate protein and keep the salt water clean. Now, the smaller a tank is, the harder it becomes to maintain because you’re basically trying to recreate a complete eco-system with under 10 gallons of water.

Jacques Costeau himself said that the ocean is the world’s sewer because of its sheer size. Imagine having a sewage system that’s about 5 gallons capacity. It’s going to be pretty tough maintaining this.

Setups like this won’t allow for a lot of life. In fact it’s highly discouraged to even have fish living here. Invertebrates, crabs and shrimps are your best bet.

Nano reefs such as these need a lot of TLC. 60% water changes every week. Fresh saltwater mixes. Cleaning. It needs 24/7 power and a backup generator system in case the power goes out. All the stuff that needs commitment. This hobby is generally not advised unless you’re 101% serious in building tanks. You can actually start with gutting out an XBOX 360, waterproof it and instead of salt water, start with a fresh water setup which won’t require as much backend wiring. You’ll basically just need an aerator and a filter to get one of these going. And a gold fish.

[source]

This post is just about two years late. Yep. That’s how long it took me to finally grab a copy of 7 Wonders, easily one of the most epic board games in recent history. Released last year, 7 Wonders has already won a Cannes Jury Prize alongside 28 other awards. I’ve been playing this card development game a couple of months after its release but it was only recently I was able to acquire it as I live on the other side of the pond.

7 Wonders is a card development game for 2 to 7 players. It is set in ancient times and each player controls his own civilization that must fight for economic, military or scientific victory. Since there is no one clear path to victory, winning the game entails amassing the most number of points based on the cards that you played. The game is divided into 3 different ages each with 6 turns for a total of 18 in-game turns. A turn consists of playing different cards by paying the resource cost. Your city has the option of buying resources from other adjacent players and rewards are given for building structures, markets, military or contributing to science.

At the end of three ages, all the player points are tallied and the one with the most points win. For instance, a player may decide to take the route of building structures which give him direct influence points that add up at the end of the game. Or, a player can focus on investing in science where every green card adds up exponentially and can really rack up points as you get more combinations. There’s also military conquest which grants victory points at the end of every age. The strategy to 7 Wonders is endless as it highly depends on your choice of city, who are the civilizations adjacent to you and what cards are passed around during the game. Note that you don’t keep cards — your hand is passed around every turn after choosing a single card to play.

7 Wonders is no doubt one of those games with very high replay value and after several games, I still can’t figure out a “best” strategy to winning as there are just too many factors to consider, just like running your own city.

7 Wonders retails between ~USD $30.00 to ~USD $35.00 from Amazon.com.

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Justin Gary of Gary Games — better known as one of the Magic Pro-Tour players who founded the highly addicting deck building game, Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer. In this interview he hinted of an iOS version of the first expansion, Return of the Fallen due soon. And “soon” really meant before the holidays. For USD $2.99 you can upgrade your version of Ascension and buy RotF as an in-app purchase for USD $2.99.

BUY ASCENSION: RETURN OF THE FALLEN (USD $2.99)

Return of the Fallen introduces a new expansion deck which can be incorporated into the main game or played separately, albeit for 2 players only since there are fewer cards in this version. RotF is an exact replica of its deck building equivalent, sans the setup. For those unfamiliar, you can read the core mechanic in our initial preview. The new set adds the “Fate” concept where cards in the center row will behave according to the way the Fate instructions dictate. In this version you also have more abilities to play with, such as Arha Sensei, an Enlightened Hero that allows you to banish starter cards for Mystics of Heavy Infantry directly into your hand.

To buy the expansion all you need to do is upgrade your version of Ascension to its latest version, which adds the in-app purchase option. Apart from the expansion, the latest version adds support for online and offline play record keeping, player profiles (previously was lacking and a definite improvement!) and the ability to play the game using any config of Ascension, as a solo set or with mixed cards.

The new expansion also adds a new soundtrack and effects (some of the Creature kill FX are disturbing!), a new gallery for the expansion set cards, and a brand new refreshing title screen. Ascension has not however, added a third level of difficulty for the AI, something that iOS players will notice as being un-checkable in the options.

Ascension won’t make it to the Top List of iOS apps in the App Store but I well assure you that this game is epic. The additional USD $2.99 you’re going to spend + the initial USD $4.99 for the core set (that’s if you haven’t bought it yet) are so worth your money!

For the past several years we’ve seen concept cars rolled out by the Americans, Europeans and Japanese. From designs inspired by the Batmobile and Tron, these cars embodied the “sleek” design of the future making me wonder how every civilian will be driving a car that looks like something straight out from a movie.

Now Toyota did a bit of the reverse and was inspired by the philisophy of our everyday, people-friendly touch screen smartphones to dictate the future of the automobile. The movement towards cars being platforms has been taken an almost literal step further with the Toyota Vii Concept Car.

The “Vii” sounds like it could have been a model for a smartphone. And in a way it is, it’s a smartphone with four wheels on it. Watch the video.

Observations and Learnings

1. Modern day platforms seem to take the formula of apps into ubiquity. In this case, customization and OTA downloads are really staples, just like with computers and mobile phones. You can change the color of your car. You can download and update apps. You can navigate with GPS. It’s pretty much the same thing mobile phones do under a different ecosystem. I dare say the same thing with appliances and furniture.

2. These smart cars will only be fully actualized when the paradigm of the road infrastructure shifts as well. If you noticed, the car makes use of different navigation technologies embedded into the road to safely navigate its way around the city and not collide with any other car. Recharge stations should also be in abundance; like paying for the mere parking of your car isn’t just rent space but also space for refueling. And the Internet. You’ll need a well thought out Internet plan to get this thing going as being connected forms part of the overall experience. If these work, they’ve got a new revolution.

3. It’s a concept car. Nothing we will see in the next 5 years. Maybe even after 10 years. It’s too revolutionary that the infrastructure needed to support the system barely exists. Try driving this in the countryside and you’ll end up with a car out of fuel after a bit.

The holiday sales are really good for discovering titles that have gotten pushed down through time from the iTunes App Store best seller list. Aquamarine HD is one of them. Released September of this year, Aquamarine HD was made available for free for a limited time which prompted its rise to the top downloaded game that week.

Aquamarine HD for the iPad is absolutely stunning. The graphics are gorgeous. The animations sparkle amidst the filter of being underwater and provides that exact illusion to the player that he may often get lost to simply admire the underwater flora and fauna. Watch the video.

Sure there may be some uncanny things happening in the game such as our heroine being able to laugh and speak underwater and propel herself several feet into the air like a dolphin but these are easily forgivable for the actual gameplay is rather fun and immersive.

A huge storm sweeps through the coasts and our heroine loses all her friends in the wake of the storm. While on a boat, she decides to snorkel underwater to talk to some of the fish to help her find her friends. Yep, the story seems rather bizarro but trust me on this one, it works out somehow. The gameplay mechanics are rather simple with you pointing and dragging your finger towards the general direction you want her to swim. There’s an oxygen bar on the left side letting you know how much time is left before you run out of air. It’s amazing though how deep she can hold her breath. And talk. Underwater. To fish.

The current game is not without hiccups though — the current release is bugged with BG music not playing which should be fixed in a later version that was also just announced.

Pros
- excellent graphics; one of the best on the iPad
- relatively fun to play

Cons
- current version has an audio bug
- only available on the iPad

[Download Now]

Bottomline
Aquamarine HD now only costs USD $0.99 and it’s well work the price. Great graphics, good gameplay and an overall charmer that you would want to show off to your friends.

There’s a new game out for iOS and it’s called Brawl. The game made it to my radar for two reasons — first because it was a free release and secondly, it was a card-based boxing game. I’m a huge fan of deck building games like Ascension, Dominion and 7 Wonders so albeit this one makes use of much simpler rules (yep it’s really simple), I find the genre of fast-paced card action rather interesting.

The game itself isn’t very deep. Two boxers fight their way to victory and punches are thrown through cards. The winner is determined by whoever landed the most punches. A game consists of two player cards (boxers) and each player draws from a shuffled deck of punches and blocks. You can throw punches to the head and torso, represented by locations on the top and bottom part of the player cards. You can stack blows until a player draws and places a block card which means you won’t be able to land any more punches in that area.

Punches and blocks come in different colors. You can only stack punches of the same color and block with the corresponding color of punches.

Depth is achieved when you can add a third stack (red cards) which lets you throw additional punches and blocks. The game ends when you can no longer land any more punches and the total number of points (i.e. punches landed) determine the winner.

Variety takes place with the choice of boxers. There are three boxers initially available with three more unlocked via in-app purchases (surprise!). The boxers are characterized by the number of certain cards in the decks. For instance, Hale comes with more hit cards in all colors but very few blocks. Chris on the other hand comes with a balance of hits and blocks.

The game may take a while to master but after the tutorial and first few play through, a game can last no more than 1 minute. You can challenge the AI or play online.

Brawl is free on iOS and can be downloaded for both the iPad and iPhone. [DOWNLOAD NOW]

Add them up on Facebook too.

We’re delighted to have Justin Gary with us, sharing his thoughts on the new expansion for the Ascension series. We previously featured the core game as it also had an iOS component but now, a number of expansions later, their latest — Storm of Souls is ready to go.

In the photo above, Justin is the one with the Ascension shirt in front of the poster.

1. Ascension was built by pro tour Magic players — how were they inspired to come up with Ascension and what are they doing now?

I originally came up with the concept for Ascension after playing Dominion for the first time. With my background in Magic, I immediately recognized the excitement and opportunity that comes from being able to build a deck and develop a strategy during the course of a game (and without spending tons of money to collect all the cards).

After playing several games of Dominion, I noticed that once I became familiar with the piles of cards, I could plan out my entire strategy from the beginning of the game and the rest of the process was a kind of boring simulation to see what happened. Ascension spawned from the idea that you could combine the randomness of Magic booster drafts with the deckbuilding concept of Dominion. Then, I brought in my many talented Magic Pro Tour friends to test it out and refine to make the game as fast, fun, and strategically interesting as possible. I’m happy to say that all of the talented Pro Tour players involved in the initial development of the game (Rob Dougherty, Brian Kibler, John Fiorillo) are still on board today making new sets for Ascension!

2. What’s your view on deck-building card games? How much influence did games like Dominion have in crafting the Ascension series? What aspects of deck-building did they take and make to improve Ascension?

See above. Dominion gets a lot of credit in my book for inspiring the deckbuilding genre of games. I designed and developed Ascension before any other deckbuilding games came out. The main improvements I tried to make over Dominion are:

- make the game faster to set up,
- make the game faster to play,
- increase the variation between and during the game so you have to make more relevant decisions as the game goes on
- allow players to influence the cards that are available during another player’s turn

3. Are there any plans to build up the lore of Ascension? Looking at the cards, it seems like there’s an epic backstory to the whole thing. What does the latest expansion bring to the table in terms of lore?

There are a lot of people asking for more about the lore of Ascension and we are planning to deliver. Right now most of the story is told through the art and flavor text on the cards, but we have put some stories up on AscensionGame.com and are working to get more info to the players soon. One other big aspect of our story is that players can interact with it through our organized play system. This summer at Gencon, we had our Godslayer tournament, where players were able to battle to determine who would earn the title of Godslayer, killing Samael once and for all and saving the land of Vigil. He will receive a card in a future Ascension expansion to commemorate his victory.

Storm of Souls takes place after the fall of Samael, with each faction trying to claim dominance over Vigil now that the common threat is removed. This is represented in part by the different events in the set. In addition, as this battle is going on, a new threat is arising, with the souls of the dead flooding into the realm and a mysterious Nemesis (a dragon made up of lost souls) looming in the storm of souls above the land of Vigil. Learning who is behind this new development and how to defeat him will take place during Storm of Souls and the follow up expansion.

4. For the latest expansion, what are the new features that players should look forward to?

Events are an exciting new addition to the Ascension world. Event cards represent the different factions of the Ascension world rising to dominance. When an event card flips into the center row, it is set aside and creates a new rule for the game that all players must follow. Some cards interact with the Event cards, becoming stronger when their faction’s events are in play.

We have a lot of exciting new ideas for future expansions and I know Ascension fans are going to love what we have in store. Storm of Souls represents a lot of great mechanical changes to the game, not just with the new Event card type, but also with Trophy Reward monsters, and a whole slew of exciting individual cards and interactions.

5.One of the comments by most Ascension players was that there was no direct way to influence your opponent’s deck apart from say, Xeron Duke of Lies. Will there be such things in this latest expansion?

We are very cautious about making ways to directly take cards out of an opponent’s deck because this is a very negative experience for a lot of players. We do introduce a lot of ways to disrupt each opponent including making them discard cards, constructs, and distrupting which cards are available to them on their turn.

For the full interview, check out the Forevergeek Boards.

If you want to preorder or purchase the board game series, do check out their online store.

We are truly living in the age of tomorrow. Making leaps from the Internet, touch screens and human computing, human civilization is moving on to the next phase of technology — defying the laws of physics even more. As technology gets even better, science fiction such as Star Trek serve as pegs for the reality. The tricorder is today’s smartphone, voice commands are in computers and mobile phones, touch screens are everywhere … so now it’s time to look at the more astounding “macro” uses of technology.

Last week we were made aware that levitation is now possible (hello hover bikes, hover boards and gravitational plates). It’s possible because of a little thing called quantum physics. This week, we’re seeing another stab into epic science: tractor beams. And they’re being made possible by taking a second look at lasers and how they behave in conjunction with other particles.

With around USD $100,000 in funding, NASA explores making the tractor beam a reality (actually this is sad — if this was the case Kim Kardashian’s failed wedding could have funded this and perhaps warp gate technology).

NASA scientists Barry Coyle, Paul Stysley and Demetrios Poulios of the Goddard Space Flight are in charge of this project. It seems that a laser light can be manipulated to carry an object towards a destination in the same way a vacuum cleaner pulls an object by creating “empty” space between it and whatever it’s pulling.

Note that this isn’t the first time something like this has been attempted. In 2010, a team of Australian scientists were also able to move an object more than a meter into the air. The laser attempts to move small objects through changes in air pressure and heat (I would assume that this is because hot air rises while cold air falls).

These two methods have one thing in common — the use of air and vacuums to create a pull like effect. In science fiction, we see tractor beams working outside space and perhaps this is still a long way off. Yet NASA seems want the tractor beam to be used precisely for space — cleaning up debris outside our atmosphere.

[source]

Many weeks ago we reviewed Bang! The Bullet. This app never made it to the top list of Apple apps for download but among a huge niche of board game geeks, Bang! is definite favorite.

Recently, Palzoun & SpinVector released a much needed update that not only incudes the Dodge City Expansion set, it also put in the much needed online multiplayer that players from around the world were clamoring for. Previously, Bang! only had pass on play for some semblance of multiplayer but this turned out to be rather tedious and impractical.

To sweeten the deal even further, the app now sells for only USD $3.99, a full dollar cheaper than when it went on sale earlier this year.

For those unfamiliar, Bang! is a spaghetti western game where each of you take the role of either a Renegade, Outlaw, Deputy or the Sheriff. Depending on your role you each have specific missions to accomplish: outlaws must kill the Sheriff, Deputies must protect the Sheriff, while the Renegade wins by being the last man standing. All identities, save the Sheriff are hidden from one another and you try to discover everyone’s roles by the different card actions you can do. Dodge City introduces green cards to the play deck. Green cards must be placed down as equipment cards but only have a one time use in the succeeding turn. That means that if you have green cards that allow you to shoot people, you can use these apart from your regular Bang! cards.

Online multiplayer is included in this update but it isn’t done through the Game Center — rather you need to create a Bang! account from an external website and sign in. Other than that small annoyance, the core multiplayer is fun.

Bang! also includes achievements to unlock during play. They’re really nothing new, but add to the “oh so I did that and got an achievement” discovery of the game. Sadly, no new characters are in the expansion — you will need to unlock them separately.

All in all, Bang! HD sweetens the deal by adding a complete expansion pack, achievements and online multiplayer and subtracts one dollar from the app. Those are more than enough reasons to get one of the best board games ever made.

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is by far one of my favorite card games. It’s right up there with 7 Wonders and Bang! Board Game Geek has awarded Ascension: CotG 3.5 stars out of 5 and the good news is that they full game is now available on iOS for a mere USD $4.99. The physical game costs USD $27.99.

Ascension: CotG is a deck building game for 2-4 players. The game was designed by a handful of Magic: The Gathering Pros and they wanted to build a fast-paced card game that didn’t rely on who had the better deck beforehand. Instead, players start off in equal footing and build the deck as they play. Winning entails computing the sum of Rune points acquired from creature kills and points from the types of cards you built your deck with during the game It’s good news to those that don’t want to spend a ton of money on booster packs and special cards as the core game is pretty much a standalone set good for 2-4 players already.

On to the iOS version. I can pretty much sum up the experience of CotG as quite similar to playing the actual card game. The UI is very well thought through with each card having a zoom in function anytime during a game session is ongoing. As the screen of your iOS device is limited, the board allows you to touch areas of the screen to pull out your summoned Constructs, view the Void and discard deck (you can hold and drag to see everything scroll by!) as well as see summaries of other player decks such as the number of constructs in play, number of Runes acquired and so on.

The game features both offline and online play. You can hold several offline games simultaneously as well as queue up in gaming lobbies for multiple games to see which one you can get into first. Because CotG is fast-paced by nature, wait times are never annoying.

Bottomline
Ascension: CotG is a definite MUST HAVE for the iOS. If you’ve never heard of the game till this review, you STILL should pick it up and I guarantee you that this will be one of the most played games on your iPad or iPhone.

[Download Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer]

EDIT: The original image is traced back to the young Jonathan Mak.

I found an Apple logo with Steve’s silhouette serving as the bite mark. I don’t recall exactly where I found it, but I really wanted to turn it into a little tribute wallpaper. Problem was, the image was around 300 x 300 and really wouldn’t fit anything, even a mobile device.

I opened Keynote and created a new presentation with a black background. Pasted the image and it auto-aligned with the rulers. Added the text. It was that easy. Many years ago, creating something like this would have taken about 5 minutes if you were any good. It literally took me 15 seconds.

This made me realize Steve’s legacy of empowerment. Of making things easier. Of simplifying. And of making things beautiful.

If you want a 1920 x 1080 version, feel free to save this file.

So I checked out the video and I must say this is a “fresh” look into the way back machine of gaming nostalgia. In a nutshell, Team Fortress Arcade is a project that takes everyone’s favorite Free to Play shooter and turns the whole experience into a side scrolling action platform reminiscent of the days of the SNES and arcade machines.

In Team Fortress Arcade you can relive the Payload maps with the same objectives but in side scrolling mode. It’s not enough to kill enemies, but you need to move the payload forward to advance to the next areas of the stage.

Here are 5 reasons why you should download Team Fortress Arcade, like now.

REASON 1: IT’S FREE. Not only is it free to download, there’s no business model behind it. No micro transactions. No hats. No cash whatsoever. All you’re spending is bandwidth to download the entire game.

REASON 2: IT’S MADE BY ERIC RUTH. Look at this guy’s stable of games. Truly epic. If you’ve played any of his previous titles (like the 8-bit version of Halo)

REASON 3: IT’S FUN. So what if it’s free? Is it fun? YES! YES! YES! The game takes all the Blue Team members through several levels with a boss from the Red Team at the end of every level. The Spy can backstab. The Engineer can plant sentries. The Doctor can heal. The Soldier can rocket jump. It’s quite authentic. And most of all, fun.

REASON 4: Because there’s more to come in the future. Yes you can play with up to four team mates in this version (having a Doctor in the team is an absolute must) which makes the game even more fun as you go through every level fighting the oddest types of enemies (very reminiscent of NES games where you have the weirdest types of enemies from floating teacups to robots and other doodads). Future versions will have multiplayer, difficulty settings and a versus mode. And more.

REASON 5: CAN’T WE STRESS IT ANY MORE? IT’S FREE! You absolutely must download it now. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t download this game.

Team Fortress Arcade [FREE DOWNLOAD]

[source]

Fun to play and easy to learn, don’t let Hero’s Way make you too confident with your party management skills!

Price: Free
Platform: iOS
Download Link: [Download Now]

A defense game with a twist — Hero’s Way is a side scrolling action game that allows you to indirectly control three types of heroes specializing in different forms of attack. Choosing from a combination of the strong burly warrior, the mid-range spell caster and the long range archer, you can mix and match combinations so that each adventure is different. Thus far it may seem that the best party combinations would be to have two warriors for damage and meat shields and one long ranged archer that can attack flying creatures. Heck, we even tried re-rolling three warriors and the party management seemed to play even better.

All your troops attack automatically, which means that the only way to control them would be to pick them up and position them in various places in the map, helping them evade attacks and positioning them in between enemies for maximum damage. Enemy behaviors help you take advantage of the drag and drop automated battle system of the game — from choosing where to place your heroes when the werewolf charges from left to right, or choosing where to fling your party as they dodge slow moving arrows.

Each time you die, you can choose to immediately resurrect your hero by paying a penalty fee of 100 gold. Gold is extremely important if you want to get anywhere as the chests you collect need at least 200 gold to unlock. The amount of gold needed to unlock a chest increases as you progress. Most of the time it doesn’t seem practical to open chests as the bonus items rarely outweigh the ones you can buy at the shop. In fact this **problem** becomes the greatest challenge in Hero’s Way — not having enough money to unlock all the chests you want, which is why the devs have included an in-app purchase system for micro-transactions. And that’s your business model right there. Gold coins are needed for bringing fallen heroes back to battle, upgrading different aspects of each character type, and so on.

The game is oddly simple but overly entertaining for its class and it’s definitely one of the must have downloads for your iPhone / iPad.

Action packed, easy to play and overly addicting, Third Blade gives you three ways you can choose to deal pain to your opponents.

It’s not often we come across good hack and slash games on a mobile phone. Third Blade is one such rare occurrence. The game is made by com2us, one of the more prominent adventure game developers for iOS and Android. They’re responsible for another best seller, Inotia 3: Children of Carnia and Heavy Gunner.

Walking through the forest, you and your girlfriend (??) encounter an army of huge slugs. After slicing up a few, you realize, in horror that your friend has been half-eaten by one of the remaining slugs. You make your way towards their general direction to rescue her.

Third Blade is a side scrolling action game with a lot of hacking and slashing. It features the option to use three different types of bladed weapons, each more suited to different types of enemies. The three weapons are classified into a fast but weaker dual wield knives, a balanced sword and a heavy two handed broadsword that deals maximum pain but attacks slowly. Each weapon has its own distinct adrenaline charge attack which you can further customize as the game progresses.

Each level is pretty linear and advancing to the next level only entails you survive a number of waves of enemies before a portal to the right of the stage opens. After a couple of warps, you encounter the boss of the stage which is usually a more powerful version of the generics you kill off in that particular stage.

Third Blade allows you to change weapons instantly, although I found using the two handed broadsword for most of the game, dishing out maximum damage while keeping checked on my distance with enemies. Each level awards you with coins — which you can also get from drops. The coins can then be used to upgrade each of your weapon types and abilities.

Third Blade is pretty much the cookie cutter action game that Android users may want as the ultimate time waster. Best of all, the game is free to download with in-game purchases being the not so surprising business model.

Third Blade for Android [Download Now]

Inspired by a cult classic, Space Pirates vs Zombies is a highly engaging space sim with a lot of replay value.

For those of you young enough to remember playing Star Control II, it is enough to say that Space Pirates vs Zombies brings back the nostalgic feel of that very same space sim and brings the genre back to life, updated with so many more perks that you wished were there in the 10 or more years that it lay dormant.

Even though they don’t say it, SPAZ is an obvious tribute to Star Control II. It’s “that” game that the two devs are referring to.

Space Pirates vs Zombies is developed by a duo of indie developers that couldn’t seem to find a game much like they had wanted to play, so they decided to build one for themselves.

You play the role of space pirates commanding the Clockwork, an almost self-reliant starship that can build its own fleet of ships and defend itself from the authorities. Your missions consist mostly of mining for the generic “Rez” element to build anything while fighting different galactic factions — yes including the zombies, a product of an experiment-gone-wrong by one of your officers let loose when your old ship crash landed into an asteroid.

In Star Control fashion, the game plays top down, where you get to maneuver your ships using your mouse and keyboard. Both mouse buttons are used for weapons. Unlike in Star Control where alliances with each race gives you access to different types of ships, SPAZ forces you to grind for enemy black boxes found by destroying ships. Once you destroy a ship and acquire a black box, the Clockwork reverse engineers the blueprints of the hull you destroyed. Ships are classified into size classes where the differences lie in how many weapon and upgrade ports are made available for each ship. Some ships may move fast but can only carry missles while others move slowly but can carry forward and rear turrets.

As you gather resources and build ships through missions within chapters, your ultimate goal is to span through the galaxy across all warp gates and defeat the evil space shambling menace.

Space Pirates vs Zombies is a must have title for its creativity, price and replay value. There’s a lot of grinding here, but what space sim wouldn’t be complete without it.

[LINK] It’s USD $14.99 on Steam.

Dragon Hunter 2 may have slipped under your radar, dear Android user. I was surprised myself, initially downloading it based on the number of stars it received in the Android Marketplace, but I admit that I had to dig deeper into the list of games to find this one. I have never played this series before — I had no idea what part I was. In fact, after playing this, the “2″ seems irrelevant.

Dragon Hunter 2 is a defense game where you have to defend your base against swarms of dragons. You start off with a ballista and flick your finger in the general direction and angle of the incoming waves to take all the dragons down. Initially, the absence of a targeting system was rather bizarre but I found the controls to be rather intuitive as you don’t need to be 100% accurate when taking down each dragon. It seems like you’re hitting a square target that’s rendered into the shape of a dragon.

Although it sounds easy and yes, maybe oversimplified because the graphics don’t stand out too much, I will admit that Dragon Hunter 2 has a relatively good amount of depth. As you kill dragons, the corpses fall into the water. A viking boat comes and picks up the corpses which is used for food for your troops. At the beginning, you have 3 troops — two operating the ballista and one boatman. Later on your crew size increases to having more archers, faster boats, a repair crew on a zip line and mages on top of the tower that do area of effect damage. This is where the game gets more interesting, as you battle more powerful dragons, sea monsters and bosses. Sure, the graphics are nothing like Army of Darkness Defense, but it’s still hella fun and don’t you forget — FREE.

At the end of every level you receive food and gold. You can use the gold to buy upgrades for your defense and offense and the food is automatically used to feed the crew. One technique to get more food is to wait for the dragons to come nearer so that the boat has an easier time gathering. Of course the payoff is that if you start missing, your tower goes down.

Dragon Hunter 2 is free for Android. [DOWNLOAD HERE]

What happens when you take the creator of the Mechwarrior, Shadowrun and Crimson Skies series and put him at the helm of a new pirate game for the iOS? Crimson: Steam Pirates is the collaborative work of Jordan Weisman (our Mechwarrior guy) and Bungie Aerospace, which is Bungie’s own platform to help developers create games and launch them in mobile and social platforms. So we’re bringing together the guy who created Mechwarrior with the team that conceived the Halo Universe — and after months of shack work, Crimson: Steam Pirates is born.

Forget the “YARR!” and “AHOY MATEY!” dialogue. Steam Pirates is set in a steam punk universe where pirates man the helm of what looks like ironclads with riverboat wheels. From destroying coastal fortresses to shop for a dress for your first mate to capturing enemy ships to add to your fleet, Crimson: Steam Pirates

The game is reminiscent of the old Astraware classic, Tradewinds, a turn based strategy game of maritime warfare but this new title adds an epic storyline, ships with special abilities and boarding parties.

Before each scenario, you’re given a list of objectives to accomplish. Whether it’s to plow through enemy ships, capture a prized vessel or destroy a fort, the game mechanics are the same: before a turn starts, you will need to plot the course of your vessels before hitting “Play.” After which, all actions are carried out including your ship’s movement, special abilities activated and also the movement of enemy ships. Since the turn takes place simultaneously, you will have to guess where the enemy’s forces may end up based on the map objectives and special abilities. Combat is automatic — cannons are fired as long as an enemy ship is within the vicinity of your weapon’s reach.

In missions where you’re required to board an enemy ship, you will need to win 3 skirmishes done through a mini card game. Your crew leaders are defined by playable cards with special abilities that affect the ship (double range of guns, faster movement, etc). But in deck combat, each crew member has an attack and defense rating which they need to use to overpower the enemy crew. Win 3 skirmishes and you gain control of the vessel.

Crimson: Steam Pirates is, amazingly, free. For the initial chapter of course. Future episodes being developed will have in-app purchases available.

Crimson: Steam Pirates for iOS [DOWNLOAD NOW -- opens iTunes Link]

Always loved the movie Tremors when I was a kid. I’d borrow the Betamax every so often when my family would visit the rentals. Giant worms burrowing underground, hunting their prey through vibrations. In fact, gigantic worms have always been part of my childhood — from the movie Tremors, to the huge sand worms of Frank Herbert’s Dune series (yes, the book and the movie) to the 1984 manga-movie Nausicaä: Valley of the Wind. I believe the armored worms were called Ohmu.

A year ago, a friend made me try out Super Mega Worm by Deceased Pixel, a game which he had described as “the movement back to 8 bit graphics with amazing gameplay.” Super Mega Worm was my first foray into the “Worm” series. Many months later, a more colorful and polished Death Worm was released by Play Creek on iOS and was then later ported to Android earlier this year. There was a free version which had a built in timer which stopped the game after a certain point and the paid version (it really didn’t cost too much — about USD $2.99) which let you unlock the entire game.

Between this there were other ‘Worm’ clones not really worth mentioning.

Apart from graphics, Super Mega Worm had some form of platformer element where you could double jump if your worm landed on the roof of a vehicle — which let you jump on a plane, which led you up to outer space. This game was less sparing when it came to power ups as Death Worm made you collect three of a kind power ups in the form of fireball blasts and nitro for speed. The latter made you work for special power ups, making you rely more on your acrobatic feats of crashing into tanks, jeeps and helicopters more hard-earned. Pulling the nitro enabled you to do long jumps from the ground to reach the higher soaring vehicles such as bi-planes and commercial aircraft (which oddly reminds me of the trailer from Sharktopus).

Net of it all, the ‘Worm’ series of games are must haves with Death Worm looking more polished but it doesn’t necessary mean it’s better as the strategies for high scores are very different (the platform jumping on Super Mega Worm is the kicker).

Download Death Worm [iOS]

Download Super Mega Worm [iOS]