Daily iPad App: Frozen Synapse simulates some very impressive turn-based strategy
Frozen Synapse has been a successful title on Steam for a while now -- it's a turn-based strategy game, with the twist being that you're a sort of tactical AI, running these battles on simulations and hardware rather than in real life. As a result, the big draw of Frozen Synapse is that while, like many other tactical strategy games, you are guiding a series of soldiers around turn by turn, these turns are actually simulated, and you can test them out and repeat them as many times as you like before playing out the "prime" sequence, and running the real thing.
The pacing of the game is pretty perfect, then. Frozen Synapse has now been ported to the iPad, and the touchscreen gives you a whole lot of flexibility over what commands you can give your little soldiers: Just double tap on the screen to set up waypoints for them, and then you can drag those points around as needed. You can then run the simulation to see what happens, but of course your enemies don't always behave in the real world as they do in the sim, so it's up to you as commander to make sure you've planned for any contingencies in the various scripting you've passed out to your troops.
Frozen Synapse is simple once you figure it out, but the UI allows you to do a lot with the little guys you control, and as a result can be fairly complicated. Still, there's lots of helpful tutorial videos included, and the good news is that there's no shortage of content for the game. In addition to a full campaign, you can also play instantly created skirmishes, or five different multiplayer modes. Frozen Synapse is available for a premium price of US$6.99, but that's much cheaper than the Steam version still goes for. If you're a tactical strategy fan, this one is a don't miss for sure.
