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Daily iPad App: Leviathan Warships features sweet, turn-based boat warfare
First of all, go enjoy the wonderful trailer for this game. If you're not sold on Leviathan Warships (US$4.99 on the App Store) after watching that, then I'm not exactly sure what else you want. Leviathan Warships is a turn-based naval strategy game. Your job is to guide a series of ships through watery battlegrounds, leading them turn by turn against your opponents. The game is similar to Bungie's Crimson: Steam Pirates, in that you guide ships around by dragging them, but it's much more complicated. You can aim each ship's guns separately, upgrade your ships as you see fit and take on co-op and multiplayer battles in addition to the main campaign. The whole package is impressively thorough, and in that sense, the trailer is dead on. In fact, there might be a little bit too much here to play with. Those looking for a casual title will find Leviathan Warships overwhelming. But the $4.99 price is fitting -- enough to signify the game is substantial, but still cheap enough for anyone interested to jump right in. Leviathan Warships is highly recommended for sure.
Daily iPad App: Magicka arrives on iOS with Wizards of the Square Tablet
Magicka is a long-running game series from Swedish developer Paradox Interactive that the company has recently decided to go big on. In addition to an upcoming multiplayer spinoff, Paradox has released this version for iOS today, hoping to bring some of the PC game's magic to Apple's touchscreen platform. And in general, they're successful. While it's not perfect, Magicka for iOS does recreate some of the desktop series' wackiness and creativity. On the PC, Magicka is a top-down RPG of sorts, where players can control various wizards that run around blasting off spells. On iOS, that game has been translated to a side-scrolling beat-em-up, but the spell-combining mechanic from the original title is still included. Basically, you have a series of elemental icons across the bottom of the screen, and you can combine any four to create spells on the fly. Hit four fire icons or ice icons to cast spells of those types, or you can combine fire and water to cast a steam spell, or fire and electricity to cast a thunderstorm spell, or water and electricity to both wet down your enemies, and then light them up with current. You can attack any of the bad guys that are pestering you or your allies (the game offers local co-op, which can be a lot of fun). There's also a "life" spell to either heal yourself or others. The spells have some really fun effects, too. For example, casting life on the undead hurts them. You can also use a wall spell on your various elements. Extra weapons and robes provide stat bonuses, just like in the main game, but most of the fun involves sussing out which spells to use in any given situation. The game also carries a wacky tone -- Paradox's Swedish sense of humor shines in its weirdness. I don't think Magicka for iOS is quite as fun or original as the PC title. To a certain extent, Paradox is just trying to spread the brand more than creating an original iOS game. But it is a lot of fun. Whether you're a Magicka die-hard or just want to try the game's spell-creation system on your iPad, Wizards of the Square Tablet is a very good time for a price of US$1.99.
Knights of Pen and Paper gets a +1 edition, courtesy of Paradox Interactive
I've written here about Knights of Pen and Paper before -- it's a really great little role-playing game that portrays not just a party of fantasy adventurers fighting monsters, but the actual tabletop players behind those characters. It turns out I'm not the only one that really enjoys Knights of Pen and Paper, because Swedish publisher Paradox Interactive has picked up the game (which is developed by a company from Brazil named Behold Studios), and re-publishing it as Knights of Pen and Paper: +1 Edition. The new version of the game will play essentially like the old version, though a rep from Behold told us at GDC this week that it will have lots more of everything: more monsters, more skills, more dungeons and towns, and more quests, encounters, and everything else. There will be some new systems in the game as well, including a dungeon system where you can delve into a series of rooms trying to find a key and reaching random encounters, and a tavern system, which will allow you to change out new characters at the table right in the middle of your adventure. There's also a new equipment system, which will allow for things like elemental damage, so you might be able to build a mage with fire damage, or protect against specific types of attacks. The new version of game looks great, and besides a release on iOS, Paradox is also helping Behold to bring the game to other platforms, too. It's releasing on iOS as the new version, but also the PC, Mac and Linux on Steam, and on the Android platform as well. Behold says that Paradox has been a great partner for them, and they've even got proof: When both the Behold and Paradox teams sat down separately to make lists of suggestions for the game's new version, it turned out that a lot of the ideas from both teams were exactly the same, so that shows they're very much on the same page. I think the partnership should be great for both parties -- this is a great game already, and Paradox is helping to make it even better. Knights of Pen and Paper: +1 Edition is due out sometime later on this summer.
Europa Universalis dev offers up game engine for free
There's only one thing better than getting something for nothing. However, since it's unlikely that someone is going to deliver us a life-size Toblerone, we'll settle for Paradox Interactive's news that the Swedish game company is releasing its game engine into the wild as a free download over GamersGate.Codenamed "Europa," the engine was the same used to develop games in Paradox's Hearts of Iron series and Europa Universalis II (pictured). According to Paradox, the company plans to set "a few minimum criteria" for the engine's use, and games created using the technology will be made available for sale over the GamersGate download service -- meaning that for those indie devs looking for a 'cheap as free' solution to make their hard-core PC strategy game dreams a reality, this could be it.
