Speaking of Game Center, the developers were going to make a separate HD version of Neuroshima Hex, but decided against it. A sort of win/loss tracker would also be nice, but that might be implemented once Game Center support is added. The developers have promised on the app's website to fix this in a future update, and they've also said that they'll add asynchronous multiplayer (which means being able to play multiple matches at once and also being able to leave a game in the middle and come back later, as you can do in Samurai), so big things are on the horizon. Since battles are "lovingly" animated and take a while to play out without requiring any input from the player, the screen often darkens before it's over. No app is perfect, though, and one of the minor problems in Neuroshima Hex is the inability of the game to turn off automatic screen dimming. You can play the game with between two and four human or computer opponents, so props for the flexibility. A poll – with an admittedly small sample size – says that the game's AI is quite good, and I found that to be true in my games. There are three levels of AI difficulty (easy, medium, and hard) and three speeds (slow, normal, fast) to challenge you.
Right now, there is a decent video tutorial and a well-written manual to guide you. The developers promise that a change to the way players can access this information is coming soon. Right now, you need to pause the game, then drill to the manual and then into the unit descriptions. The easiest method would be to simply have a pop-up window appear if you touch and hold a tile. At first, these will be overwhelming because, sadly, the app doesn't currently make it easy to duck out of the action in order to figure out what the heck is going on. Unit tiles have different strengths and abilities that are described using little icons on each piece. In Neuroshima Hex, the problem is figuring out what your tiles do. In Kingsburg, the problem was the lack of an overview screen. Like Kingsburg, Neuroshima Hex is not the easiest game to figure out by playing the app. Nothing is ever certain in a chaotic game of Neuroshima Hex, and this is a good thing. The biggest one? The battle tile, which starts a fight right away, before the board fills up. There are also instant action tiles, which can totally change what's going on. You need to be able to make the best moves with the tiles you draw, and there is a lot of tension in making sure you're placing your pieces in the right place for the battle to come. The game involves lots of luck and strategy. Unit tiles all have an initiative number, which determines the order in which they will attack, as well as any special abilities, like toughness (the ability to take multiple hits before dying) or ranged weapons. Each army has different units and, thus, different strategies to try out. Simple, right? Well, as you probably suspected, there's a lot more to it than this.įirst, there are four different army decks of 34 tiles to play with: Borgo, Hegemonia (Hegemony), Moloch, and Posterunek (Outpost). The pieces fight, HQs take damage, and you repeat until you're the only one left with any (or the most) hit points on your base. Once every space on the board is filled, a battle is triggered. Each turn, you draw up to three tiles and must discard one. Set in the post-apocalyptic world of Neuroshima (a Polish RPG), where machines and monsters fight, Neuroshima Hex is a simple little miniatures game for two to four players where you use hex-shaped pieces to attack an opponent's base. Want to know more? Read on for what you seek. Need another reason? The developers say that a universal version of the app with a higher price tag ($4.99) will be coming soon. Given that the tabletop version of the game runs about US$30, and the app sells for $2.99, there's very little reason to not check out this app if you're at all interested in the theme or board gaming on your iPhone. The music and sound effects are also well done, adding to the tension and mood of the battles. The gameplay combines tricks from a miniatures-based war game with abstract strategy titles. The artwork is wonderfully clear on a Retina Display, and the part-apocalyptic, part-1950s sci-fi style graphics are very fitting. For a cardboard hex-based game that's reproduced in your pocket, Neuroshima Hex is gorgeous. The new board game app that's based on the 2006 tabletop game Neuroshima Hex is a lot of things.