Cards, the Universe and Everything is an excellent mixture of gaming and education that builds upon the foundation created in Avid Games previous title ‘Card Explorer’ in every conceivable way. Educational games have a reputation for being hit and miss in terms of quality, and some have a questionable level of content that could be considered useful to growing minds. Luckily, the team at Avid Games seem to have hit the perfect balance with this title.
The product of Armour Games Studios, who also brought us ‘Gem Hunters’ and the mobile edition of ‘Sonny‘, Void Tyrant isn’t the first game to fuse deck building and dungeon crawling, but it does manage to do so with a massive amount of charm.
Suikoden is a series very close to our heart, and without a digital re-release of ‘Suikoden Tactics’ or ‘Suikoden V’ we’re rapidly running out of titles we can easily access to review in time to take part in this year’s Summer of Suikoden event. Luckily an English Translation exists for the Game Boy Advance exclusive title, Card Stories.
On the surface, The Huntsman looks like a shameless advertising scheme for the release of the film ‘The Huntsman: Winter’s War’ a sequel to ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ and a dark take on the popular fairy tale. We’ve seen companies such as BioWare turn these advertising stunts into legitimately entertaining slices of RPG goodness in the past however, can Desert Owl Games manage the same?
Another collectable card game and RPG hybrid hitting the mobile market isn’t normally something to get excited about. At this point the Android and iStores are flooded with titles attempting to successfully do just that and few of them manage to bring anything new or original to the table. Spellstone, the product of a group known as Synapse from Kongregate, manages to exceed all expectations.
I’m deeply thankful to Elements for finally testing out an adventure mode because it allows me to legitimately write about one of my favourite games without having to bend the ‘RPGs only’ rule here at My Boxed Universe. Not that I intend to allow my personal experiences with this title sway me, this will be a fair and balanced review.
It’s hard to take the rules of a card game as successful as Magic: The Gathering and turn it into a thrilling experience outside of its original medium. Direct versions for mobile exist that follow the games design to the letter of the law and manage to be dry, lifeless and overly-complex experiences. Compared to games such as ‘Elements’, which does much the same but allows for the benefits of its medium, there’s not been a really great Magic game.
Edgebee turn their hand to the concept of a card battler and for the most part the product they deliver is a complete success. Card Monsters is something quite different to the usual ‘Pokemon’ or ‘Magic: The gathering’ clone.
Card games are an interesting sub-genre of roleplaying that usually skew just outside of this site’s remit, however with the introduction of a world map to explore, character banter and a story as well as item research and other systems, SoulSpark crosses the border into RPG territory.
