A little clarity on Caylus…

It is NOT a lazy cash-in. From what I can tell, it’s a fantastic representation of the physical board game. However, the lack of private games and a friend list, particularly for a mobile board game with asynchronous play, is a serious omission. That is the only reason I haven’t been badgering folks to get it. The community around the iOS game has spoken (loudly), and the developer, Big Daddy Creations, is working on a solution.

Caylus is a complex game with simple mechanics and very deep strategic possibilities. Carcassonne and Ascension are simple in comparison. If someone is craving that sort of thing, with a less than optimal multiplayer implementation (right now), then I say get it. If you’re into these sort of things primarily for multiplayer, then it’s probably best to hold off until/unless they improve it.

As a footnote, Big Daddy Creations is a developer known for releasing very slick, well-received games. They just haven’t gotten a handle on multiplayer yet. Hopefully that’ll change.

I played the demo for Darkness 2 at NYCC this past year, and even though it wasn’t my favorite game at the show, it was definitely interesting. The idea of “4 shoulder buttons for 4 arms” worked fairly well and was intuitive. I’m interested to see more when the full game arrives soon.

I really enjoyed this show! I liked the banter, but the serious stuff was good too; I liked hearing about some of the background stuff and it makes me more appreciative of all this stuff you’ve done for us, especially seeing how you don’t make anything from it! It’ll certainly be interesting to see where things go, and how our community grows with the addition of forums!

I’ve also been playing a few demos recently; I played a few older game demos, but I also played the Amalur and Darkness demos.

I had quite a few glitches and bugs in the Amalur Demo, including the same no-head bug that Adam got. I kinda enjoyed the linear opening section, but when I got to the more open free-play stuff I kinda lost interest. I think this reflects more on my personal tastes rather than the game, though. I quite enjoyed the gameplay mechanics and the story is interesting, but as I said, I’m not an open-world game fan and so am not sure what I think about it.

The Darkness demo was quite fun too, and it was really interesting to have the extra arms with their abilities etc. I found it pretty difficult to manage four things at once though, and I think this may hurt the game – I felt like I was spamming random controls at times and not taking in the level design and other elements. I think that with some practise, things might become a bit easier though, so I might give the game a rent.