As part of the tenth anniversary celebrations for Stonemaier Games (which strangely for a fanboy I haven’t written about yet!) have just announced and released a free official Stonemaier Games Scoring app.

The app will initially act as a digital score pad for Wingspan, and record high scores. Other Stonemaier games will follow over time.

So how will this effect the unofficial, nothing to do with Stonemaier Games, Wingspan scoring app Wingmate?

Although technically they do the same job in other ways they differ.

Firstly Wingmate will cost you money. To score a game (other than the free to try single player scoring), use the automata, use either/both the expansions for scoring, you have to fork out hard digital cash.

As mentioned earlier in the post the Stonemaier app is completely free.

Wingmate is designed to be used during play.

At the start of a game you set up the end of round objectives either using the app to select them or draw them randomly physically and let the app know which ones you are using.

Then during the game at the end of each round you record each players score for that objective.

The official app is designed to be used at the end of the game.

It’s here that I noticed a difference in the nectar scoring.

Wingmate calculates the end game scoring on the rules where points awarded are based on majority in each habitat. Whilst the official app gives a point for each nectar collected!

When did this change? Shouldn’t the official app use the rules or give the option to chose between the two?

I don’t play using the Automata so I haven’t used that option in Wingmate. And I’m not paying £1.79 to see what it does! I’m not that dedicated.

The official app keeps a high score table, which Stonemaier plan to have so that you can see how you rank against other users of the app.

It also allows you to record scores for three other Stonemaier games (no score pad functionality) for their own respective high score tables. With the same future plans.

Currently Wingmate does not have this functionality. Will they add it? I’m not sure.

I’m not sure what the future of Wingmate is. I think the official app will meet the majority of players needs. Despite the change in nectar scoring. Whether that takes away enough in-app purchases income to justify stopping the further development of Wingmate I don’t know. Maybe it forces Wingmate to drop the in-app purchases and go completely free also. It’s going to be interesting to see what the developer decides.

I do like the end of round scoring functionality of Wingmate. I’d definitely add this to my wish list of features for the official app after sorting out the nectar scoring. Which for me is the top priority.

As a first release the official app is pretty cool.

Although I only cover iOS apps this will as soon as the Google app approval process allows be out on that other platform too.