The weekend saw Portal Games finally release their in-house developed port of their classic board game Neuroshima Hex.
I was wondering how Portal would handle the free update for existing customers. And it appears that when Portal took back the rights to the digital version of their game, they got the iOS dev account for the previous version as well. Which makes life so much easier for this sort of thing.
On a side note it’s no secret what my opinion on board games that rely/require apps to play. I don’t mind companion apps that are not integral to game play, but are optional and enhance the experience. It’s a subject that Ignacy Trzewiczek and I do not see eye to eye on. Why am I bringing it here? Well Ignacy or whoever at his company wrote the app release notes made my point for me!
Before this new version was released players of the app have been in limbo for about 2 years (I think that is correct, it’s definitely over a year). In that time we have seen os updates that have broken it. It has been unplayable. It’s nice for Portal to admit this, and prove one of my points.
I have to say this new version looks beautiful. I really think the game screen pops!
I do have a major criticism of this initial version. There is no in app help. It’d be handy for the iconography used in the Create Game menu option. It’s very much stumble around, trying things to work out what they are.
Plus I’m not too impressed with how to set up an online game via the Create Game screen and the Join the Game menu option.
To play with a friend I need to know their id first. I can’t just set up a private game and have them join. There is no friend list that I can see.
For me setting up an online game isn’t well thought out. Hopefully future updates will remedy this.
I look forward to playing this once more on a regular basis, and getting all the extra armies I had back.