Fantasian is an Apple Arcade exclusive Final Fantasy style RPG. I liked it.

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This post never made it into words when planned, so the references are a bit dated, but I think it’s still mostly relevant. (For those who are familiar with the references.) Some time ago, I saw a claim that the software developers who worked on Zelda: Breath of the Wild are much better than the developers for Elder Scrolls: Skyrim which has a great many bugs. I agree that Skyrim (and every Bethesda game) has an infamous reputation for lots of bugs, much more so than the Wild, but I don’t think we can conclude much about the skills of the people jamming code into vim or notepad++ or whatever.

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Sometimes I want to play a game. On Windows. On a laptop. That weighs three pounds. This kind of limits my options, but here’s a few games that worked out decently enough. Of course, some obvious choices like old school point and click games will run fine, but what I found is that even a number of retro pixel style games can be graphically intensive. It’s hard work looking easy.

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A fun iPhone (and many more) game. Your job is to build and manage an ever growing subway system, until eventually unhappy riders revolt. The gameplay is fairly simple, with very few different types of resource to manage, but each play through is different. I’m still working out a few strategies, but just when I think I’ve nailed it, I’ll get an uncooperative map. It’s both like and unlike Flight Control. In many ways better. More variation. The intensity builds up over time, but it never demands unblinking concentration. More strategy than action. The game strikes a very good balance between abstraction and realism. Station types and passengers are just shapes like circle and square, but it’s easy to imagine them as residential and commercial districts.

A short review of Godus, iPad edition. It’s a modern update of Populus, one of my Super Nintendo favorites. You squish the earth around, let your idiotic worshippers build homes, and rain destruction on the blasphemous other tribe. It’s fun, especially to start, but then starts slowing down and running into some serious limitations.

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The only thing better than remembering the past is reliving it.

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I was growing tired of my old iPhone games so I bought some new ones. I play only on an iPhone, not an iPad. I was mostly looking for quick fix games, not anything to rival a console game.

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Some notes on a few games I’ve purchased for my iPhone. I paid some minimum amount of money for all of these. Compare with the paid app roundup and the free app roundup elsewhere.

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