Virus Wars, My Humble Review
Finally it’s time to write a review of Virus Wars, a nice and cute board game developed by Dash and Dot game studio based in Russia.
First of all, I might tell you that, I’m not doing this as part of Dash and Dot, or represent them, or do it because I got something from them, but I do this because it’s my intention, yeah that’s pure thing.
As I already told in this post, I got a chance from their own developers let me have hands on the game while in the latter process of development process. I can tell you their dev listen and keep all the suggested point and act up on it as appropriate, they did a great job.
I never thought that this game would be for all ages as the name of the game implies, but when I entered the game and see the above screen. Okay man, we will see something cute inside :)
The beginning of transition to this screen pops up a little “click” sound effect like we would open up a book or something real “click”. Yeah, it gots you attention enough to look at the animation parades gonna happen.
The game stays strong in notebook theme as it would like players to imagine themselves playing this board game like in a childhood, as we did XO, or any other types of games with friends. Although, you have to play a game for one or two matches first to feel this stuff.
Just “Tap” on the notebook, then the opening animation happens, and you got the following.
Each “Tap” on the option will play real nice opening page and sound effect. You will definitely would love to “Tap” it alot even though it won’t get you into the game !
One particular stuff I really like is to swipe through the “Start game” menu and the paper will open up and show the hidden menus inside. I remember that I did this for several times, swiping back and forth to see and hear the effect.
Option menu allows you to select your color and difficulty level. A little gimmick for me is “Credits” as when you “Tap” on it the page will slightly flip up on the edge and show Dash and Dot studio logo, tap on it again will bring you to the official site. These little animation tricks and transition parades make me go nuts and won’t like to immediately go into the game (and that’s why I won’t directly write up the main gameplay just yet, hah).
Now’s let go into the gameplay detail.
Virus Wars, with the name implies, is a board game to which you play against AI or friends up to 4 persons. The concept is to spread your “X” (or virus) across the page and eat up all the opponent or at least occupy enough slot of the page to win.
Each turn, each player have 3 time-chances to spread out their own “X” across the page. Move wisely and think carefully, the game AI is so strong, I’ve lost my first match against it. Apart from the final release (this release), their own developers really did a great job implementing AI system as I feel a bit more relax when playtested the previous beta version, but this version’s AI is totally stronger.
As you can see in the image above, each “X” will make you step closer to the opponent and you will be able to eat up their “X”. If your “X” is ate up, then that “X” will become messy and transform into your side thus it will be part of your path further for moving your virus army !
So many tricks you can play with this game either using the ate up “X” as a blockage path to cover the opponent up or playing fast and get to opponent side as quick as possible to eat them up.
In addition to gameplay, the background music while in board screen will make you relax enough just like you’re sitting under the tree and play with your friends. Damn, I thought about Japan now !! It’s CALM you know.
Before starting the game, the game allows you to select the size of the board. It ranges from small board which fits to 1 screen of all iOS devices or larger than that in which it needs of panning movement from players.
I love to play on the largest board although the panning is not extreme flexible and fluid but there’re not too many times requires you to look around too often. So it pays out for that.
After selected the size of board to play, then you will select whether you will be playing against AI or with friends. Of course, each friend can select the color as well.
To switch between AI and players mode, you “Tap” on the upper right circle. The tex label will be showed up after you did the action telling you which mode you are in. I’ve found this label some what interrupting in the process, anyway I know their developers know this as the time schedule is tight to release and pay attention to another stuff. Hope it will be fixed (although this stuff is not that important) in the next update.
I believe this game is best play on iPad even though they don’t develop this game especially for iPad screen as I need to scale it up 2x from iPhone or iPod screen. Playing with up to 4 friends on iPad will boost up experience when playing on iPad device. But you know what ! Their developers know about this and make the network gameplay available.
You can make your iOS device as a server or client and play against each other via “BT game” or “Bluetooth game”, or even play with others on Game Center through “Internet” option in the first menu.
Final word, if you have kids or hang out with friends a lot, you probably would like to have a cute and relaxing board game to play over. Consider this game. Fun, relaxing, and multiplayer options (also animation gimmick hehe !) are things you will get out from this game.
