GeoWars, a new turn-based strategy game from Studio Mee, has hit the app store with a few cleverly implemented attributes. If you’ve ever engaged in a battle for neighborhood supremacy as a child, this will be a nostalgia blast with a 21st century global twist.
GeoWars has been created in the style of Risk or one of its many flash-based descendents, such as Dice Wars. Set against a Google Earth backdrop that allows you to select either your current location, a location of your choosing, or a random location, your mission is simple: domination. Through mini-battles that hinge on the roll of a die (or several dice, as is truly the case), you must work your way across landscapes and through locales that may hit closer to home than any you’ve experienced before.
Studio Mee has pinpointed over 2.5 million named locations, whose colorful, amorphous shapes are set atop their actual real-world locations. Each location is marked with the number of available armies (or dice). Select one of your locations and a border-sharing opponent to attack. Each rolls their dice. If your score beats theirs, you take over their location, moving all but one army to the new location. A bomb explosion at that new site indicates your successful conquer. If your score is lower, you will hear an aluminum-bat-type pinging sound, and you will lose all but one army. TIES ARE NULL. Continue attacking enemies until you only have one army in each location or end your turn at any time. At turn’s end, your locations will be fortified with additional armies based on the number of locations you currently possess. Defeat all of your opponents to win the game.
Options abound in GeoWars, allowing for tons of variation. You can choose background type, level of field transparency, use of field names, your color, game size (from 5 to 50 locations), max armies at each location (2 to 12), dice sides (1 to 100), number of opponents (1 to 10), opponent’s playing style (including Stupid, no joke), and more. You can create a completely different game every time you play. The Google maps require a wi-fi connection to display, though the game can be played offline against a green backdrop if you are out of range. All location names are built-in to the game. GeoWars even auto-resumes if you must take a call or you accidentally exit the game. Also, if you happen to be defeated and do not press the Try Again button, you can continue to watch the battle play out until a winner is declared, which is kind of a cool feature.
Graphics are pretty decent for what the game is trying to achieve. Sound is adequate, but nothing spectacular. Controls are strictly tap to play. None of these aspects really stand out. It is the nuances, the use of Google maps and familiar locales, as well as the wealth of options, that are most attractive in GeoWars. As such, replay value is boundless. There are other turn-based strategy games in the app store, even a Dice Wars port called KDice, but nothing quite like Studio Mee’s GeoWars. Note: GeoWars does require OS 3.0 to run, so 2.2.1 users are out of luck unless they upgrade. GeoWars blazes a trail across the turn-based strategy genre with a solid 4-Dimple score.
GeoWars gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating:
