Lux Touch
by Eric March on October 7, 2008 at 2:19 am
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App Name: Lux Touch
Developer: Sillysoft Games
Category: Games: Strategy
Sillysoft’s Lux Delux has been around for some time as a cross-platform world domination game in the tradition of Risk. Now they’ve come to the iPhone to port their most excellent strategy game and bring it to you for your troop deploying pleasure.
Lux Touch is a very faithful port that follows quite closely to the desktop version, but is optimized for the small screen and touch interface. The game iself plays very much like the Risk you’ve always known, with the attack and fortification phases, and there are some nice sound effects and animated explosions when countries and regions attack one another. An interesting visual gauge is added here that is shown as an undulating coloured bar representive of the various warring factions’ strength, and the iPhone/Touch version has a nice little at-a-glance overlay in the lower left that shows everyone’s vitals. Another way in which this differs from Risk is that you get bonus cards redeemable for troops whenever you hold an entire country. The more countries you hold, the more bonus cards you get, and therefore the more bonus troops you get each round, which gives you further advantage in taking over more countries.
I will say that Lux Touch does seem a bit undercooked. When you load the game you’re shoved right into the thick of things. No splash screen, no menu, no inline help. You just go. It took me a minute to get my bearings before I realized that the colour I was playing was indicated by the colour that was currently at the top of the gauge. (It cycles colour based on who is currently up, with the current player at the top and the next players in order below.) Once I acclimated myself to the UI however the gameplay was quite familiar, and I had a lot of fun tromping all over South Africa (because that was the only one I was able to hold for any length of time. I said I was a seasoned player. I didn’t say I was good.)
Overall, there is a damn fine game of Risk to be played here. I feel that it will suffer at the hands of newcomers for its lack of instructions or any indication of what to do or how to play. Anyone who hasn’t played Risk before will be dumped into Lux Touch like a random passenger on an airliner suddenly being asked to mind the cockpit while the pilots go murder a blunt in the bathroom. Hopefully they’ll put a more newbie-friendly version up in the future.
Lux Touch will soon be accompanied (or possibly replaced, it isn’t clear) by a deluxe version, Lux DLX, which will feature more computer AIs, more maps, more settings (which I suppose is to say that there will actually be some settings), better graphics, and the ability to play against other humans. (Sillyware don’t say if that’s networked or local). There’s no indication of what the deluxe version will cost, however, or when it will be out, so for now, you’ll have to make do which this — which frankly is still a great deal of fun for anyone who loves Risk.
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Posted in Games: Strategy
