Thinking Out Loud

I tweeted this out last night:

What would my @vanguardsoh peeps say about the diplomacy sphere being turned into a mobile game? Obvs have no green light. Just wondering.

— Timothy Lochner (@tloch14) April 7, 2015

I did so because I was sitting in bed, searching for good puzzle games to play on my phone. I enjoy simple puzzle games when I have down-time. It's something that I can do at my own pace and leisure. If there are any time-constraints to the game, they're often in short bursts like "solve the puzzle as fast as you can" which only takes about a minute anyway.

After not really finding anything in the app store I was particularly interested in, my mind drifted to games that would fill this need I have to play a quality puzzle game that I can do in very short sessions, or chain them together for an engaging longer session.

I thought of Vanguard's diplomacy sphere. Don't know why, but I did. I also like wondering and thinking about how a game design would play out and discussing it with others, so I tweeted to see what other people thought.

What I didn't expect was to wake up to this:

#Daybreak dev muses about mobile #Vanguard diplomacy game: http://t.co/EVyC5Z1sop @DaybreakGames

— MassivelyOverpowered (@MassivelyOP) April 7, 2015

My first thought after reading this was that a better question is, "What kind of loser uses the word 'obvs'? Did I really use that?" *facepalm*.

The next things was that the tweet was probably misleading because I mentioned a "green light". As if it was even remotely possible that it could happen.

My intent for mentioning "no green light" was to attempt to be clear that this is just thinking out loud. After reading it this morning, it sounds like "I have no green light now, but maybe I could if it was a good enough idea" or something like that.

Sorry to say, nothing is brewing. It would be a neat challenge to design diplomacy as a stand-alone card game (holy crap, a lot of context would have to be filled to replace the actual game of Vanguard) but it ultimately is just not a thing right now.


That being said, if you know of any good mind-bender or puzzle games for the iPhone that aren't a thinly veiled attempt to nickel and dime the user, let me know. Here are two that I have enjoyed so far, plus some more action-y game too.

• Hexy - The Hexagon Game by Valcour Games - Although I wish it had more content. The picture puzzle thing seems neat, but I don't really want to solve pictures from my own phone.
• Flow Free by Big Duck Games LLC - A decent amount of content you can play for free. More purchasable if you want.
• Solomon's Keep and Solomon's Boneyard by Raptisoft Games - Very entertaining games to play. Really dug into Solomon's Keep. Only just started Solomon's Boneyard. And the in-app purchases aren't very in-your-face. The games are quite enjoyable without them.