Twilight Struggle
Cold War, hot game
$9.99 Developer Playdek, facebook.com/Playdek Platform iPad Requirements iOS 7 or later
Twilight Struggle is the best game you’ve never heard of. Originally a tabletop board game simulating the cold war, it’s widely regarded by hobbyists as one of the finest designs around. Now you can judge for yourself with this smooth and silky tablet version.
Play involves using cards to spread the political influence of the US and USSR around the globe. Each card can either be played for influence, or for a historical event useful to one side or the other. These events, such as the US card “Chernobyl” or the USSR’s “Glasnost,” give the game a rich sensation of recreating an alternative yet plausible past.
But there’s a catch: if you play an enemy’s event card for influence, they can still resolve their event. This simple but brilliant twist turns every hand into a cardboard minefield. Players frantically sort through their mixed blessings, conniving plans to advance their game while neutralizing enemy events they’ll be triggering. Said plans need adjusting on the fly as they’re thwarted by unlucky die rolls or unexpected turns of play.
It can be frustrating, but it’s also gripping and strategically satisfying. With cards sorted into early, middle and late war decks for a semblance of historical structure, there’s a certain flow of play to master, together with patterns of influence which creep across the board. The learning curve is steep, but welllit; by the end of each game your brain is fizzing with ideas to improve your play.
That difficulty was off-putting in the physical game. Here, you can learn via a tutorial, then try your skills against an adequate AI. Given the depth and variety of the game, it’s impressive that the digital opposition even reaches adequate levels. Repeat plays will quickly outstrip its capabilities, though, at which point you can move smoothly onto cross-platform play against human opponents.
Dragging and tapping feels like a natural substitute for handling real cards and pieces, and you quickly learn to cope with minor interface issues such as the board being too large to fit on screen all at once.
the bottom line. Heavyweight strategy sims of recent history have never been more approachable or more enthralling.