March 12, 2010
Bigger Screen, Same Game
Galcon was one of the first games I bought on my iPod Touch. It was simplistic, but a lot of fun. It required a lot of strategy, and a game took only a minute, at most. It worked perfectly on the touch screen. It was a great, great portable game. I picked it up in the big Steam Indie Midweek Madness, and I was interested to see how the desktop version would become more full-featured to make it work in a less portable setting.
It really doesn’t change a whole lot.
There’s nothing really lost in the control scheme. Mouse controls work just as good as touch controls. One might even say better, since you can control the percent of ships sent to attack with the keyboard, letting you react with that quicker than having to tap it on the iPod. It works fine, and, of course, sitting in front of the keyboard means you can have chat in multiplayer matches. Finally, someone can call me a n00b when I play Galcon online!
It’s really just the same game. There’s no campaign or anything. Single Player is simply picking a mode and a difficulty, just like on the iPod. This is enhanced a bit by Steam Achievements, however. There’s an achievement for winning a game at every difficulty in every mode, giving a bit of incentive to push yourself and pick harder and harder computer opponents, but this isn’t really a significant enhancement. Just a good idea, and something I’m glad they through in there, but it’s not game-changing.
Overall, though, I would never recommend this version over the portable ones. Being portable gives Galcon a huge advantage. It gives the game much more value. There’s nothing wrong with Galcon Fusion, and if you can’t get enough on the iPhone or don’t have one and want to give the game a try, you’ll have a bit of simple, strategic fun. But if you have the option, pick up Galcon or Galcon Labs on the iPhone. It’s much better as a portable game.