Review: Horror Vacui 2
Well, boys and girls, it’s review time again! The game that I decided to check out recently is called Horror Vacui 2. Horror Vacui 2 is an iOS strategy/board game designed by Shaun Inman, who is perhaps best known for his web apps Mint and Fever. However, he also seems to have a pretty strong interest in game programming, pixel art and chiptunes, which of course I can relate to. I never got around to playing the original Horror Vacui, but the game mechanics are the same in both games. Since the difference is apparently purely cosmetic, I figured I might as well try out the newest version.
Horror Vacui 2 pits two players (or one player an an AI) against each other, one
controlling the water element, the other controlling earth. The goal of the game
is to place more of your own pieces on the game board than your opponent. The
twist, however, is that each piece can have a hot or cold temperature. Hot or
cold pieces don’t count towards your piece count, so you need to “normalize”
each temperature by placing a piece with the opposite temperature next to it.
However, your opponent’s pieces affect yours as well, which means that you both
are trying to normalize your own pieces while freezing or heating up your opponent’s.
The game is turn based, and the pieces you get are random (there’s an option to dispense pieces in slot machine fashion too), so there’s elements of both strategy and chance as you place hot, cold, or normal pieces on the board. In addition, special “Extinction Level Event” cards can be drawn randomly, which affect all the pieces on the board with either a hot or cold temperature. The game ends when all the empty spaces on the board are filled.
My only complaint about the game is that playing versus the AI is not much of a challenge. You’re basically guaranteed to win unless you get totally hosed by piece selection. While there is an option for “local” multiplayer (i.e. put the device on the table in front of two players), there’s no option to play via the internet. Supposedly Game Center makes such matchmaking easier to implement, but since I haven’t tried programming it yet, I’m not in a position to comment on how easy/hard it would be to add to the app. But it definitely would add a lot of replay value.</p>
All told however, I really enjoyed Horror Vacui 2. The game mechanics work really well, and it’s a great example of a board game adapted to electronic game format. The music is catchy, although sadly there’s only one main track (after reading the developer’s blog about his NSF-related pursuits, I was hoping there would be more music). The graphics are well done, with lots of polish put into little details (such as little animations that play after you place a piece on the board). For only $1.99, it’s a great app to add to your library.
★★★★★ — Horror Vacui 2 - Shaun Inman
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