Ghost Stories The Boardgame
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Games | $5.99 | repos production | iPad |
≈≈ SLAY THE LORD OF THE NINE HELLS! ≈≈
~ The first COOPERATIVE boardgame available on the Apple Store! ~
The players must unite their forces to beat the game.
If the right decisions are taken at the right moment, then you'll be able to taste the sweet taste of victory. Otherwise, you all lose!
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SYNOPSIS
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You play the part of a Taoist monk with supernatural powers.
Your final goal: vanquish WU-FENG, the wicked Lord of Darkness.
In GHOST STORIES, the forces of good won't get a break – the ghosts will attack you unceasingly.
You'll have to team up to repel the attack of the ghosts, zombies and other abominations under Wu-Feng's command.
You can defeat them through sheer strength or by calling upon Taoist magic..
Don't hesitate to call upon the skills of the villagers you are protecting.
The WITCH will help you exorcise a ghost but there will be a price to pay... the PRIESTS will pray in order to help you with some of your battles or the HERBALIST will help you find new ingredients for your spells...
Be stronger and more clever than Evil and the village will be saved.
Will you be brave enough to vanquish Wu-Feng and his minions?
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INFO
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This application is an adaptation of the famous GHOST STORIES boardgame.
A game by Antoine Bauza, with artwork by Pierô and published by Repos Production.
iPad development by Immeractive & DS Improve (www.dsimprove.be)
• 1 to 4 players.
• ± 30 minutes per game.
• 4 difficulty levels.
• A customizable board and multiple powers.
• Never play the same game twice, the game is always fun!
Reviews
Please update!
Drang
I purchased this game and now it is unplayable. It needs to be updated to work with the latest iOS. Apple is mostly to blame, but a small update for a game will let us play it again.
Great iOS Implementation of a Fun (Yet Challenging) Co-Op Board Game
WakeOfPoseidon
Being a huge fan of the wave of co-op board games that we've seen come on the market the last few years, I was pleased to see one of my favorites in the genre show up in iPad form. From a faithfulness to the original board game goes - this one is very good barring one omission. The (often devilish) mechanics are accurately represented, and the same iconography from the board game seems to be intact. The only missing feature (at least with this version) compared to the physical game is the ability to play with 3 or 4 live players. This version only supports solo or 2 player play - may not be a huge issue for most folks, but there is a distinction that needs to be made. If you've never played the physical board game, this iOS version is a great place to start. It's very fairly priced (especially relative to the physical game), the tool tips help guide you through explaining what everything is/does, and the side bar does a good job of reminding you of what steps are available to you next. The presentation is very well done - it all looks nice and the interface works well. This stands as one of the top tier premium board game conversions available for the platform. The game itself is very fun, especially with a co-op partner (even though it is strangely easier playing solo), even if you loose. And make no mistake, this is a tough game. Many co-operative games are very challenging, and this one can be one of the most extreme, especially at the harder difficulties. Even on easiest setting, Initiate, a few bad dice rolls and unlucky ghost draws can put you in a tight spot. Great game - highly recommended! Can't wait to see more games like this one appear on the app store!
Do not buy if you're even close to a casual player
Shaktiboi
Frankly, the game design (even the original table version) is TOO difficult. The difficulty curve is ridiculously bad game design. They have built into the rules 4 different difficulty settings, so why make even the lowest (Initiate) so frustratingly difficult? It would be so simple to spread out the difficulty curve by simply slowing down the rate at which the game throws things at you. For example, the basic (and most common) losing condition is if three "haunting" ghosts make it to the village and haunt a village square. 3 village squares haunted = game over. The rate at which the game generates new ghosts (any of which might be a haunting type) is incredibly fast. A haunting ghost makes it to the village in literally 2 turns. It takes you two turns to relocate from the village square you're currently on to the square you need to be to even attempt to exorcise a haunting ghost! This means you need to be successful on your first attempt at exorcism, and trust me, the probabilities of a successful exorcism on any one try are VERY low. It would be so incredibly simple to tune the rules for initiate level to take 3 turns (or even 4 turns) for a haunting ghost to make it to the village, giving you more time to react and deal with it. Then there's the issue of how often and easily the game brings conditions ito play that reduce the amount of dice you have to make an exorcism roll with, and hard it can be to undo that condition. And don't even ge me started on how often and easily the game can force you to do a curse roll, and how hurtful the curse rolls are. All in all, the core game mechanics are great, but the rules implementation and difficultly curve is FAIL. Do not recommend you get this unless you are a masochist gamer. Literally. I regret buying this game when there are so many others with much better difficulty curves.
How is this fun?
PhilFromIT
Ghost stories is a solo or cooperative game that is an adaptation of the board game designed by Antoine Bauza . The premise of the game is that you are a Taoist Monk trying to protect your village from various Ghosts and eventually defeating the incarnation of the evil Wu-Feng who is currently banished in hell. From an app perspective I think the developer has done a pretty good job of adapting the board game to the iPad. The game is responsive, the controls are intuitive and I haven't had the application crash once. There are some bugs in the program, but over all the app itself is well written. However the joy ends there! Game Play: There is almost no skill involved at all especially in when playing solo. You simply react to the barrage of cards the game sends your way. At the start of each turn, you draw and place a ghost on one of the player boards depending on the color. Guess what? Some ghosts cause yet another ghost to be placed. When this happens, you can end up placing 2 or 3 ghosts per turn instead of just one. And if that isn’t hard enough, some ghost cards are “haunters” which means that if you don’t eliminate them within 3 turns, the village tile they are adjacent to becomes haunted. If 3 village tiles become haunted, its game over. Oh yeah and I almost forgot about the curse die. Some ghosts have a special power that requires you to roll the “curse” die each turn. There is a 33% chance that nothing will happen and a 66% chance that something bad will happen. Bad things include adding yet another ghost, a village tile will become haunted, you will lose all your Tao (pronounced “dow”) tokens, or you lose 1 Qi (pronounced Chi) token. I could go on. All of this means that the game can literally end in 3 to 4 turns no matter what you do. So instead of trying to win this game, you end up trying to see if you can lose less badly than in previous games. This game just has too much randomness to have any enjoyment factor at all. You might as well just roll a single die and say "If I roll 5 or 6 I lose, otherwise I'll roll again". That would be about as much fun as this game. App bugs: There are several bugs in the program as well. I have only played the game about 15 times and have already found 2. For instance, before the game begins you are supposed to be able to change the special power of the color you have chosen. This works for all colors except red. Also, at the Initiation difficulty level the game isn't supposed to end unless 4 village tiles are haunted, it ends when there are 3. I would love to report these bugs but unfortunately there is no way of contacting the developers (try clicking on the developer website button above) so hopes of bug fixes are dismal. Summary: A well designed game should be winnable. Most games I have lost I have gone back over them and there was absolutely nothing I could have done differently to change the outcome. Perhaps the real game would be different when playing with 4 players as at least you would be able to try and help each other out, but as a solo game this fails abysmally.
Amazing!
Haakai
Now that there's four-player mode, this app is basically perfect! Now we need the expansions to be 100% flawless.
Excellent update
Veraxus
This was a fantastic update. That brings the game even closer to perfection. First of all, there's been some minor, but very welcome graphical updates. But better than that, the controls now let you drag-and-drop. This is much more natural than before (originally it was tap to select, tap to place) and dramatically improved the "feel" of the game. One complaint stands, though - when you draw a ghost tile, there's STILL no way to read the description/effects. Drawn ghost tiles REALLY need a little magnifying glass "tab" next to the "hide" tab so that inexperienced players can make educated decisions about ghost placement. As it stands, when you draw a ghost tile, there is no way to tell what it does until you place it. That's just not cool. The rules are just as obtuse as ever, but I still recommend reading them first (and also second). The game is fun and rewarding once you figure it out (which shouldn't be too hard for Arkham Horror veterans and their ilk), but the rules for Ghost Stories (just like the physical version on which this is based) are just not well written. Still, I highly recommend this to any board game fan. It's the closest thing you'll get to Arkham Horror on your iPad, and it's both fun and challenging.
Excellent
ScatterBrain011
A bit of a learning curve, you will lose A LOT your first games, but every game teaches you a new strategy for the next, and your first win is exquisite. This is the game I've been looking for! Thanks!
