This is my favorite game, ever. – Spaceward Ho! Review

I bought my first copy of Spaceward Ho! back in 1992 for my then-brand-new Mac LC II. I have probably wasted more of my life on this game than on any other activity. So I was thrilled when I saw Spaceward Ho! finally appear on the App Store for my iPhone. While the gameplay is still great, the port feels clunky. The original game for the Mac was very polished. This one… not so much. I understand that the iPhone's makes Spaceward Ho!'s interface a challenge, but there are a few things that need improvement. For starters, battle scenes look terrible. Oftentimes, the battle screen is empty, or I'm fighting against ships that appear off-screen somewhere; the original version dealt with this problem by grouping ships together. Also, the damage indicator also looks terrible. I'm not a huge fan of the +, ->, etc buttons above planets. My issue is that, when you zoom out, the buttons also scale, making them impossible to press without zooming back in. When an event happens elsewhere in the galaxy (e.g., an impending supernova), I have to open the systems window, find my star system, and then touch it to get back to where I was. In the original game, the planets window was always open, so this was less of a hassle. It would be nice if the iPhone UI had a simple way to "go back" to the last thing you were looking at. The manage ships screen was baffling when I first tried to use it, despite the fact that I knew what all the buttons did. The reason is that you need to hit the button below before you select the ships. I was doing it the other way around. But there are no helpful UI cues, just a mysterious rectangle that appears around the ships you selected. Lastly, and these are aesthetic things: many of the graphics are jarringly rough-looking compared to other graphics. For example, the planets still look great, and I think the addition of the little satellite orbit circles is a nice touch. But I find the expanding-contracting circle to be irritating. Also, some of the ships, like the scouts you start with, look strange next to the other ships, since the original game's ships are flat and side-on. Anyway, if you love the original game, you'll probably still enjoy this one, despite its flaws. But I think a newcomer would be baffled at this game's UI. It seems like it needs an overhaul for the iPhone/iPad. I hope the developers don't think my review was too harsh, and I look forward to improvements in the game. I am glad that somebody finally brought this game to a modern platform!
Review by Dañ on Spaceward Ho!.