One of the first games I purchased for Android was Highborn. The graphics, story line, and it being a turn-based strategy game are what drew me to the game. It was one of the best purchases I have made for my Android device. If you enjoy turn-based strategy games with a sense of humor, you need to pick up one or all three chapters of Highborn.
Title: Highborn Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 | Developer: Jet Set Games | Genre: Strategy | Players: 1 | Version: 1.3.7 | Size: 130MB | Price: $0.99 each |
Highborn is the story of Archie, the mighty knight and hero of the story and his fight against the evil Decay. In each chapter of the game, you must plan your attack, move your men, and complete the mission. Highborn is an easy to pick up and learn casual turn-based strategy game. If you want to play for 5 moves or 5 hours, you can easily do that. Great graphics and a great sense of humor are two of the reasons why the game works.
The game is current broken up into three chapters, each of which are available only in the Amazon Market place. Each chapter is independent of the others so they can be played in any order. Doing the chapters in order though will give you a general story line to follow. Within each chapter there is also a tutorial mission to help new players out.
The game play is very simple. Each turn is broken into movement and action segments. When it is your turn, you select the unit you wish to move, the possible grid locations will then be highlighted on the screen. Select the grid you wish to move to. It is that simple. If you after you move, you can attack your opponent, you will be given that option. When attacks do occur, a small animated cut scene will come up to allow you to “watch the action.” Movement options are determined by the terrain and type of unit you wish to move. Now in each mission there will be a hero character, if that hero character is killed in battle you lose and will need to start over.
Each chapter will give the player similar options such as
-missions within the chapter have to be played in order
-the ability to set checkpoints
-use of spell books
-multi-player option via OpenFeint
-achievements via OpenFeint
-ability to reset campaign if you want to start over
What makes Highborn fun is the storyline. Each move, each mission helps tell a story. The humor in the game is very good and sometimes subtle. I know there are some things I get that my kids have no clue on. When playing the game, you can learn more about each of the characters by tapping on the question by their picture in the lower left hand corner. So you can learn all about Archie, Enzo, Trillian, Mad Wizards, etc. I think the developers did a great job in creating the story behind Highborn.
I will not give away all of the details and allow you to enjoy them for yourself. The game plays in landscape on both my phone and tablet. I did not find playing on a small screen a problem at all. The game interface is very easy to use and doe snot take up a lot of screen space. I need to point this out though. The game played great on my ASUS Transformer tablet but after I recently upgraded to ICS, I could not play any of the chapters. Just a FYI.
So what happens in each of the chapters?
Chapter 1 is the beginning of the story of Archie and the battle against Decay. There are 8 missions for you to complete.
Chapter 2 is called “As a Matter of Fact…that is a Moon!” Archie and the gang search for Arch Lich. At the end of each mission, there is a statistics screen for your enjoyment. The developers also added Shake to Undo – undo your entire previous turn by shaking your device.
Chapter 3 is called “The Audacity” where you now get the play as Floyd on the Decay side! In this chapter you now have Worgons, and interior map locations.
Highborn Chapters 1-3 are great fun and a very well done series. I would highly recommend them to any turn based strategy player. There are 24 missions in all. The story line, graphics, humor, characters, and multiplayer options add to the replay value of the games. Each chapter is only $0.99. While I was doing this piece, I contacted the developers for some questions on this series, its future, other titles and so on. IS there going to be a chapter 4? What else is Jet Set up to? You can read my interview with Jet Set Games on my site DroidReviewCentral.com
