(And please note that this game is only for the iPad, not the iPhone or iPod Touch.)
Disclaimer: I'm an iPhone game programmer, so Small World is technically my competition. I believe I've given it a fair look, but caveat reader.
The Gameplay
Small World is a game of conflict where you're trying to win territories with peoples that you control.
When you start the game, you pick a peoples, which are made up of an attribute and a race--like "flying amazons" or "seafaring skeletons". Each of those two elements gives you some special power, and together they tell you how many chits you get to use with that race.
On your turn, you use those chits to conquer the board. Each space takes one or more chits to take, depending on what type of terrain it features and how many enemy pieces it holds. At the end of the turn you get a point for each of the territories that you control.
The aforementioned special abilities modify all of the rules. They can make it easier to conquer certain areas, they can give you bonus points for certain areas, or they can do even more extravagant things.
Here's the real catch to the game: you only temporarily control a peoples. At some time you'll decide that they've extended as far as they can and you'll put them into "decline". Though you'll keep scoring points for those peoples, you'll also get to start a new active race.
That's pretty much the game in a nutshell, though I'll again point you to my Small World review if you want more specifics.
Limitations: The gameplay of Small World for iPad is a comprehensive adaptation of the original board game with one exception: it's only playable by two players.
In addition, none of the Small World supplements are yet available for the iPad game. I'm sure they'll turn up as in-game buys if the original does well enough.
Ways to Play Small World
The iPad version of Small World offers two ways to play:
Hot Seat: You can play Small World against a live opponent. The interface is set up quite well to support this. The entire user interface is explicitly two-sided, with a little status bar along the bottom of either side. The chits also show who they belong to via orientation (and in fact I find it easier to determine chit ownership in the iPad game than in the original).
You can actually play versus an opponent in two ways. You can either leave the iPad in the middle of a table and play around it, or you can pass-and-play. And, Small World is set up pretty cleverly to differentiate between these methods. If you've got the iPad laying flat, the orientation never changes, whereas if you've holding it up, the whole thing flips when you go from one player to another.
I'm personally dubious about the usefulness of an iPad as a flat gaming surface because of issues of glare, but Days of Wonder has done a great job here of making sure you can play the game by whatever method your current environment allows.
AI: New in v1.0 of Small World is a computer opponent--which was what interested me enough to review the game. The artificial intelligence (AI) uses the exact same interface as a human opponent would, with all of its info sitting upside down from you, the human. In fact, it uses too much of the same interface sometimes: I don't want to see their race selection upside down and I want to be able to touch their race to see what it does, and I currently can't. However I have every faith that these issues will resolve themselves as additional releases mature the AI interface.
As for the AI: it's OK. When I started playing, it beat me three straight games. Since then I've come around to win maybe two out of three games. Sometimes the AI just gets stuck in a bad thinking strategy and I cream it. I think my worst problem with it is when it sticks with a losing race to the bitter, bitter end--sometime to the point where it can't move, let alone attack. However, it keeps me on my toes more often than it does badly, and sometimes it spanks me hard.
There are a huge number of special cases in Small World and I'm generally impressed with how well the AI accounts for them. It knows to go after my territories that score extra and to protect its ones that do. It seems to go out of its way to use some of its powers to its benefit. For example, I've been surprised more than once by it staying with elves longer than I thought it should--and doing very well with it.
With that said there are still some special cases that it doesn't support yet. For example, seafaring halflings should never start at sea, since they get extra defense for their starting space, but they do. I also find it frustrating whenever the AI plays a race with heroes, because it moves around all its troops, then moves its heroes, then moves its troops again. But, I would have been pretty stunned if they got everything perfect the first time, given all the potential special cases.
Overall, the AI could be better, and I hope it improves through subsequent updates, but it's sufficient to keep me entertained and it does win a game out of three.
I do think that part of the issue with the AI strength is that Days of Wonder decided to constrain Small World for iPad to being a two-player game. When you have an AI go directly head-to-head with an opponent, it needs to be that much better.
Overall, the game play of Small World is already top rate and the options offered here to play it display it to almost its full potential. I've thus given Small World for iPad a "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Graphics & UI
Presentation has always been a strong point for the Days of Wonder games, and I'm happy to say that Small World for iPad holds up to those high standards--mostly.
Graphics: The graphics for the iPad game are drawn directly from the original Small World. The gorgeous map from the tabletop game is the backdrop for the app; it's been digitized well, so that individual countries are outlined when they're selected. All of the counters and the race banners appear as well, and they're all both attractive and readable on the iPad. Finally, most of the objects are given some nice depth with drop shadows which really add to the professionalism of the piece.
I had some problems with clutter in the tabletop Small World game, but here that's largely gone because of the regularized arrangement of the pieces. As a result, I think that Small World for iPad improves on the already superior graphics of the original game.
Audio: There are a handful of well-done incidental sounds in Small World for iPad which are used to demonstrate various actions. They're generally attractive and appropriate, adding something to the game.
Animations: The iOS makes heavy use of animations, and Small World for iPad lives up to that model. Chits move across the map and items grow and shrink to draw your eye to activity. It's all well-done and good-looking.
I do sometimes have issues with the speed of the animations. I'd like to be able to set them to go faster now that I'm familiar with the game--but also see my issues with settings, below.
UI: The UI of Small World for iPad adheres to the simplicity of the device. In general, it's touch-and-drag, with objects moving smoothly and in-sync with finger motions. You can touch a wide variety of objects to get info, for example: you can touch on a gold icon to get your gold total, on the current round to show the round track, and on your racial banner to see what the power does. However, I'd also like to see some more touch-related info, such as on what value a region has to you and the opponent, what your overall win/loss ratio is, etc.
I also wonder whether there's some hidden UI that I haven't found. After much fumbling, I discovered that you can change who the start player is by sliding the starting flag up and down. Similarly, I accidentally discovered that you can double-tap to zoom in the game. Maybe those were covered in the tutorial, but we know most people won't look at that, especially not those who've played the tabletop game. I would have liked UI like those items to be more intuitive.
(The start-player button was the worst because I tapped, bumped, and slid that lots before I discovered how to control it.)
Missing Features: Though there's a lot to like in the game of Small World for iPad, it does feel a little empty of additional features, and that's the prime area where I think the game needs improvement. There are no score pages (to see how you've done over multiple games) and no options pages (to turn sounds on and off). There's no way to choose different difficulties for the AI (presumably because there aren't any yet). I'm struck most by the rudimentary nature of the game's framework when I decide I want to quit from a game--and have to quit the app and restart it, then tell it not to continue the current game. Still, this is all ornamentation; it'd add to the presentation of the game, but isn't strictly necessary.
Overall Small World for iPad is a well-produced mobile game with all the beautiful graphics of the tabletop original, adapted well and intuitively for the iPad. However, there's a lack of additional functionality outside of the game proper, and I think some is needed to really finish up the package.
I've thus given Small World for iPad a high "4" out of "5" for Style.
Conclusion
Overall, Small World for iPad is a treat for the strategic gamer. An already-great game system has been adapted well to iOS, with the developers taking excellent advantage of the iPad's animations, and standardized user interface. Though the brand-new AI could be improved, it still keeps me on my toes in most games and does a good job of understanding the many different racial powers in the game. I've probably played a few dozen games of Small World so far, and continue to be entertained.
