Terraforming Mars

I’m a huge fan of the tabletop version of this game. I am by no means an expert on Terraforming Mars but I consider it among my favorite board games in my collection. Naturally, when I saw there was an iOS version of this game I jumped on it. I bought this game with the goal of having something to pick up from time to time when I have lulls in my free time and primarily play against AI opponents. All in all I really think they did the tabletop version of the game justice with this release. Unfortunately, the AI in this game appears to be rushed. I have played 10 games now on the the easiest AI setting and have yet to be able to come close to beating them. It seems despite being labeled as “Easy AI” the computer opponent knows exactly the right moves to make each round to maximize their TR and VP. In other words, the AI never makes any mistakes. When playing against multiple “Easy AI” if any of them manage to draw a card that strips production resources from an opponent, the target seemingly is always a human opponent and not another AI. It’s extremely frustrating and makes the game feel unbeatable. I’m fine with acknowledging that I’m just not that good at this game, but it makes me want to not come back to the game when I keep getting crushed by bots. I would encourage the developer to adjust the AI settings so that room for error is possible in their logic. Without the tangible physical cards in hand, being able to visualize card strategies is not as easy for a human as it is for an AI.

Hey devs, I hope you’re doing well and thanks for all your hard work on making my favorite board game available for my iOS devices. I’ve literally played this game hundreds of times irl and online and I would like to ask if it would be possible to let the user decide the time restraints based off of 15 min intervals. So if I wanted to set the game for 1 hour and 15 min it would be easy to do so. Also there have been plenty of games where I was just moments away from seeing the score and I timed out and I felt like 2 hours of my life were wasted. Would it be possible to allow your opponents to grant you more time when you’re going to time out? Especially in private games when I’m playing with my friends. And finally there have been public games were my opponent leaves mid game with over half an hour left on his timer. I then have to wait half an hour for his timer to run out before the AI takes over. Can you give players a 5 min window to make their move and if they don’t make it they forfeit their rounds for that generation? I also wanted you to know that I would be willing to pay extra to play with the expansions. Jonathan Gomez

First my brother and I have both played their actual board game so it was fairly easy for us to learn the digital version. As much as we loved it we couldn’t help but mention how difficult it’d be to learn the game because there were multiple things we had to search for in the Ui. However we were able to do everything we expected to through the game, it is a great digital version as it’s not lacking in any features we could find. My largest complaint is that it has no notification system so it is really only worthwhile to play if both players are going to play live. The online component gives the option to put time limits on turns but that doesn’t work great because you have to constantly go back into the game to check if it’s your turn. Even that wouldn’t be awful but it takes a good 15-30s to resume your game if you leave the app for ANY reason, even a switch to a respond or view a text message you have to sign back in and wait to reconnect. The game needs to implement notifications or have a way to see from the main menu whose turn it is. The only other flaw of the game is there is no undo, if you play a card or an action there is no way to back out of it even if it is still your turn. If those two issues were resolved it’d be a 5 star game