Auralux: Constellations 4+

The first Auralux stayed on my phone forever. It's one of the best strategy games for the iPhone because of the deceiving simplicity of the concept. I say deceiving because there's nothing simple about the strategies you have to come up with in order to beat the game. It scratches the same itch as chess or Starcraft.

This second installment of the Auralux game series is better because the "DLC" style levels that you can purchase introduce new game dynamics that have been sparingly yet thoughtfully worked into level design. I dropped $10 to unlock them all and have not regretted it for an instant. I've been playing these levels exclusively for over a week, and I've barely made a dent in playing through all the content.

I played the first game and stopped because it became too impossible. The AI will always gang up on you and make it incredibly difficult to win just to try to teach you some specific strategy that is never explained very well. I only made it a couple of missions in this time before I’ve gotten bored. It’s a really cool concept, but if I’m always fighting at least two on one, it’s very boring very fast. It’s not even really a strategy game. Like you can try the same strategy the same exact way and the enemies always move at random, so it doesn’t matter what you do. You basically just have to wait until you get lucky enough for them to actually fight each other, which they will do to put on a show, but they will relentlessly attack you. There is no real way to build up or counter anything, it’s a numbers game. You can sit trying to build up, but if you are short on planets and don’t take them when they are exactly empty, you might as well restart if you ever have less, because it won’t matter. It lacks depth and strategic value and just isn't very fun past the first couple minutes.

Now I don’t know if it’s just me but I’m logged into Game Center and this game refuses to keep progress, resetting every time when I close the app to preserve battery. This loss of progress is absolutely heartbreaking since I’ve completed every level in the Pegasus constellation over nine times total(not including replay before reset). And I’ve managed to reach top 10 in the leaderboards on several occasions but I reset and I lose that progress. Again, I don’t know if it’s just me or if other people are having this problem but it’s hurting the excitement of completing a constellation when you know you’ll just have to do it again.

There aren’t any in-game bugs I’ve experienced when it comes to actual game play and I’m perfectly fine with it since this is a continuation of Auralux, one of my favorite strategy games on mobile that doesn’t require constant log-ins and base building(specifically looking at you Clash of Clans) and it’s because of that freedom to do whatever, whenever that I love both of these games and the creators. Thanks to everyone who’s helped build these games, I’ve lost countless hours having fun because of you!