Titan HD Review

The iPad is constantly proving itself as the ultimate game board. Many games that I would never even considered playing as a board game make great iOS board games. Titan HD is the iPad version of a fantasy chess-like game for two to six players. I know that I wouldn’t have much fun playing this in the physical world, but it was quite fun on the magical iPad.

First of all, I had no idea that Titan HD was an iPad version of a real board game when I first started playing. I thought the game was created for the iPad. There’s only one vaguely suggestive line in the app description that I could have caught to notice that, “The epic struggle for domination is ‘now’ available for iPad!” (added emphasis on “now”). Once I noticed the gigantic rule book for the game, I had my doubts that it was an iPad original and found the board game online. Apparently, it was made in the early 80s. I had never heard of it until now.

Gameplay feels like it started with a chess-like game and then many rules started to get thrown in. Players have a ‘Titan’ which acts like a chess king. If the Titan dies, the game ends for that person. Each player starts with eight units and gains more units by recruiting from various environments. There are complicated rules dealing with number of units and environments that dictate which units players can recruit. Battles are done on battlefields that correspond to the environment the players are battling on. Damaging in battles is done automatically according to statistics from each unit (I’m assuming this is where players would start rolling die for the physical game).

For a board game remade on the iPad, the controls work well. It doesn’t feel thrown together. The scoreboard on the left gives players a good idea of what’s going on. Sometimes, I had a hard time moving tiles around because they’re so small on the master board (the name for the main game board). The rulebook is always quickly available at the bottom right for new players, however.

My only disappointment with the game is that there’s an online multiplayer button that teases players with a “coming soon” note. This is definitely the sort of game that needs online multiplayer. The AI was fine to play against, but I could never get a full game of six going with people around me. I need online multiplayer to start playing with random players.

Titan HD is one of the better board games I’ve player on the iPad. Hopefully online multiplayer will be included in the next update.

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