Quarriors Review

I was introduced to the tabletop version of Quarriors fairly recently and it’s a great little “dice-building” game. Quarriors on the iPad manages to translate the overall experience fairly well, but it comes up short in a couple areas.

The main point of Quarriors is to earn Glory as fast as possible before everyone else. Much like a deck building game, players have a base pool of resources - energy needed to “buy” more dice, called Quiddity - to use in order to buy more stuff. Said stuff is then added to their stockpile to be used later, and can result in some pretty diverse strategies. What makes everything different here is that rather than cards, players are drawing dice; which can result in far more random outcomes.

To further mix things up, the spells and creatures available in a give game can also vary greatly. One game may include an Ooze and another a Quake Dragon. Even when the same creatures are drawn there’s a chance that they’ll be stronger or weaker than last time, and thus have different abilities and earn different amounts of Glory after surviving for a full round. Glory can be earned via a couple of different spells, of course, but it’s not as effective or reliable as using creatures.

The diversity in so many of Quarriors’ gameplay elements is one of its biggest strengths. The initial pool of spells and creatures will rarely be a repeat of any other match, and the varying tiers make it even less likely to see the exact same spread. The use of dice (considered “six-sided cards” by the game’s creators) further complicate matters and can force players to change their strategies at a moment’s notice. Rolling a Quake Dragon die and landing on Quiddity, for example, can really wreck (or improve) someone’s turn.

Unfortunately that randomness might be a problem for some as even the best laid plans won’t matter if the dice don’t roll favorably. I personally don’t take issue with it, but it’s something to be aware of. However I did find the interface to be a little problematic when it would misread a tap as a swipe and purchase a creature/spell when I was just trying to read its info. And I’ve always believed that there was a single-buy limit (a significant strategic element) for each turn, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. It speeds games up a bit but also makes purchasing decisions feel less important.

All things considered I still really enjoy being able to play Quarriors on the iPad. It’s a nice port, but it feels a little bare-bones at times.