Recommending Subterfuge
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So mobile games get a lot of flack from most gamers, and not without a good reason. However, I do feel that mobile games do deserve more attention because there are some great mobile games that deserve to be talked about. Subterfuge is one of those games.
I guess I will start this off by recommending Subterfuge. Subterfuge is a RTS game for mobile, but it was designed to be played on a mobile device. The concept of Subterfuge is pretty simple. You are the leader of an underwater empire and you want to get 200 Neptunium. To do this you launch subs to other outposts, which gives you a different bonus depending on what that outpost is. Factories produce new drillers (your main fighting unit) and reactors increase your power supply, allowing you to have more drillers. Your most important unit is your Queen, because if you lose your queen you are eliminated from the game. Your Queen also hires special units called specialists, which give you special advantages. All of this is good, but you might be wondering how such a complicated game can fit onto a mobile device. Well, Subterfuge works because everything happens very slowly. It can take several hours to send a sub from one outpost to another. What makes this slow pace work is that the game is always running, even if you aren't in the game. Of course you might also thinking "well, if the game is always running, will I have to wake up in the middle of the night to make the optimal move?". This would be a fair criticism of the game, except the devs solved this with a brilliant solution. Each player has a time machine, which allows you to look at the past, but more importantly it lets you look at the future. While you are looking at the future you can queue actions to happen in the future, even if you aren't in the game. This allows everyone to remain competitive without having to micromanage your empire all the time. I usually take a few minutes to plan out several hours of moves. I should also mention the other important aspect of Subterfuge. Diplomacy. You can have secret conversations with any group of players, allowing you to make secret schemes to betray your allies, work together, or just coordinate actions. No other RTS has such an interesting system of politics because they are all way too fast. So in summary, Subterfuge is a deep RTS that takes several days to play, that has a lot of diplomacy. In fact, I probably like this game so much because it can only work on mobile. The phone allows you to change your plans at any time and keep tabs on the game. I should also mention that this game is free, so there if this sounds interesting you should definitely check this game out.
