If you’re one of the lucky ones who woke up yesterday morning to find an iOS device under your tree your probably looking for some application suggestions. I would strongly suggest picking up Horror Vacui 2. Horror Vacui 2 is a fantastic strategy board game that’s available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch for $1.99. The game was developed by Shaun Inman, and if you’ve been following my writings for a while you’ll know that he’s one of my favorite developers. Everything he releases is gold.
Horror Vacui 2 is a little difficult to understand without playing it but I’ll do my best. You and your opponent take turns placing hot, cold, or normal pieces on a game board. The temperature of the pieces is determined by the card you draw on your turn. When you place the piece on the game board it changes the temperature of adjacent pieces. If you place a cold piece next to a hot piece, the hot piece becomes normal and your cold piece becomes normal, if you place a hot piece next to a hot piece the adjacent piece is removed from the board, etc. The player with the most normal pieces when the board is full wins. But it’s not that simple, occasionally during the game there will be “extinction level events” where each game piece will move one state towards hot or cold, even removing pieces that are already that temperature. There are two different sized boards for different play times and you’ll be amazed how much time you can kill playing this game.
Horror Vacui 2 can be played solo against the computer or two players can play against each other. The game features fantastic 8-bit style graphics and soundtrack, and trust me you’ll be humming the music all day long. Horror Vacui 2 is available from the App Store now and will also be available in the Mac App Store when it launches next month.
