iOS Release: FiTS by Reiner Knizia

Chris Miller

(millercv)

United States
Huntsville
Alabama

My Dog Has Fleas

Nice - I bet this one has the makings of being more popular as an app than the game was.

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:29 am
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Paul Beasi

(seqiro)

United States
Easthampton
Massachusetts

I just tried it out. Overall, it's pretty good.

This game is well suited to solo play since it's essentially multiplayer solitaire anyway. I'll probably play it this way more often on my iOS devices than I ever did with the actual board game. It looks and works great on both my iPhone and my iPad. I also like the face-to-face multiplayer (note: iPad only), although that does limit it to two players.

I have a couple of quibbles. Why did they change the scoring system? I guess I'll get used to it, but the scoring in the original board game just seems to make more sense to me. The strategy for the iOS game will actually differ from the board game because of the changes.

Also, I understand the reason for the undo button since it's possible to make a mistake, but it pretty much allows you to cheat since you see the next tile. This is true for both solo and face-to-face play. Even though it would mean more tapping, I'd rather have some kind of play-finalizing button that you tap to lock your piece in before you see the next one. One of the things I find myself doing sometimes in this game is a little push-your-luck style play, e.g. "Well, I'll put this piece here but if THIS piece comes up next, I'm screwed". That's lost if I can actually see what piece comes up next and then undo my last move.

(Edited to add scoring rules for those interested)

This applies to ALL boards:

Covered dots: +125
Uncovered dots: -1000
Completed row: +1000
Dot with a number (±n) uncovered: ±n x 1000
Even number of matching symbols uncovered: +3000
Odd number of matching symbols uncovered: -3000

Edited Thu Dec 15, 2011 9:17 am
Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:54 am
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Doug Adams

(dougadamsau)

Australia
Oakleigh
Victoria

Boink

Been playing it all day and I like it a lot. It is a mild pain when you make a mistake in rotation or alignment, other than that, nice conversion.

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 8:05 am
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Paul Beasi

(seqiro)

United States
Easthampton
Massachusetts

dougadamsau wrote:

Been playing it all day and I like it a lot. It is a mild pain when you make a mistake in rotation or alignment, other than that, nice conversion.

Well if you make a mistake, you can undo it. I didn't find myself making mistakes very often since it has the nice shadow showing you where the piece will end up, but the swipe-down-to-place mechanism does occasionally lend itself to accidentally rotating or shifting a row before dropping.

Perhaps instead of an undo button, they could have had a drop button. You would be less likely to make mistakes placing your piece and the undo-to-cheat option would be eliminated, all for the same amount of screen real estate.

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 8:10 am
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Brian Leet

(PghArch)

United States
Montpelier
Vermont

I'm just amused that you have a board game clearly inspired by Tetris and now it is back-ported into electronic form. I get the appeal, but fun to see at such a basic level.

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:13 pm
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Serious? Lee

(leemc13)

United States
Fort Worth
Texas

Lost in thought.

Quick question: are the boards the same as the four from the boardgame version or are there extras in the digital version?

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:51 pm
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Brad Cummings

(thequietpunk)

United States

Connecticut

There are 8 boards available. I assume this means their are expansion boards included.

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:10 pm
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Carl Larson

(clarsonx)

United States

Illinois

seqiro wrote:

I just tried it out. Overall, it's pretty good.
Covered dots: +125
Uncovered dots: -1000
Completed row: +1000
Dot with a number (±n) uncovered: ±n x 1000
Even number of matching symbols uncovered: +3000
Odd number of matching symbols uncovered: -3000

Despite knowing the scoring rules and having played the physical board game, I wish the developers provided a scoring summary at the end of each level. As it is, the score that accumulates seems disconnected from your actions on the board.

I'd also like to have seen some sort of rating system. OK, I just scored 12,750. Is that good? Lots of solo games have a 3 star rating, or for games of Japanese origin a S/A/B/C rating. I think this sort of feedback mechanism is important for solo video games. And where is an achievement system?

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:11 pm
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M C

(craniac)

United States
Orem
Utah

PghArch wrote:

I'm just amused that you have a board game clearly inspired by Tetris and now it is back-ported into electronic form. I get the appeal, but fun to see at such a basic level.

I find it hard to believe that someone like Dr. Knizia, who has been a champion of intellectual property rights, would ever knowingly borrow an idea from another game designer.

Edited Fri Dec 16, 2011 9:16 pm
Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:39 pm
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Matt Crawford

(gatchaman)

United States
San Francisco
California

seqiro wrote:

I have a couple of quibbles. Why did they change the scoring system?

Because MORE points is MORE BETTER!!!11!! I got 10,000 points and you only got 9500! That is so much better than winning 20 to 19 in the board game. It's, like, almost a thousand times better and I totally pwned you.

At least, that's probably why they changed it.

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:55 pm
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Gabe Alvaro

(blindspot)

United States
Berkeley
California

gatchaman wrote:

Because MORE points is MORE BETTER!!!11!! I got 10,000 points and you only got 9500! That is so much better than winning 20 to 19 in the board game.

As a coworker of mine says: Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing.

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:57 pm
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Ben Stanley

(Blue Steel)

United States
Pleasant Grove
Utah

This one is on sale for $1.99 today.

Posted Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:34 pm
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Pat Johnston

(hawkeyept)

United States
North Liberty
Iowa

Blue Steel wrote:

This one is on sale for $1.99 today.

Thanks for the heads up! It's amazing what 50% off will do to my interest.

Posted Fri Dec 16, 2011 2:18 am
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Torulf Jernström

(Torulf)

Finland

gatchaman wrote:

seqiro wrote:

I have a couple of quibbles. Why did they change the scoring system?

Because MORE points is MORE BETTER!!!11!! I got 10,000 points and you only got 9500! That is so much better than winning 20 to 19 in the board game. It's, like, almost a thousand times better and I totally pwned you.

At least, that's probably why they changed it.

Quite frankly, yes.
The original game will quite often give a new player a negative score on the first tries. For people new to the game, this feels a bit too punishing. (not that I'm implying iOS gamers are used to get pampered, but..) This is why Reiner suggested the scoring system we have in the game now. +125 points for every tile that you drop (i.e. a piece of 4 tiles gives +500), and all points from the board game times 1000.

cheers,
Torulf from Tribeflame

Posted Fri Dec 16, 2011 3:23 pm
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Chris H.

(LetsGetTrivial)

United States
Altoona
Wisconsin

Torulf wrote:

Quite frankly, yes.
The original game will quite often give a new player a negative score on the first tries. For people new to the game, this feels a bit too punishing. (not that I'm implying iOS gamers are used to get pampered, but..) This is why Reiner suggested the scoring system we have in the game now. +125 points for every tile that you drop (i.e. a piece of 4 tiles gives +500), and all points from the board game times 1000.

cheers,
Torulf from Tribeflame

For us boardgamers, it might be nice to have an option for the "original" scoring.

Posted Sat Dec 17, 2011 4:58 pm
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Paul Beasi

(seqiro)

United States
Easthampton
Massachusetts

Another thing that would be nice is a local high score table or at the very least a Game Center category for Boards 1-8 instead of just 1-4 and 5-9.

Posted Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:57 am
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Mikko Karvonen

(Gargoyle)

Finland
Tampere
Tampere

I don't mind the new scoring, but I'd like to see the scores echoed as floating number to make scoring more understandable. I'm not sure I can successfully introduce this to my wife as it is (as I was hoping to), as it's not really very clear which moves are good and which not.

Also, local high score table would be great. Possibly with different categories (highest score for an individual board, highest total score etc), too.

Posted Tue Dec 20, 2011 6:20 pm
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