So, one of the very few games I’ve been looking forward to for the past six months has finally come, and in general, it seems to actually live up to whatever rose-coloured hype I drenched it in in the back alleys of my cognition.
So, I do what all fans do best, as soon as they get their grubby little hands on a long-awaited product: I start to complain! But I’ll try to disguise it as suggestions for improvements.
Since I’ve found almost durnedly nothing to actually bitch about in RAD Soldiers so far, I’ll focus on the only negative thing that leaped to the forefront of a few otherwise wholly pleasant matches:
Push notifications seem to be entirely broken. I get no pushes on friend requests, and neither any on new turns in active games.
It just dawned upon me that mayhap there ARE no push notifications in this release. If so, and if it is not planned for the world-wide release, I’d like to requests it with great passion and alacrity. It is kinda an essential standard of the async genre for a very good reason
Two particular requests for convenient and player-friendly push notifications, suggestions I make to every dev working on an async title that has caught my interest, and that some of the most polished asynchronous online games for iOS (such as Carcassonne, Starbase Orion and UniWar) have implemented to a great effect, are these:
[ol]
[li]Have push notifications bring us directly into the pushed match. This is the great holy grail of push notifications for async games. For dedicated players, or just anyone who has several matches going, this is a great boon. Having to go through the process of launching RAD Soldiers, choosing “Play”, “Play online” and then the relevant match, for every turn is irksome, and a waste of time that could be spent playing.
[/li][li]Informative push notifications: Have notifications inform the player of the name of other player in the game, and perhaps even which turn the match is on. Once the pushes start rolling in, this is a convenience that can help us differentiate between matches.
[/li][/ol]
Well, since I literally can’t find anything else to be dissatisfied about, I guess I can only congratulate on a bizarrely polished beta/Canadian (I love that iOS gaming has given us grounds to claim the two are one and the same) release, and on creating one of the best async/online TBS games I’ve ever pressed a turn button in.