Smartphone Inc Review – The poor man wants to be rich The rich man wants to be king And a king is not satisfied Until he rules everything – Bruce Springsteen, Badlands
The boss has hit the mark. Isn’t that one of the reasons we play? For the thrill of starting with very few resources but making it to the top? And when you get there, you see the next peak a kilometer away and you want to see what the view is like up there?
Smartphone Inc Review
I bet the Smartphone Inc. designer is a fan of Bruce Springsteen, but he doesn’t know it yet. The sheer force of Darkness On The Edge of Town, with its abandonment of the Wall of Sound for something more electric and intimate, hits music lovers like a ton of bricks. The song’s theme, like Smartphone Inc.’s theme, is hope in the face of all despair, but Smartphone Inc.’s final act may just free you from that idea.
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Smartphone Inc. was one of the whispered wonders at Dice Tower Con 2018. It had the best seat in the “hot games” section, right in the middle, and everyone was talking about it. (Bad Ticket To Ride: London was completely ignored on the way to the table). The board stayed so hot that I didn’t get a chance to play it back then, but as soon as I could, I played a copy which was passed through Punchboard Media.
And now Arcane Wonders has acquired Smartphone Inc and its companion expansion, cleverly named Status Update 1.1. Designed by Ivan Lashin, with art by Viktor Miller Gausa, it is co-published by Arcane Wonders and Cosmodrome Games.
We previously reviewed the base game and were delighted when Arcane Wonders sent us a review copy of their production of the base game and expansion. We’ll be focusing on the stuff from Status Update 1.1, but we’ll also be discussing some elements of the base game version of Arcane Wonders.
Smartphone Inc. is originally published by Cosmodrome Games, which has made a name for itself with edgy productions, such as the release of Aquatica. But the Arcane Wonders version is just over the top. We played the original version a lot and as you may remember from our original review there were just a couple of issues with the player boxes that contained the pieces and a few minor quibbles with the review.
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I love everything about the production of this new Dice Tower Essentials production. The box cover is the same as far as I know, but there have been some major changes to the player boxes that are super fun. Boxes are plastic trays that have a clever place for all the pieces and have an indentation at the top to hold player cards, which addresses another complaint we had about the previous edition.
The Status Update 1.1 expansion comes in a box about half the thickness of the base game and also includes some new content. It’s a new game board, impressive double or even triple layered, which is a much better experience for two or three players, as it is a dense cartographic representation of the American market.
But there are many other additions in the form of small supplementary modules that enhance the gaming experience. Firstly, there are new technologies and some of them even contain new mechanisms.
The CEO technologies allow players to bring out a mini player of their color in the base that can affect the game in ways such as being able to sell more items that the CEO focuses on.
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Later, some of the technicians allow you to collect extra action tiles that don’t count towards your normal action limit. Having all these new technologies in the box really mixes things up when it comes to keeping the game fresh.
Finally, one of my favorite additions is target tiles. During each game, a certain number of target tiles will be drawn from a large and varied pile. These award a dozen points to whoever completes the objective first and bring that racing element into the game. The objectives are never difficult to complete, but they do require attention and there were many battles won or lost depending on how well one of us did with these pieces. They also change the strategy quite a bit, because a player can stray from competing strategies to go high, sell low, or earn tons of low sells to achieve as many goals as possible.
I already liked Smartphone Inc. I already liked it A LOT, so there was a part of me that was worried that this new content would either bloat the game or make it complicated for the sake of complexity. None of the concerns materialized. I played it with friends. I taught it to my grandchildren, who enjoyed the game so much that we played it multiple times every night for about a week. At one point I basically played this game to the exclusion of most other games for about 10 days and even talked about it on Gumbo Live!
With thousands of games to play online, that pretty much sums up my review of the game, as the improvements to Smartphone Inc found in the status update, for my grandchildren and I at least, were enough to shut down almost everyone else’s desire to play. games. Even a month later, I’d be ready to start tonight, as I still don’t think I’ve explored the interaction between the CEO and the objective tile mechanic enough.
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I also have to give a nod to Arcane Wonder’s in-game production. It still looks good, so nothing has been changed from that aspect, but the team has really tightened up the regulation. We had very few questions during our long two weeks of acting in preparation for the review.
And I have to make a suggestion for the design of the two- or three-person board that comes with the update. One of the weaknesses of the original game was that it wasn’t actually good for two, or even three players. This new advice changes that. The locations are next to each other, there is a fierce battle for the best seats, you can choose your starting position and there is a lot of interaction which increases already from the second round.
I honestly have no complaints about Smartphone Inc. and its expansion. Yes, some in our group are turned off by the topic, but not me. I still love the idea of being CEOs of Big Tech shooting each other down in the hyper-competitive cell phone market. Yes, this game is ultimately a family-friendly version of a financial simulation game, so if that’s not your bag, you might want to keep moving down the aisle. But to me, manipulating prices and where you want to sell your stuff is exactly the kind of player interaction I want to see more in Euros, not less.
I thought I’d enjoy Smartphone Inc. without the expansion content. But now I can’t see the game without the update and it’s my favorite expansion for this year.
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I guess the boss was right: “we are not satisfied” until we manage everything. See you next time, laissez les bon temps rouler! After getting into the board game hobby in late 2014, we decided to share our thoughts on the games we collect on our shelves. The collection has certainly expanded in recent years and we have made up for lost time!
Sometimes our opinions differ, so Amy will post reviews every Tuesday and Fi will post on Thursdays. We hope you enjoy reading some of our thoughts on board games, especially those for two players.
If you were excited about new board games in 2018, then you’ve probably heard of Smartphone Inc. Released in limited quantities at Spiel 2018, Smartphone Inc has put Cosmodrone Games on the map when it comes to board game publishers to watch . Fortunately, Cosmodrone Games has teamed up with Arcane Wonders to bring the smartphone to a wider market via Kickstarter, and now anyone can get their hands on it. Hopefully, the same will soon be true of their 2019 release, Aquatica.
As you might expect, we were definitely excited about new board games in 2018 and are lucky to be friends with someone who was willing to pay big bucks to get their hands on a copy of Smartphone Inc. We had the chance to give it a try. couple of times and I really enjoyed it – it really lived up to expectations as a financial game. However, we haven’t touched it since and this latest release was a chance to see if the game still had that same spark or if it has lost its lustre now that it’s