Burgle Bros for Android

I used to be more of a hardcore gamer - even developed video games for a few years. Nowadays I’m mostly into board games and tabletop simulators. Most board game adaptations have tons of glitzy animations and sound that I find detracts from the game play. I had played this game on Tabletop Simulator so decided to give it a try here. There are definitely some rough edges from a development standpoint. But the gameplay isn’t interfered with by a bunch of animation sideshows. I haven’t hit some of the gameplay issues I’ve seen mentioned, and hopefully there will be updates to fix those at some point. But for a casual game I can sit and play while watching TV or other multitasking, I’m pleased with this for the cost.

Burgle Bros is an excellent adaptation of the board game. It is very challenging but with multiple difficulty settings is most certainly winnable. And when you win it feels like a real accomplishment. Some of the UI can be a bit hard to see at times but this is a minor issue that does not prevent enjoyment of the game. If you want a challenging strategy game that is never the same twice you will be happy.

My friend and I play this game every day. As a game, despite a few faults, it’s a lot of fun and literally the only reason I’m giving this three stars. But this implementation has so many bugs that you wonder how any testing was ever done. Where should I start? If you play a 1 character game and one of the safes has gold bars, you can’t finish the game because there’s no one else to pick up the bars. Hacking lasers sometimes puts you in an endless hacking loop that you have to quit. Sometimes the game just stops going. When you quit and continue it has to start on a random player’s turn. I can’t believe they had to put a failsafe in for a condition that should never happen rather than just fix the bugs. All kinds of other bugs like sometimes the gemstone says you can’t move into an occupied space (as it should) but then lets you anyway. Sometimes going from a laser to a fingerprint doesn’t always give cause an alarm after you hack the laser. If you lose the cat, pick it up but then undo the turn, sometimes you end up with two cats for the rest of the game. The guards on floor 4 of the Tower of Babel cause all kinds of problems with certain events or causing players to lose two stealth instead of one for seemingly no reason, increasing by two instead of one when the guard deck empties, etc. And why doesn’t the Tower of Babel fit on my Mobile Pro 12.9 without scrolling? Are you kidding me? These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. We play almost every day which tells you how much I like the game. But man... the bugs are so frustrating.

I’m a fan of the fantastic tabletop board game, and I think the app is a fantastic conversion, but it only took me a couple of plays to notice that the guards completely ignore at least a couple of the event cards that have rules affecting them. For instance, cards that are supposed to generate a new destination for a guard don’t (he just keeps going to his original destination and THEN picks a new destination), and the card that moves guards on other floors but isn’t supposed to have ANY effect on guards that haven’t been revealed reveals and moves them anyway(coulda had something to do with my having already peeked up the stairwell and revealed a tile on the second floor). These are unforgivable glitches as, if anybody should be following the rules, it should be the AI opponent. It’s too bad the developers didn’t make a way to draw whatever card they wanted so they could test if they all worked during play. Camel Up! was another game that was well-received by the board game community where the app had a problem following the rules that was never (to my knowledge) addressed, so the sales went nowhere. Take the lesson and not the page here. I will be DELETING this until it is fixed, at which point I will redownload, return and write a glowing review. Meantime, I have a cardboard version that does everything right.

I love the art design of the game and it’s a great concept. Probably on an Mobile it’s perfect. But on my Android 8 the text was simply too small, and that got so frustrating I deleted it.