War On Terror, as the name might suggest, is quite far from a serious board game. In essence, it’s a modified game of risk. It’s not difficult pick up, and the rules are actually far simpler than the original risk – so don’t be expecting any in-depth strategy here. It’s a tongue-in-cheek look at the world today and how some societies view the global stage – and there, it succeeds. From the guys who brought you Neuroshima Hex.

If you’re easily offended, stay away from this game. The rules contain reference to Lady Liberty wielding a dildo, and one of the avatars is a little Hitler. At later points in the game, nuking countries becomes a viable strategy to winning.

Gameplay:

Starting with a few key territories, you use your ample amounts of cash to do any of the follow actions:

• Attack a neighbouring territory
• Fund a terrorist organisation in another country (cheaper than just attacking)
• Activate a terror cell to attack (take one turn to fund, then one to attack) – the initiator of the terror cell is unknown.
• Fight terrorists in your own country
• Nuke somewhere (very expensive, and you need to be very powerful before this is an option)
• Upgrade your own cities (3 levels of strength, which affect attack chance, costs etc)

You need to be at least at strong as the area you’re attacking, but you don’t need to choose where to attack from or manage troop numbers like in Risk. If you can attack, it’s always assumed to be from your strongest neighbouring nation.

The only way to get funding in the game is through oil. Every territory has a number, similar to Catan; and at the end of your turn, the dice are rolled. Territories with the same number as the sum of the dice get funding. Naturally, 6/7/8 are the most desirable numbers to find, as those are the most common dice rolls. It’s a simple mechanism, but you don’t really need to worry about much of that on the iPad.

Winning is done via certain number of “Liberation Points”, awarded when you control entire continents. The more players there are in a game, the lower the LB requirement to win. Simples.

Implementation:

The game is technically only for the iPhone, so you need to run at 2X mode on the iPad. At 2x, the text in the rule book is incredibly hard to read, but the game itself looks reasonable. Controls are simplicity itself, and I had no issues figuring what you need to touch to do the various actions, or touch-zones that were misaligned. It all works well, bug free as far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, I feel a game like this has lost a lot in the translation. The physical board game has an “evil balaclava” and secret message pad to instil fear in opponents, and the thrill of secretly performing terrorist operations on allies lands creates a very real tension. The iPad version currently has only AI to play against, so most of that excitement is lost. The mechanical action of funding a terrorist cell in a faceless AI opponent just doesn’t do it for me. Toward the end, it just feels like a bit of a grind, with a fairly limited set of actions to take.

While the physical board game is critically acclaimed (and possibly even a great education tool?), it’s difficult to say this version will appeal to anyone other than real fans. If the developers add local multiplayer, I could see this being better. That’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with the game – it’s certainly a polished implementation – but it just doesn’t work as well on an electronic device.

Verdict: 6/10