Super Tribes

Hello. Today I'm writing about a very good iOS game. Here it goes.

I recently got an iOS game called Super Tribes. It's recently released and independently developed, and still very impressive. The game is also free and only has one in-app purchase, which is the ability to play as the 5th tribe, the other 4 come with the game. Super Tribes is a turn based strategy game where you play as 1 of 5 tribes. The tribes are Vikings, Ninjas, Samurai, Romans, and a tribe that looks like Native Americans. The game is laid out over a large square, flat world made out of 256 square tiles.

Every time you start a game the world is completely new so the game has infinite replay value. You start off as one tribesman with one very small village and a very small portion of the world visible to you. The goal is to expand your tribe and advance its civilization as much as possible in 30 turns. On the world you can set it to have at least 1 enemy tribe, to as much as 3 enemy tribes. You can battle the enemy tribe and defeat their units, capture their cities, and destroy their trade routes. The basis of the game is city expansion. Every turn a city creates a certain amount of resources, which is what you need in order to do anything in the game except move your units. The bigger the city and the more population it has, the more resources you'll gain each turn. There are many ways to increase your cities' population. You do this by gathering resources near the city, or by building buildings near the city. You can gather fruit, hunt animals, fish, mine, and farm. You can build lumber houses, sawmills, ports, smitheries, windmills, and more. When your cities population exceeds the number of white bars it has below it, it levels up and gets bigger and starts generating more resources for you. You can gain new cities by discovering small villages. These villages don't belong to the enemy tribe and you can capture them and they'll happily join your empire and become one of your cities. You can also get a new city by moving one of your units onto an enemy tribes city, unless they kill that unit on their turn, the next turn you can capture it for your own.

Almost everything you do in the game raises your score, and you win if at the end of 30 turns your score is higher than the enemy tribes'. You can also connect your cities together using roads, and for each city connected to your capital (your starting city) the capitals population goes up 1 and you score points. You can connect cities to your capital across water by building ports, which will automatically create trade routes connecting them. Everything you can do in the game by buying that science. You start out with one way to raise the population of your city, but all the other ways and all the other things you can do, such as sail or climb mountains or farm, has to be bought using resources. The more cities you have the more expensive the sciences get. At the end of the game your score is totaled from your sciences, army and conquests, cities and other categories.

Super Tribes is an amazing, free iOS game and if you're a fan of turn based strategy, I highly recommend it. I also recommend buying the 99 cent in app purchase to help the developer. Bye.


- By Ashton

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Julia stared in horror. The eye twitched, unblinkingly, for a few minutes before more black sludge dripped down over the window in the door. She began to hear the thing slamming against the door, faster and harder each time, as if more creatures were joining it. She didn't have time to think about what had just happened, she only knew she had to get out of this place. Julia turned to look at the elevator in the center of the circular building. It was devasted. The cables were strewn about and the entire thing was broken almost in half, leaning against the wall of The Hole. It was a wonder that the thing hadn't fallen through the cracked and broken floor, that the things underneath her hadn't found a way to her. She stared forlornly at the far wall where the kiosks of climbing suits should be. Tons of rubble had fallen and 5 of the 6 suits were completely crushed or broken. There was one that looked nearly untouched, standing outside its kiosk. Unfortunately it was blocked by the rubble, there was no way she could get it out and put it on. Maybe if she was inside of it she could get out of the rubble but? Julia looked over at the neurotech booth next to the broken elevator. Julia was a scientist but she thought it was impossible to transfer her consciousness into the suit with its limited amount of software. SLAM SLAM SLAM. The door started to buckle. She had to try.

The Runelords

     Hello everybody.  Today I’m continuing my break from my story because I just finished a book series that would like to write about.

     Last summer I went to the Martinsburg library and got the first book in the Runelords series, called The Sum of All Men.  It was an amazing fantasy book by David Farland  written 1998.  As soon as we went back to the library I acquired and devoured the second book, Brotherhood of the Wolf.  After that I was saddened because the library had no more books in the series, due to them being lost and never replaced.  However for Christmas my grandparents came to my rescue and bought me all of the rest of the books except the last.  The series is split with the first four books centering around Gaborn Val Orden and the last 5 books starring Fallion Val Orden.  I recently finished the first half of the series and that is what I’m writing about today.  

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE RUNELORDS SERIES IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE FIRST 4 BOOKS AND ARE INTERESTED IN THE SERIES PLEASE DONT READ THIS.

     This was an amazing fantasy series.  Anybody that knows me knows that The Belgariad and The Mallorean by David Eddings will always be my favorite fantasy series but this one offered some very interesting and entertaining viewpoints of the fantasy world.  One of the biggest differences between the two is pacing.  In The Runelords the pacing was very very good.  Some fantasy series get ridiculously boring because everything is very drawn out and prolonged and story progression just does not happen.  For no reason.  Other series (liked Belgariad and Mallorean) are very fast paced and you learn about the characters through their actions and not chapter long deep self reflection.  The Runelords offers a very good mix between these two pacings because it takes it’s time with events that are important and lengthy such as battles or traversing beautiful landscapes, but instead of focusing on a single character’s lengthy, lengthy, perception of boring events, it quickly shows different viewpoints from different characters that invigorates and immerses you into the story.  

     The Runelords also has very good character building and writing.  The main character, Gaborn is not the extremely powerful, confident character you seen in some fantasy stories, but he is also not the extremely innocent farm boy with a destiny trope (i.e. Garion, Frodo.)  A huge part of the series is about learning how to be a king, a king to the world if necessary, and learning how to deal with the power, responsibility, and consequences that come with your decisions.  One of my favorite characters is Borenson.  Borenson is truly a tragic hero.  He comes from a poor, fatherless background and rises to become a huge man, a knight of the king’s guard.  In these four books he has to deal with some truly harrowing sacrifices and is one of the characters that suffers the most throughout the series.  Whether or not he comes out on top is still left to be seen because although he settles down with his wife at the end of the first four books, he reappears in Fallion’s story…

     That was my review for the first four books in The Runelords series, I highly encourage you to pick it up now if you are a fan of intense, high quality, fantasy.