Abalone

A faithful reproduction of the physical game Abalone. Achievements are broken and the single player puzzles and challenges leave much to be desired.

I bought this so I could play online, but after quite a few matches I'm not even sure anymore whether I'm playing real human beings or some AI made to pretend there are actual people playing this half-hearted abomination of a port. There really is no way to tell, because the game offers no chat functionality or any way to make contact at all. In addition to that nicknames seem to be masked or something - every search for player's profiles I made on Steam turned out empty. Why? Well, if there are people playing, matchmaking almost always gives you ridiculously weak opponents: they walk into the most obvious traps and let their forces be split incredibly easy. Out of my 50 games I had like 2-3 really good ones. Besides that the game has a lot more issues: - some people seem to be unable to start the game at all - Devs don't care / forum's dead - Connectivity - Ugly unintuitive menus Don't get me wrong though - Abalone in itself is a great tactical game with a certain geometrical beauty to it. Try it if you dare!

Abalone is a strategy game with very simple rules (the tutorial will take about a minute of your time), but is pretty tricky to play. I've never played the physical boardgame before, but this digital version seems solid enough, and in addition to the requisite multiplayer options, has many single-player scenarios to teach you the basics and progressively tougher strategies (I've only played SP so far). See those screenshots on the store page? That's exactly what the game looks like--no bells and whistles here. I've encountered only one music track so far, and it loops pretty fast, but I just turn it off and play my own music... or have silence if I need to concentrate, which is most of the time ;) The controls are very simple, and there are easy ways to backtrack if you accidentally click on the wrong piece. However, you can really tell this is a port of a game that had touch controls; small things like having to move your cursor all the way to the bottom right corner to finish your turn could have been a bit more streamlined for the PC version. The big question for single players is: is the AI good? As of now, I'm working through the scenarios to learn the game and the AI is still at the Easy level, but as a complete newbie I find there's still a fair amount of challenge to be had and I'm improving and making steady progress. Would a veteran Abalone player be challenged at more difficult levels? I'm not good enough to judge properly! But for a beginner, the difficulty seems accurate so far. Just a note for achievement hunters that this game does have achievements, but they appear to be broken. Abalone is straightforward strategy game that wears its boardgame origins on its sleeve, and has a good amount of content for the Single Player. It may not have any flash, but it's solid.

The game runs all right after tweaking (black screen if run full screen for me). Whatever you do, do NOT hit 'esc': there's no dialog box, so the game closes to desktop no matter what you're doing. Local multiplayer crashes about half the time, and online multiplayer sits waiting to connect...then exits to desktop. It...looks nice? There's a positive. The rules are consistent, and the AI doesn't seem to cheat. The control sceme is fiddly with my mouse, even turned way down. Don't know about anyone else. Acheivements aren't a priority for me, but it'd be nice if they *worked*. As anyone can see from the forums and other reviews, the developer just doesn't care. If you plan to buy the game, only get it super cheap (say, 50 cents or less) and and don't expect achievements.

Didn't expect to find this on steam, always wanted to play abalone again. The achievements in game are broken though.

You can play this for free on Board Game Arena but it's good for solo mode/practice. So far I love it and rank it up there with Othello and Lines of Action. Every turn presents a new puzzle like every good abstract game should. The app works fine. It's a basic Asmodee mobile port with a bunch of solo missions and seemingly dead online play. There's pass n play if you're into that and that's pretty much it. A good way to sample the game before you go out and buy a real set to play with your loved ones.

Abalone is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. This mobile app is a fairly authentic, if pointless recreation of the old marble pushing boardgame toy called "Abalone" (despite having no association to the molluscs of the same name). Take turns pushing black or white marbles off the edge of the hexagonal grid. That's all there is to it. You can play this hotseat or vs AI if you want, but there's no point. This is incredibly shallow stuff and doesn't really belong here on Steam competing with games like Counterstrike 2 and GTAV. From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The mobile app features lazy minimalist assets and visuals (it's just a recreation of the Abalone board). Admittedly it really does look like an Abalone board... but then that's all there is to this, and the simplicity and shallowness in itself is a significant problem, especially considering the eyewatering price tag the mobile devs put on this mobile app when they dumped it on Steam. The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone. These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. Abalone didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the mobile app, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the mobile app didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for playing long enough to complete just one game, trivial to get, but less than 21 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the mobile app. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the mobile app. The poor quality of this mobile app is also reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected. Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this mobile app was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the mobile app. But this only appears around the same time that trading cards were applied to the mobile app... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the mobile app just has a couple of players every week running up the mobile app and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many mobile apps like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards. Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $7 USD, it's $2 USD on the Amazon app store. Presumably it's been kicked off Google Play for being crap, I don't know why it's not there anymore, but you can get it elsewhere for your mobile phone if you really want this app. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay MORE THAN THREE TIMES THE PRICE for a cheap mobile app just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this is a mobile app, is priced to insult and gouge PC gamers, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend. Just who do they think we are?