Days of Wonder announces Small World 2 - Tournament Style

The first game I ever played on an iPad was Small World. Small World 2 came along and improved on the the original. Now, we've got the Tournament Style launch, which includes a full lobby, real time play (as opposed to asynchronous which already existed), and the big feature they're touting - a "speed chess" like timing mechanism, so each player is time limited for the entire game, thereby encouraging a faster, more exciting style of play without changing any of the standard rules. If you've ever played a board game, you've probably played one of those folks who takes FOREVER to finish their turn. The clock is adjustable with several different offerings to match the kind of rules you wish to play under.

The new release is available on Steam, Android, iPad.

Small World 2 Tournament Style - New Features

• Full-featured Lobby (called "Online Arena") with real-time chat, list of connected players, game creation and list of open games to join. This will help building a thriving community just like what happened with Ticket to Ride.
• Two types of games : "Single Session" games and "Multi Session" games.
• The single session game is real-time gaming à la Ticket to Ride, with AI taking over if a player quits the game. This will allow players to play quick real-time games and be sure to finish them even if a player "rage-quits".
• Multi session games are the asynchronous gaming that already existed, but with the new system described below.
• Tournament-Style Multi-player - This is the big new feature. The player creating a game decides in advance how much time will be allocated to each player for the entire game.
  • This includes a mechanism that works much like a Multiplayer Chess Clock, with the difference that if a player runs out of time, a AI takes over for that player until game end. The player that runs out of time loses no matter what (i.e. even if the Bot that steps in her shoes to complete the game wins the game), but the other players can finish the game to completion and see how they fared against each other.
  • Bad players won't be able to spoil the other players' experience by dragging their feet when they lose.
  • Allows for different styles of play, from "quick fix" to "deep strategy" games.
  • Also sets proper expectations right from the start in terms of how fast or slow a player wants to play a game.
  • Finally it paves the way for some future major features, such as tournaments.
• A Player Clock will govern both style of plays, albeit with different preset durations.
  Player Clock duration is adjustable to the minute, with a number of preset durations available for tournament play as well as more leisurely games.
• Additional improvements in the online gaming area. This implements the most important requests of players:
  • Ranking, private games, karma filtering, starting player selection when creating a game,
  • Persistent in-game chat,
  • Chat at the final score screen, with possibility to add the other players as Buddies right away,
  • An improved invitation system for "games with friends".
  • A detailed statistics screen at the end of each game to analyze how each player performed with the various race/power combinations