sirjolt wrote:
Coming to this conversation very late.
I still have my original Stop Thief and picked up the new version as well. Only two things bother me about the new Stop Thief. One is that I miss the old shamus figures from the old game; the meeples are ugly and I would have preferred them to just be plain. Second, the private clues are just too strong (or they were, haven't played for a while). It practically gave you the solution since one of the two locations was so obviously not correct.
I still have my original Stop Thief and picked up the new version as well. Only two things bother me about the new Stop Thief. One is that I miss the old shamus figures from the old game; the meeples are ugly and I would have preferred them to just be plain. Second, the private clues are just too strong (or they were, haven't played for a while). It practically gave you the solution since one of the two locations was so obviously not correct.
If you haven't gone back to Stop Thief!, it might be worth a second look. The app now has multiple difficulty levels, play modes, and customization options. (Including how much information you get on a private tip.)
As for Dark Tower, I don't mind the changes but I hope the competitive mode makes a return in time; the Dragon and Wizard were a lot of fun. The biggest problem I had with the original game was that one person would always get stuck looking for the Silver Key and one person would always find the keys on the first space of each zone and would cruise to a win. The original game was way ahead of it's time but it just doesn't hold up.
You kind of answered your own question here. No one loved Dark Tower as much as Rob and I, but there's no doubting that it has some major issues. I think a lot of folks who are concerned about cooperative play are coming at it from a purely nostalgic perspective. Thematically it makes no sense as a competitive game.
At the end of the day, what Rob, Isaac, Noah, and myself are trying to do is make the absolute best play experience possible (and also knocking your socks off with technological wizardry). Early playtesting suggests we're on the right track.