7 Wonders Duel is my #2 pure two-player game, just behind Jaipur, and that makes it perfect for a port to the digital space – apps are great for pass-and-play or for playing against a single AI opponent. The 7 Wonders app, released about two years ago, turned out to be quite good, just a little tough to follow because of the size of the cards and the speed (which you could adjust) of the AI’s moves. The 7 Wonders Duel app has all of that, pro and con, although with just one opponent to track it’s much easier to follow, and some non-intuitive features that made it a bit harder for me to learn, but the AI seems fairly strong and outside of one crash the first time I used the app both on my phone and my iPad it’s been quite stable.
7 Wonders Duel is a real reimagining of the original game, which plays 3 to 7 and is best with at least 4, ditching the card-drafting mechanic for card tableaux where some cards are face-up and some face-down at the start of each round, with players alternating choosing cards. You may buy a card or, if available, take one for free because it has no cost or because you have a precursor card; you may take a card and discard it for 3 coins; or you may take a card, discard it, and build one of your four wonders. Once the seventh wonder has been built between the two players, the eighth one is destroyed. There are three rounds called eras, with cards becoming more expensive and more valuable as the game progresses, and there are purple guild cards worth variable bonuses in the third era just as in the original game. It’s a model for taking a multiplayer game and turning it into a two-player experience that forces direct interaction between the two players.
For straight play, the app is solid. There’s only one AI level, but it’s good enough for me; I’ve played the original game maybe a dozen times but wouldn’t say I’m particularly good at it. One of the most important strategies in 7 Wonders Duel is to choose cards that limit your opponent’s choices on their next turn, and it’s frequently possible to set up a move that forces your opponent to pick a specific card that makes two other cards available to you on the next turn. The AI player is programmed to do this, possibly above all else, and knowing that makes planning a counterstrategy a bit easier.
Using the app is much easier if you know how to play and what the icons on the tops of the cards mean; they’re clear enough to see even on the phone, although I find spotting the symbols on the side that tell you what precursor card might get you that card for free isn’t easy even on the larger screen. I found the way you choose to build a wonder so non-intuitive – you have to click on your wonders to pull up a separate box, then drag a card from the tableau over the wonder you wish to build. Since you play a card to your space by dragging it there, and discard one for coins by dragging it to your money pouch, dragging it to your wonders should give you the choice to build.
The tutorial in the app is really not very good, and there’s no way (that I can find) to directly access the rules within the app. Some of the card descriptions look unfinished; if you click on a science card, for example, it just says it counts for the symbol shown, without explaining how science cards score. There are three victory conditions in the game – more points at game-end, advancing to your opponent’s end of the military track, and collecting six different science icons (there are 7, two of each in the deck, although you omit three cards from each game) – and the app at least labels the first two differently as Defeat and Supremacy, but I lost to the AI once without any indication of why. It wasn’t military supremacy and the game wasn’t over; if it was the science icons, nothing told me so and I don’t think that was true from what I saw on screen. There’s also no undo function, although in this game it might not make sense, since so many card choices will reveal at least one face-down card.
I’m picking the app apart a little bit, but the underlying game is really great, and the app does work – it’s more that it’s rough around the edges, and maybe the AI could be a little smarter about its choices of cards. I’m still playing it a lot, though, and would recommend it at the $4.99 list price.