Beasts of Balance
Review

Beasts of Balance (2016) comes with beautifully sculpted physical toys that interact with your iPad to create and nurture creatures in a magical land. You place a toy creature on the plinth provided and it appears in the game. Balance another creature on top of the first to join it. Different items can then migrate and evolve animals to score more points. Players work together to get the highest score. If the tower tumbles you have a limited time to get it balanced again. There’s also a competitive mode where players balance animals to battle each other.

The balancing teamwork gets players supporting each other and discussing how to add creatures without bringing the tower down.

The collaborative mode is a good way to understand how the different objects interact with each other in the game. But adding the ‘Battle Cards’ really brings the fun alive. Along with picking the right pieces to play, you can use cards from your hand at any time by tapping them on the plinth. This adds substantially more tactics and even lets you booby-trap particular creatures and items.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Beasts of Balance 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 2 years ago.