Calamus 4+

It’s okay but…

If your looking for an easy map maker to throw some maps together this is perfect, but since the “free mode” it has gone downhill, there are things locked that shouldn’t be, torches, bookshelves, a lot of the plants. the wall selection is…. Bad, it only has cobblestone, wood, and brick (locked without subscription), and the floors are okay, there’s plenty of options, except you can’t use the dock without a subscription, even tho I’ve used it before, and where are the desert themed items, you have tomb things but not anything related to the most notable tombs ever? And no steering wheel or crows nest without paying, I know you need to get money to keep your app running but I would much rather watch an add every 30 mins than try to fight with not having a steering wheel or torches in my pirate ship, and don’t even get me started on logging in, I like the concept or having a rune password, but once I put it in it shouldn’t freeze and not let me in, and final thing, when I save a map that has water, when I go in to crop it to make print it on to pages, the water turns a light blue instead of the color I need, if you could fix these problems this game could easily rival any map making software

Like it, but have some issues

I basically just downloaded this to make maps, and so far I really like it a lot. I love the art style used for everything and after playing around with it to make a basic map, it’s easy to use after you get the hang of the weird menu layout.

Now on the the issues I have with it. While there is an okay selection of things to chose from, as I was able to create a tavern with what was on hand. It still felt rather limiting with what was offered. I would like to see a bit more verity with this. I want to be able to make underdark maps and there is a bit to be able to make them like lava, crystals, and chasms.... but no fungi? That is a main staple of the underdark. So that really bummed me out as it’s more work on my part to incorporate them into the maps I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make.

The biggest gripe I have with this is, how do you download saved maps? There’s no way to save them to a device of any type. I want to be able to save my maps with out having to screenshot them and have to edit them just to get a whole map. Unless that is something you get with the subscription. I don’t know as I just downloaded it.

I’d be willing to pay for a subscription, only if there was much more of a verity of items to chose form and you could save your maps to a device.

Developer Response ,

Hi! Thanks for the feedback and interest in the app.

More tiles are being added consistently. I know spider eggs and webs are currently on the drawing board, and I'll suggest some fungi to the artist. As far as downloading maps, currently you can only do that on the desktop build (which you can download on our website at trapstreetstudios.com/theCalamus and log in with your account. However, in the next build you will be able to download maps on any device. That is coming soon!

Let us know if you have any other feedback or suggestions. You can email us any time at us@trapstreetstudios.com.

Subscription VTT

I downloaded it for the free trial. This is a virtual tabletop to play D&D type games online with friends. What this brings to the table is it is cross platform, working with PC and mobile. There aren’t much in the way of mobile VTTs out there. I already use Roll20 and Tabletop Simulator for free and for a one time cost, so to me it’s not worth paying a monthly subscription for this. Thus, I didn’t much check out those features.

What I did enjoy was the map making portion, where you can make battle maps or dungeons and then export them for use in other VTTs. They have a nice palette of icons to make maps and tokens with. I did notice if I made medium or large size maps there was a significant slowdown on my iPad Pro. But for a set piece battlemap or breaking a dungeon into chunks of smaller areas (20x20 squares or so) it worked perfectly.

Not worth the subscription in my opinion, but I would pay a one time cost if they made a program that was just the map maker.

Developer Response ,

Thanks so much for the review! A one-time cost map-maker is in the works! Stay tuned. =)