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[sambojin]

Mmmmm. Deathtraps 

Fortress Legends! A game that has the rare honour of getting more Dwarf Fortress legends mode results on Google search than any other I've played.

The basic premise is, you've been teleported to a strange world and been told to fill a stone with magic. By creating a horrible deathtrap of a fortress around it and raiding the hell out of other people doing likewise.

Simple plot, good execution. Think "The Quest for Epic Loot!", but on mobile, with touchscreen/emulator joystick controls. It works surprisingly well.


On the gameplay side, when people raid your dungeon, you're not in control. It's AI asynchronous, but it works very well. You really have to put a bit of thought into trap placement, spawning portal summons, room type and defensive device placement. They may get a tiny bit of your loot, but you can watch the replay, and make it eviler next time. So much eviler. Plus, my raiding buddies raid my dungeon at least once a day. Because.
Mostly because I do it to them too. What goes around comes around, it's pretty random, and I've got well over 350 people that haven't sought revenge yet. Yes, that means I'm winning. Or just a part of a wrecking crew. BMing with the laugh emote is acceptable. Until your things get wrecked
A good, scary dungeon takes longer to make than a scary character. So don't be disheartened if you lose 10% of what is essentially unlimited gold and mana. My dungeon/fortress will be cool in another 3-4 weeks (1 1/2 months of play time all up. Yes, I will cackle maniacally). Your dungeon will catch up to you. Until then, raid everything profitable. My 3.2mil of gold and mana storage doesn't just fill itself.

On the raiding side, you and up to three buddies can wreck the hell out of other people's dungeons. It's real-time Diablo-style, but it feels faster paced, with 4 classes (a sword swinging tank, a twin-blader dps'er, a status-debuffer archer, and a JoAT/AoE wizard). You can level into various skills and classes in a reasonable RPG fashion.

You have 3 "attack slots" (essentially different load-outs or weapon-type builds. Broadsword/Twin-Blade/Bow/Staff), and a "defense" slot. You spec your defense slot entirely differently with gear than your attacking slots. You can amp your traps, monster damage, monster/building defense or HP and all kinds of other stuff for your defense slot, so when people raid you, your dungeon gets buffed. Don't be a troll and bring that stuff to raids. Unless it literally is your best gear. There's a heap of stuff to do for builds, even if itemization is a little limited (change it up on your skillset/items as you please. But no free character re-specs. Though you'll always level more than one weapon-type eventually).

And damn is this game fun to play. I've got a crappy little Huawei phone, and while there's a bit of lag, it's pretty damn responsive on WiFi. Graphics are good, sound is serviceable, music gets a bit repetitive. Matchmaking is quick, but you will get n00bs jumping into your party that'll make you cry. It's just a part of the game. I was level 5 at one point too (but at least I was the Hover monkey, so did something for the team).

It's also pretty much free-to-play. I've been playing a bit under two weeks. I'm lvl35 (mixed class, but mostly mage. You have to skill into different classes for higher end skills. Lvl50 is max), have a pretty reasonable dungeon (trap placement is a wonderful mind-game in expected player movements and psychology), with mostly rare gear (1 epic ring that is the best thing ever, items go to legendary though). Everything is on timers for upgrades and raiding, everything. But that's mobile games for you. Raiding timers are pretty lenient (15mins a raiding "stone", 20 max stored "stones", 20 extra free "stones" for each lvl-up, can go beyond the max storage cap due to levelling, raids take 5mins max. You can use 1-3x stones each raid, for 1-3x XP and loot). Dungeon upgrade timers are pretty harsh (6 days for my current main fortress stone upgrade. Besides all the other things I've got to upgrade. But I've got an awesome dungeon for under 2 weeks f2p).

There is a crafting system. More on that later....

This isn't a great description of the game, but try it out. It's free on Android and iOS, and the only p2w thing is to make your dungeon creation faster. Some upgrades take ages eventually, but that's not a necessary thing to be a boss that makes rooms explode when you press a button.

There's a quick upgrade path (buy one fairy, not two. Do up your storage with gems quick. Half fill your storage with gems to buy more storage asap. Mines/mana collectors are kind of pointless other than ornaments, raiding is your income stream. Choose Hover and +100MP as a Sorcerer so everyone's happy to have you along on raids, even when you're lvl 3. Level into whatever you want after that). Buying two fairies straight away probably isn't a bad idea though. I wasted a tonne of gems early on, and am now only just eyeing off my second bought one. Fairies do all the upgrade/building work, so are absolutely vital to get anywhere. Two is good, three is better. It's more or less the reason that I'd chuck some $$ at the game.

I'll fix this up a bit later, it really doesn't do the game justice. It's good enough that you wouldn't mind paying $5-10 for it, after a couple weeks of play to make sure you enjoy it. I've had tonnes of fun f2p anyway, so it's all good.

Here's some youtube trailers for it:
(they're not very good. Shit goes kaboom! when I play. You can actually facebook share replays too, but I've yet to bother).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zjsJ_vnurl4
Official ad for the game.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp3Wy-JFBFU
Random 15mins of lvl1 stuff

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fNoCjyFsT18
Probably pretty similar. Meh. I'll do a Unity EveryPlay thing at some point so you can see some of the fun stuff.


I'm "sambojin" on there if you want me to exploderize stuff for you as you level up.

[sambojin]

(reserved for stuff)

[sambojin]

(probably do a mini-starter-guide here)

[Aklyon]

Emulated joystick controls worked not at all the last time I'd tried a tablet game that used them extensively. Can you elaborate on thise a bit better?

[sambojin]

More or less exactly what I said.

Think of playing some of the ps2 Baldur's Gate knock-off series (Dark Alliance?) on a gamepad, but with touch icons instead of triangle/square/etc for skills. And 4x multiplayer available as standard.

Four slotted skills max, and a big basic attack button. A touchscreen joystick on the left/right of screen, depending on how you set it. Sort of a (don't think of this as bad) fusion between Diablo 3 and an emulator joystick.

It works way better than I thought it would. You'd be surprised at the shit you can pull off. I can play matador with a Behemoth or Dragon all day, or snipe Sirens amongst a group of hammer Gnomes, or chain-knockdown a boss while dodging archer fire, or just aura-blast two portals worth of stuff and fireball the remains.

There's auto-target for ranged characters (archer/sorcerer), but it's not super-quick. You still need to move, stutter-step and choose your targets wisely. Whilst managing cool-downs, grouping mobs for AoE and running interference for the team.

Mêlée is still pretty responsive without auto-target, but you can't just wade in constantly hoping damage/tanking will see you through. There are kill priorities and movement/debuff/AoE/knockdown skills for various situations as well.
(note: it turns out mêlée DOES have auto-target now. It's very handy for longer ranged skills, but you can still attack in any direction you want. Goes for all classes actually).

[sambojin]

Just another run-through to see if there's any interested b12'ers. There's meant to be an update coming soon, so it'll be interesting to see what it brings.

About 2 1/2 weeks in, I'm level 41, with 3 pixies and I've unlocked all intermediate classes (and two high tier ones). Dungeon is getting there slowly, and I can redesign the whole thing if the mood strikes me.

I probably won't be paying anything for the game, simply because at this point, it gets me so little. $10 for another pixie/fairy? Nup, not paying that. The game is "worth" money, because it's good and fun. But it's not necessary if you're skint or cheap.

This does mean that the game is actually Free-to-Play, even to the upper echelons of lvl/gear/dungeon-design. Not sure just how much true longevity it has, but I'll be lvl50 (max) before the month's out.

It scratches my dungeon-bashing Diablo itch, even if new items take an age to get (actual upgrades anyway). It's fun as a morning coffee game.

It's free on playStore/appStore, and you don't have to pay a cent to get killy or diabolical with it. Give it a whirl some time. About 4-8 hours in and it gets pretty awesome (you'll have enough skills to start doing a fair bit by then).

[Aklyon]

You're probably not getting much since its actually in soft launch mode. I tried to look it up yesterday, failed to find it, then had to go look up wtf is up and found out its in some sort of limited soft launch and not available in the us yet. (rather similar to what happened when I'd found out about clash royale, actually.)

[sambojin]

Hmmmm. Well I know there's Aussies, Russians, Brazilians and maybe Greeks on there. So if you're one of them, give it a go

(it's been banner/ad-supported-advertised through games for about a month now, so I thought it was proper-launched. Maybe just actual targeted advertising for once....)

[sambojin]

Apparently Romania is a soft-launch target as well.

You could probably VPN an Android emulator on PC through any of those countries if you wanted to try it out. But mouse controls would be horrid (joystick and touchscreen skill controls do not work well with a mouse pointer).

[sambojin]

Now level 47, epic staff, epic bow, feeling damn godly as I close in on max lvl. Got a 6.4 mana/6.4mil gold stash size (make around 2mil a day easily from raiding), so money is no object to me, just the time it takes to upgrade dungeon stuff (I can solo my own dungeon easily, so there's plenty of work to be done on it).

Have enough items to make a fair few "builds", control/crit-damage/movement, etc. So itemization isn't completely limited, but I'll admit that it isn't great. Still tonnes of crafting to do.....

Lotsa high level friends, which makes making private rooms (to avoid lvl2's ruining a high lvl run by wasting one of four room slots) pretty damn easy. Heaps of English speakers, even from Russia/Japan/Brazil etc, which makes conversations easy. There's no in-dungeon messaging system, which is glorious. Or there is, but think "Hearthstone" style. I wish they'd put a "sorry" option for when you stuff up, but it's almost usable for party communication between that and character emotes. Almost.

Pretty sure version 5.0 is out soon, which is the proper launch version. Can't give a date, but soon.

Scratch that diablo itch. You know you want to

[Aklyon]

Scratch that diablo itch. You know you want to

Already can do that with PoE

[sambojin]

On a phone? This does phone/tablet.



note: either this game has great anti-hackware, or horrible software/network design.

Press the "home" button on your phone/tablet during a raid? You lose.
Make sure you have your phone up the right (wrong) way, so the in-dungeon chat buttons are nowhere near your phone/tablet's home button. Otherwise, you'll lose. I've done it more than once (ie: probably once a day while charging my phone while playing. A 3d Unity engine chews cheap phone batteries like you wouldn't believe).

Receive a phone calling during a raid? You lose. Even if you just won. You've either gotta turn off telephony on your phone, or potentially lose because someone wanted to see if they should buy milk. "Lose your friends, get a shit-bucket": BFFs quote. It's annoying as fuck that this is a software "feature".

The real thing is, gold and mana are essentially unlimited. Win trophies don't matter. Crafting is so random that a few materials here or there are irrelevant. Time for dungeon upgrades just slowly happens, and very few things can stop a group of lvl40+ people successfully raiding you anyway (other than lag, disconnects and idiocy). It's kind of worthless to hack the game. It's more about dungeon raiding and fun. But these are "Lose" conditions for some reason.

There's heaps of other face-palming, crotch-kicking idiocy in how the game is made. The UI for making a private-room for friends (or not having a minimum lvl cap for public rooms)? Dumb. Having to "reset" traps/legendary creatures after you get raided (log-in tax)? Dumb. And plenty more.....

Strangely enough, the game itself is pretty good. Maybe the developers are fucking stupid or something. I'd probably pay $$$ for my dungeon to have a different theme-song for instance. But nope. The only cheap, payable option you can get is tiny (1/3rd quicker dungeon creation, if you already have 3 of 5 pixies for free) at higher levels. Because 1000 gems ($10US worth) gets me nothing else viable long-term to buy.

It's a good game. But flawed as shit on some basic UI and software elements. Still, free-to-play to max lvl cap within a month is great. I almost wish there was some cosmetic feature I could buy. It's good enough to throw a few $$$ at, but there's no viable option to (unless you buy a fairy "donation" worth of gems).

[sambojin]

This recently got an update to version 5.x. Basically, there's guilds now. You can summon one of your guild members into your dungeon to fight off raiders as well. It's expensive, but cool. I usually just grab whoever is affordable and put them with a dragon and some archers. They do alright.

The economy has changed too. Mana is now very important, and you can't triple your earnings on raids. I wish I'd done a grindfest just before it changed. Got everything working now though.

It's still got all the annoying things like lvl 10's jumping into a lvl55's raid and ruining everything. It's kind of funny that in this game it's the high level people that band together to stop the plebs from ruining all their fun. Random newbies are essentially the equivalent of sociopathic pk'ers in this. They'll end the level before you get your loot, set off entire rooms full of monsters and then splat themselves, or hide in the previous room so your AoEs don't hit as many summons as they could. They're evil.

The game is still completely f2p though. I'm at max lvl with ok'ish gear and do pretty well (if you'll excuse my win/loss record. It's atrocious, but plebs). Haven't paid a cent so far.


Aside from the little annoyances, this is one of the most satisfying mobile games I've played. When you have a few good runs, it's great. Even when you manage to win (ie: carry them all) alongside a bunch of lvl10 scum

[Aklyon]

Thats nice to hear that they've added new fancy bits and changed stuff. Still doesn't mean a thing until they finish hiding in their closed beta or whatever it is that hides it in the app store still

[TempAcc]

mobile

Bluh