Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sambojin]

Per character type, but unlimited use after purchase. They're in groups, like druid/druidess, fighter/valkyrie, and you get both for $1 (or maybe cheaper, I use Aussie dollars, but the game was made here as well). You get them forever (it's a character type unlock, even though you already had them, they can go below 300 feet from now on). It's also for all copies of the game on all Android devices, so if you've got a phone and a tablet, you can always use those characters on both devices to unlimited depth from now on.

Think of them as character packs. Once bought, you can use them on as many runs as you want. You just get an unlimited trial up to 300 foot depth before that, so you can figure out which ones you'd like to buy. They've all got different skill trees, attributes, etc, and all play differently enough to be worthwhile considering. But if you only have $1-2, pick your favourites.

I don't mind the business model, because it makes what would have been a game with an upfront cost into an unlimited demo instead. Try before you buy, which is good for a roguelike, because they're often complicated enough and come in so many different flavours that you wouldn't buy it unless you knew you liked this particular one.

Kind of how I like the Trese Brothers model as well. The free demo is fully functional, there's just not all the content there. But enough to know if you'd be happy to spend money on the full game. This one's just split it up into even smaller one-off transactions, so you can get a full game pretty damn cheap if you only like playing a couple of classes in roguelikes anyway.

There's 16 classes divided up into 8 groups (different flavours of the same class kinda), at a dollar for each group. So you could get a wand-caster and a book-caster for $1, that have subtly different ways of zapping stuff. Or the fighter/valkyrie group for an armoured, possibly dual wielding fighter and a sword and shield valk. Different skilltrees but similar gods in each group. But yeah, they're unlimited use after purchase (no one's that silly or confident in a roguelike to pay per run). $8 for all of them, but you can get "the whole game" for $1-2 if you only ever intend on running with a few classes. Or you can stagger your purchases over a few months if you want them all, but don't have the cash for all of them straight away.

It's a strange business model, but it seems pretty fair considering the quality of product and the genre it's in. Not much different from buying gems, etc, for a character unlock in other titles, but you'll definitely know you like that character type before you pay for it.

I'll probably throw a dollar or two at it, see if I like the later content (roguelike dungeon levels are "content" due to the different challenges you face deeper down), then decide if I want the rest of the classes.



((edited previous post so it's more intelligible on what you're buying. Kind of. English is my first language, I'm just bad at it sometimes))

[sambojin]

Doom Warriors - Tap crawler is what you get if you combine the dungeon exploration mechanics of Gumballs & Dungeons with a tap based "shooter". Honestly, I'm still not sure I like it. But I'm going to mention it because I tend to like everything Doom orientated.

You couldn't really stream this game and explain what's happening on your side of the screen. Because what's going on would appear from the outside to be you having an epileptic fit, thrashing away at your screen as quickly as possible, while swearing sometimes. It's innovative, I'll give them that.

For everything that you thought "fuck that" about the whole Pokemon-Go walking around thing, this'll probably still get your heartrate going, even as you sit on your arse. And in theory, should void your phone's warranty due to basic screen abuse after a bit too.

It's kinda cool. Worthwhile playing for a tiny bit, preferably with someone else filming you for the lols. You probably wouldn't look as ambulatory on a tablet, but on a phone with double thumb tapping and your tongue slightly hanging out, it's golden.


There's weapons with AoEs, perks and roguelite progression systems, risk/reward on map exploration and "worthwhile" progression, but the basic combat mechanic is dumb as shit. Possibly in a good way. Or in an RSI inducing one in any case. It's not hard to explain, but you have to play it to understand why it's dumb and cool at the same time.

Give it a burl, just for giggles on game design.



((you'll never know when you should be using your bigger weapons, but it's Doom related. So probably as often as possible. I'm not sure if there's a strategy there, but I wish there was. One of this title's few big downfalls, even as a very simple game. But hey, I played it for about 20 mins. There's probably a "thingy" or a "feeling" for ammo consumption and the use thereof you'll get on extended play of it. But even knowing a 1-3/1-6/2-4/3-6/3-9/whatever monsters *before* the encounter would make it a better game))

((There's no fucking exit button. This is a crime. If you're going to make a game and want people to respect you, put in an exit button in your app. Or get tossed in the bin as someone that doesn't create "a whole program". It doesn't show that you're still working on it, or that we're committed to the functioning of it, end the fucking program so we don't have to task-kill it as a nuisance, and we'll come back to it happily. I honestly don't care if you skipped the last sections of your game development course. You released your game on the playStore, there's IAPs in it, so how's about you learn how to deallocate resources and give an exit button to the user hey? Just to look half-way professional.
/rant))

[frostshotgg]

I've been playing a lot of Yugioh Duel Link recently since it just came out. It's surprisingly enjoyable. The game is mechanically pretty close to the actual card game, with 3 spaces for monsters and spells/traps instead of 5, and no main phase 2. The card pool is enormously restricted though, almost no archetype interactions at all, and a 1750 normal monster is pretty much the top of the summon then attack power curve, so none of that 2000 attack alexandrite dragon business.

[Aoi]

Fire Emblem Heroes

Cons:
Energy-based system with a few different currencies.
RNG-based gachapon system for new units.
Update: Sort of rapidly plunges into a cashgrab feel once you're out of the new player phase.

Fire Emblem probably doesn't require too much explanation so about the differences... Each battle is (up to) 4v4. No equipment, and minimal RNG. As far as I can tell, no crits, no dodge, and even level up stat increases are fixed. The stages are fast and fun, but you can often end up in a deadlock if you're using a healer. And the downside to fast stages is that the energy regeneration is sloooow. I have about an hour and a half to my next five minute match...

No equipment. Instead, you get skill points used to unlock additional skills (Base attack, a special that charges based on actions taken, and up to three passives).

Much like a lot of other games in a similar vein, there's a lot of familiar faces that show up early in the plot, but good luck acquiring them. (Roy, Marth, that dragon priestess from Awakening, have shown up so far, and I'm sure that older fans would recognize more.)

There's still new game launch perks going on, so it's probably a better idea to check it out now, rather than later.

I have some misgivings about the energy system making things a grind, or worse yet, the upgrade system taking units obtained via cash currency making purchases near required.

[sambojin]

Battlefleet Gothic: Leviathan now has a free demo available. It seems to work fine on even low-end phones (although I've had a lockup when directing bombers) and is a good recreation of the TT wargame from what I can see. I've only done two tutorial levels for now, so I'll see how it pans out later on, but so far it feels great.

The demo comes with a tutorial and a mini-campaign. I don't think there's multiplayer included, but it might just be locked behind progression somewhere. Really tiny footprint on your phone (3mb on phone, 120'ish mb on SD card), graphics are good, sound is fine.

I'll have a bit more of a play around, but I probably will end up buying the full thing, just for MP. Hopefully the free demo will expand the player-base considerably too, making the purchase all the more worthwhile.

[sambojin]

Soul Knight is a roguelite twin-stick shooter similar to Enter the Gungeon and Nuclear Throne, but on Android and with auto-aim. Don't let this fool you though, it's still pretty damn hard. Currently in Early Access, so there'll be improvements and content additions, but it seems feature complete from a gameplay perspective. And it's pretty damn good too.

It uses a room mechanic similar to EtG, rather than the open playfield of NT. Every few levels are themed (first level group is knights and wizards, second is skellies, etc) with a boss to kill at the end of each lot. It's all RPG/medieval themed overall, but with guns. Lots of guns. About 120 in all.

There's plenty of character choices, a few for collectable currency, a few for real money. They've all got different stats, health, armour (regenning health), energy max (your ammo pool) and their own "special" that's on a cooldown. The knight dual wields for burst firepower, the rogue dodge rolls, the magician lightning bolts stuff, the vampire creates bat swarms and life-leeches, etc.

There's a levelling system (permanent health/stat upgrades) before a run paid with collectable currency, and an ingame level-up perk after every few levels cleared. Stuff like better accuracy, more health potion drops, melee weapons reflecting bullets (yeah, there's melee in it too), immune to traps, immune to fire/explosions, wider lasers, cheaper store prices, etc. There's quite a few, all with varying usefulness to make a character build from. You get 1 choice from 3 ala NT's levelling system, so there is some decisions in the matter.

The guns are fun with a wide variety available. You can only carry two at a time, so choices must be made. They all run on "energy" as a basic ammo pool, with stronger guns using more energy per shot. There's plenty of zero energy use weapons around, including your basic starter weapon and backup melee punching, so you're never *that* constrained by it. You get a bit more energy after each room is cleared, there's energy potions, and the starter knight character has a good energy pool anyway. So let 'er rip. There's everything from basic pistols, to shotguns, to swords, to smgs/assault rifles, up to multibarrel rocket launchers, gas grenades, death beams, lock-on missiles and charge-up bubble blowers. I've only had about 6 runs, but I've found some fun stuff to use every time and haven't ever felt a lack of choices in them. The further you go, the better the found and bought guns get (I had heaps of options by level 2-2, some pretty powerful).

The graphics are in good pixel-art'ish style, the sound is great with a good up-tempo soundtrack, and it seems to be a good all-round product. Controls are tight and responsive, movement is fast and fluid, and enemies and room layouts are varied enough to not be boring. No real grind or hoops to jump through (you can grind if you want, but it's not a barrier to progression or content) and it seems pretty fair and free overall. Most importantly for a roguelite twin-stick shooter, the weapons are great and abundant and the enemies are tough enough to need them. So give it a go, Early Access or not. It's a really good game, and I'm glad there's some decent stuff like this coming out on mobile these days. I'd happily play it on PC right now, so that should give you an idea of how far along in development it already is (and how fun it is to play).

[sambojin]

Quick update for stuff I missed for Soul Knight: There's combat pets. I don't know if there's any difference between them, but I've got the cat, pig and robot so far. They're just free mini-npc helpers. You can still hire NPCs, pets do almost no damage, but free is good. I've got an idea the robot might have a ranged attack while the others are melee only.

There's bows in the game too. Charge 'em up for more damage, representing you pulling the string back further. There's a perk to speed up charging time too. Kind of changes your playstyle from run'n'gun to cover-sniping. Feels good. There's magic staffs too, which tend to be shotgun'ish or multi-directional weapons with elemental effects. Burn, poison, freeze etc. There's tonnes of other stuff, but they're just off the top pf my head on the big groupings I missed.

There's a crate you can buy in your base upgrades, which means you'll always start with another low-end weapon. I thought it was single-use, but after you've bought it (1000 ingame thingies, like the pets) you'll always have it. Makes it easier to decide on character build perk choices, and you'll never be stuck with just the starter pistol. Shotties, better pistols and assault rifles in it for the most part, but they're useful for the first few floors. Random, but it gets you going if the RNG is screwing you on weapon crates and shops.

There's also a safe that gives you a few coins to start with (handy for early floor purchases, even 2-4 gold can make the difference), and a book that ups your critical chance (I'm not sure, but that might be the melee looking stat on characters and weapons. The last one. More is better and there's a perk for criticals being piercing shots as well).

Oh, and the Wizard character is awesome. A little squishy, hopeless in melee, but amazingly useful. Chain lightning FTW! It's like you've got a good spare ammo-less weapon at all times, and it's the perfect opener to any fight. They might have to tweak the cooldown a bit, because you can often use it 2-4 times per room (whereas the knight might only get 1-2 uses of dual wield. Then again, he scales with the weapons used and the lightning doesn't. Dual wield is far better for bosses too).

There's statues/shrines that you can worship at too. I don't know what they all do, but the Knight one gives you an occasional free NPC melee helper randomly for one room (they don't stick around, but they do respawn in other random rooms), the Assassin one (or was it rogue?) lets you fling a fan of knives every once in a while, the Elf one gives you a whole room radius blast effect when you use your special (only 2'ish damage, but it might be nice on the rogue or wizard character) and the Magician one gives 4 free homing projectiles per special use (do unto others as they have done unto you). There's a fair few, and they're about the cost of an NPC hire for the buff they give.

Oh yeah, there's chest mimics too. It scares the crap out of you the first time, and they're pretty tough (and in a small room with no cover). Shoot lots. Keep shooting. Don't stop shooting. And hope your armour can take the damage. Evil bastard mimics.

Character upgrades seem to go: +1 armour, +1 health, +20 max energy, -cooldown(?), +skill time/damage(?). Not sure on the order of the last two. But the Knight's dual wield burst lasts long enough to get through two waves in a room, and who doesn't want more chain-lightning damage to soften everything up into 1-2 shot range? Even the +20 energy is great for the Paladin (who's huge limitation is ammo). It makes it slightly easier, but I got to the second boss with only the first upgrade on the Knight, and still haven't gotten further with them all on him now. I'm pretty bad at taking cover

Weapons seem to go white, green(>?), blue(<?) orange, red for "order of rarity". Probably. There may have been a yellow in there too. Reverse Wonderboy II health order or something for weapon rarity? A rainbow of killy fun. This doesn't actually give you any idea of its power or usefulness, but I tend to pick up or buy most things until I know what they are. Try them in a room or two if you don't know. You can always swap back afterwards. Thank god for a universal ammo pool. You can actually use whatever you find (though not necessarily all the time. Just mostly, if you like it).


My sad progression (there's only three full levels so far):
Got to 2-5 and died on the big robot boss with the knight character. Had a frost sword and a nasty laser. Was using a splitter cannon before then (think the flak cannon secondary fire from Unreal Tournament) but couldn't resist the freezing effect. Dual wielding twin frost swords was too cool to pass up. Damn near killed him with it too.
Did it again with a sniper rifle and a big homing rocket launcher. Died again......
Got there again, with a Shotgun Pro (tight spread shotty) and a Glacier (freeze on crit sniper rifle, 48% crit with my perks) and killed him. But died to the last few bullets bouncing around. Grrrrrr. I might record an EveryPlay thing so others can feel my pain


I'll add more features as I find them.




A couple of youTube vids of early gameplay (I play way more riskily than this):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6M5uFcMweBs (yep, there's a tutorial)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KKpNDsv010o   (this one's up to the first boss, though there's the Grand Magician instead of the Knight sometimes as well)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lxyk4kBLxh0   (seems to be on bluestacks/NOX, so movement isn't great, but there's a bit of melee gameplay with a pitchfork)

[DeKaFu]

There's a Humble Bundle of RPGs for Android going on right now.

Does anyone have any experience with any of the games on offer? I don't have much in the way of games for my phone so I'm pretty interested, but I'm a bit concerned they might be intended for tablet and not work well on a smaller screen...

Out of the games on offer I'm currently most interested by "Adventure Bar Story". More are supposedly being added later, though.

[Frumple]

*waggles hand* Both it and symphony are kemco games. That... basically means they're probably solid-ish, the writing may be surprisingly good in quite-possibly-unintended-ways, but they're almost certainly not going to be terribly impressive. Kemco produces a lot of RPGs on the good/playable side of mediocre, more or less. Usually doesn't have much that's exactly bad about any particular game they make, and there's quite often one or two fairly neat mechanics per game, but in general they're just... not exactly amazing.

Guess what I'm saying is you can't really go wrong, exactly, with a kemco game, usually. They're just not something you might want to hinge your purchase decision on. _{that said, now that you've mentioned it, I'm probably going to grab the mid tier* mostly just to get the kemco games. I like their games, to a fair extent, they're just very much not really good from any sort of objective/relative standpoint}

*And yes, I can see that KotOR and dragonfall's both for just about a quarter more than the current mid tier minimum. I'm not sure I care enough about either to spend the extra ~25 cent :V

[Sappho]

I saw that bundle and gave an immediate NOPE despite not really knowing any of the games. RPGs are great for computers and consoles, and generally speaking, absolute garbage for tablets. The controls just don't work well on a touch screen, and when a game tries to tell me to rub my thumbs on the screen and pretend there's buttons there, it never works well. I wasted maybe an hour of my life trying to play Evoland on my tablet before ragequitting (after having died maybe 15 times in a row due to the poor controls not allowing me to dodge a monster).

[Frumple]

Eh, the kemco ones aren't that bad, usually. Tend to have virtual d-pads and whatnot that work fine, since they're almost always mostly-grid based and thus precision isn't very necessary. They usually do alright with the tap based interface, too, really... I usually end up using both for different in-game situations, heh. Shadowrun stuff should be fine, too -- it's your basic SRPG in terms of interface, more or less, and that's pretty painless on a tablet.

That said, ARPGs on tablets -- like evoland, yes -- are generally complete goddamn misery. If it's not turn based, don't bother. Evoland, KoTOR, and that Souls thing probably might as well not be in the bundle, tbh. Might be able to manage something if you play it on bluestacks or whatev', but that... probably defeats a good chunk of the point, ehehe.

E: Jeez, that adventure bar thing. Other restaurant, top floor. "It doesn't taste good... Mother's cooking is way better!" "That's too bad... you won't be able to eat your mother's cooking anymore since she just left us." That's about what I mean when I talk about kemco-published games' writing.

[BigD145]

Adventure Bar Story has a demo version.

[Sappho]

Hm... Adventure Bar Story seems reminiscent of Reccetear. Maybe I'll pick it up after all, but without the top tier... Although I still have several dozen Android games from previous bundles that I never seem to get to. Fattening up the ol' backlog...

[frostshotgg]

I remember playing Adventure Bar Story 4 or 5 years ago, I really enjoyed it. Not sure if I enjoyed it enough to pay twice its price on the app store to get it plus some other stuff I'd never touch, but it was a fun diversion.

[Sappho]

Well since the BTA was almost as much as the top tier, I went ahead and paid the $6. I figure I'll enjoy the Adventure Bar Story game and hopefully both of the Shadowrun games as well. So I guess that's worth the $6? I hope so anyway. Already paid for it. XP