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[sambojin]

On the "a bit more casual, but still really fun" side of stop'n'go shooters, I've been playing quite a bit of Wizard Legend : Fighting Master. It's not bad, and well worth a look.

Different sorts of spells/ missiles than Angel Saga (or archero, etc), with some really well made levels that provide good challenge variety. There's a 50-level run, and endless mode, and a boss rush mode to try out. Graphics are quite nice, sound useful and kind of cutesy (it matches the game really well) and the controls and movement speed seem perfect. It's in portrait mode too, so you can play it easily with one hand.

Spells come in elemental varieties, where you're rewarded for specialising into element or spell type, but you also want to generalise a bit so itemization is easier/ more reliable. The itemization is pretty good too. Slightly "vanilla upgradey" for some, but also with a fair few "have completely new effects" and "you now have lasers on your runes too" style items as well. Quite a nice mix, more on the BoI style thing, rather than just "damage went up a smidgen" thing. There are cloaks/books that you always have that do that, but they're just base items that you start with.

Runes are where the fun lays. They get generated a few seconds into the level, and you have to collect them to set off a spell. Very risk/rewardy, and adds another dimension to gameplay. They do all kinds of stuff. Lightning storms, lasers, missile machine guns, shurikan spin-shields, just too many to list. They're the main draw of the game compared to others of the genre, although your other spells are pretty good too. They've all got 3 levels of potential upgrades, and I haven't found a single useless upgrade yet. They're all pretty useful by level 2-3.

This is one of the few games absolutely worthwhile paying for the $3 remove ads option. It turns what feels like an overly ad-based revenue-generator game (I actually got really far free-to-play, otherwise I wouldn't pay into a game like this) into a "choose your build and playstyle" game in just one purchase.

Cash owls? No ads, just click. Reroll items at store? Just click. Double gems at end of run? Click. They really do mean no ads, and it makes it a joy to play. It was pretty good before, now it's great. I've finished the main campaign (and almost did free-to-play, got to final boss, without watching a single optional ad along the way, so they're not really necessary), got up to level 84'ish on endless, and will probably have this as one of my go-to "just want a laugh on a lunchbreak" games for some time to come.

So yeah, give it a burl. Between missiles, arrow upgrades, elves, bombs, runes, shield shatters and all that, alongside the itemization for them, you'll feel powerful, but never OP. There's plenty of builds to try out, plenty of enemy types, heaps of level layouts, and enough challenge that it's worthwhile playing for a bit. And yeah, it's good free, but the $3 no-ads purchase is one of the few that you really get your money's worth out of on the Play store.


(Just got up to level 101 on endless with a rune heavy build. Had "runes generate at level start" and "rune magnet", with almost all being level 3 by the end. Oh boy was there some fireworks going off. It was awesome 😀 )

[sambojin]

Angel Saga just got a big update. All cool-down magic skills are now bonkers within 4 level-ups. Which is cheap as buggery to do with all of them. There are now no totally bad magic skills, just good and better.

Do a few demon tower runs with the green reward things, and do-up your magic skills. You'll be highly rewarded for doing so.

You can still tailor the magics every 3-4 levels or so like before, but you really can alter what they do with those choices. And every one of them does stupendous damage anyway. The cool-downs went up a bit, but not as much as the sheer effectiveness of any given skill did.

It used to be that your main attack did most of the damage (other than Mega Fire). Your magic now pops entire screens full of enemies. Now subskills like +50% Wind skill, which was hopeless, now turns into "wow, I hope I get Sonic Boom, but whatever wind thing that comes up is fine regardless."

There's also a fair few magics that got the option of "throws 3x more shots over 1.5secs, with a bit less damage, but still about a 50%+ damage increase over time, but you can't move for that 1.5secs or it stops. But more shots = more crits and damage."
Sounds useless in a shoot'n'move game? Like, you have to move, it's a given, bye-bye shooty spell. Nup. Instant alpha-strike and boss killing potential. That initial 1.5secs tends to be the exact amount of time it takes for anything to move or shoot, and you've got full magic charged each new room. Dakka-dakka-dakka, boom! You've gotta see what a swarm of Magic Missiles does in Endless or against bosses. It's rather impressive.

Anyway, it's a great update. They even gave you heaps of free skill refreshes so that you can try out a few new styles. Check to see what your skills do now, and refresh them if you want to try something different. They're not the same as before, but they're "better". Choose your own flavour. Me? Still Mega Fire first, every single time. But now it does 2000+% damage instead of the lowly 794%, has knockback, a bigger aoe, and burn. I'll swap 2x crappy for 1x knockback-insta-death on room entry for my poor hapless foes.

Good magic skills got better, bad magic skills got way better, niche subskills got way way better, main firepower skills are still awesome, and it's far more encouraging to try various builds each run, even if your pets do still go "here, have this skill offered regularly". You can happily say "No, imma gonna try this one instead" now.

But having Mega Fire and Lightning Force as insta-kills and long-range machine guns is never bad. Having multi-mega-split Sonic Booms and doubled Hellfires and 1.5sec chaingun magic skills for backup helps too. Or just any random thing. You get way more freedom on builds, and don't feel half as nerfed for grabbing whatever you feel like now.

Anyway. You now deal as much or more damage with carefully selected cool-down magics, instead of it all being main attacks. Which is good.

If you haven't tried it, do so. If you have, give it another burl, and see if you like all the new explodiness. It feels quite nice. As an obvious replacement for the last demon lord, you certainly do bring the pain down properly now.

((Oh, you can now also re-roll equipment for 300 whatever-equipment thingy tokens and 100 gems. This is also cheap-af. No matter how bad your first few legendaries are, mod-wise, if you want you've got a fair chance of changing them into something amazing within a week or less. And if the alter is worse than the original, you can just keep what you've got, so you've got a proper potential upgrade choice.
I only bother spruiking games that are fun and that have a good business model that gives you heaps for your monies, but that can be free-to-play'd properly as well, and this is one of them. A few weeks in and you'll be kicking arse in this one, without paying a cent, unless you want to))

[Folly]

Punishing Gray Raven just became available for download!

[AzyWng]

Punishing Gray Raven just became available for download!

A quick glance of the screenshots is reminding me a lot of Honkai Impact.

[sambojin]

Been playing a bit more of DeckDeDungeon2 recently. I'm actually enjoying it immensely.

Think deck builder game, with massive amounts of synergy involved, that was pseudo-translated fairly well from Japanese. Made by the same crowd that did Buriedbornes, but with more high-tempo music, and challenges to match. But it's a card game.

Like Hearthstone (you have a deck of ten cards as standard from all the cards you own), but also a deck-builder (you get to choose a card to add to your deck after each level of a dungeon, one-out-of-five randoms, to add to that deck), but with only single player mode available.

You know the Hearthstone challenge thingos? That give you stuff if you finish them. Where it's grindy and impossible (or very random on draws) unless you already have good cards? Yeah, you get two of them every day, fresh ones, but they're possible to finish each day after 2-3 days of playtime, every day. Not events, that's just what this game is. Just whatever random stipulations for those dungeons each day, sometimes brutal so you skip them, sometimes a cakewalk. As well as a standard dungeon or two/three, and a basic "blow my energy today, I just want free stuff" explorations for when you're not playing.

And there's speed runs, whacky random dungeon "draft 10 out of 20 cards on picks-out-of-five, you don't have to own them yet", buy a card you randomly drafted for because you won, badly explained mechanics (but once you know what they do, you'll understand just how complicated and synergistic virtually any card can become), long-term progress for your overall "standard" deck with arousals on cards (global abilities for your deck, and card synergies from them), and everything else a deck building long-term card game should have.

I don't really know how to explain it. For singleplayer, it's better than Hearthstone. After a week or two you'll have SOOOOO many options available. Daily free packs, but with enough low hanging fruit that free packs (3-5 a day) is just a thing you get.

In some ways, it's too simple, because some things simply work so well. Until they don't in a certain form of dungeon (like Inspire (lowered PP-cost to play a card) or card-draw (more cards to play, yay!) or Robust (bigger PP pool each turn) or Rest (more PP regen each turn)). This game can punish you for a basic engine like that, with reversed PP generation, lowered hand size, card draw doesn't work, you take damage from "X", etc. It's really quite neat in that way

I'm not even sure if it's available on Google Play any more (32bit app, and extensive re-coding might be needed for basic "can be store-worthy" these days). Still, check it out some time, even off their main website or other .apk download sites. It's one of the most "yeah, build your deck and defeat the enemies, but put some things into place early, or you'll never get past floor 10, let alone the big-boss on 15" card games I've played. Plan early, play hard. The 5-7Ps thing. With caveats that make it "not perfect deck buildable" (those dungeon world rules can and will kill any deck that doesn't dance in amongst the stipulations laid out).

Made by ohNussy, (nussyGame), the same people that did buriedBornes, so you know it's a good timekiller in its own way, just on simplicity yet possible wtf'ness and internal synergies and progress

My current standard deck:
(Yep, I got really lucky with card arousals)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Current deck, will change or add to it, but there's things here that cover many basic dungeon stipulations.

Silvia, the Flower Dancer
Arousal: Drainlife 3
Gives me multi-turn Sprint, and Drainlife for Dinald's Bloodedge on all basic attacks. Like a Centaur, but the Sprint carries over to future turns, no matter how quickly the enemy dies and you have to take another turn. Gives sustain, even when the Kraken runs out of freebies. Never leaving my deck, Drainlife and multiturn Sprint is just so good, regardless. Can even overrun "can't draw a card" sometimes, just because I'm actually drawing two cards in theory alongside the Kraken arousal in those sorts of dungeons.

Davin, the Detective
Arousal: 4 Rest
Inspire 1, card draw 1, basic damage, cheap PP cost, and 4PP at the end of turn. What's not to like about Davin, even without the arousal? See below

Davin, the Detective
Arousal: Frenzy!
No end-of-turn PP like the first, just double damage. Which is BS amazing. As in, everything attacks twice. Lol. Sure, the enemy does too, but doubled synergy on everything as standard for a card you'd play anyway. It's really quite nice. Can insta-kill you from time to time though. I'd probably always have 2 Davins in the deck anyway, because Inspire and card draw is so good. The fact that they do basic damage alongside it is amazing, for such a cheap cost.

Adrienne, the Millionaire
No arousal yet.
Just stock standard long-term Rest and Robust. First fame buy, because she's not vital to the deck, but she got it to where it is today. Always good for 7PP, especially with plenty of Inspire making that heaps cheaper, though she feels weaker than she is. Just a basic long-term building block of more PP and shield. Amazing card, even though her impact feels weak'ish. She felt amazing on early deck building, and the whole deck feels weaker without her.

Devil Queen
No arousal yet.
Want heaps of PP? Yeah, she's your girl. Only two turns worth of it, but so much Robust and Rest she superpowered the entire engine. And with the 15pt 5turn shield, she even makes trolls look like an ok pick for heaps of shield if picks are bad. More shield /= more life, but sometimes it will do.

Kraken
Arousal (wait for it....): 4 Activity!!!!
You don't know how bullshit good this is, if you haven't played this game.
Yep, one of the best, cheapest multiattackers also gives me 4 Sprint card-draw at the beginning of every new floor. 6PP for a 6 damagex4 basic attack finisher, and auto card draw just because he's in the deck. Yes, it made the Flower Dancer feel weaker, except she's got drain life too, so did it? Really? No, no it didn't. A finisher and an opener, all in one!
Basically the greatest thing ever. Ever, ever.

Dinald, the Holy Knight of the Woods
Arousal: Fortitude 2
What's he doing here? Considering every basic attack (with the Flower Dancer's drain life) pings off his Spell Blade, for 5 turn Charging compounding from SpellBlade. Twice, because of Frenzy. Lol. It gets even sillier.... Waàaaggghhhh, etc, etc..
(His arousal is kind of like really bad Guard2. As in, you'll die before it kicks in, but if you don't, it's like weaken2 on the enemy).

Goblin
Arousal: Charging 2!!!!
Yep, I drew this card from a free daily pack. A 1PP cost card that does 4 normal damage. That has 2 charging(!!!) as its arousal, for 1PP.... Actually gives me PP back as soon as a few Davins are played. And makes every card hit harder, additively, even while you're only playing them to get the engine together properly
I keep thinking "wow, I wish this arousal was on a better card card". Then I always realise that I'm not sure if it could be. I'd have to luck-out on a 1-3PP multiattacker or something. This one's staying, potentially forever 😁

Minotaur
No arousal yet
Because I heard you like charging and multiattack, so I added some extra charging and multiattack to your charging and multiattack big finishers bit of your deck.
You could theoretically even open with it to get charging going big time straight away, it just makes it harder to get a lot of Inspire and Rest/Robust in play before the enemy dies. Regardless... I like it, I like it a lot.

Iona, the Spellblade
Arousal: Frenzy (redundant, but might be handy in other decks. May even give me "remove good things" protection alongside the second Davin)
5 turns of "bad things happening to the enemy2" while being cheap and cheerful and attacking twice. Possibly replaceable, maybe for Penetrate or more Bloodedge, but I've seen no reason yet to not stack a shit-tonne of bad things on the enemy, considering how quickly I run through my deck, and how high my Inspire/ Robust/ Rest ends up being. I've had the bad things just kill the enemy while I'm still shifting down gears and making sure I'm cool for the next battle. Do I know what killed them? Nope. It was pretty random. But there was a lot of it


So, yeah, card draw, ramp, lowered costs, synergistic arousals, and multiattack finishers, with most of them being fairly low PP cost cards to begin with. Literally any extra card you pick up along the way can fit in anywhere, though I'm a bit lacking in guard, fixed damage synergies, luck, and "make me ignore their good things or my own bad things" stuff. I can always grab cards like that along the way. But once it gets going, even the Goblin or Davins hit HARD! Fun little deck, until you run into a dungeon or enemy(s) that punishes all those things.

And yes, I've cleared both the 5mins or less, 1000damage in one turn, and "less than 1min thinking time" challenges with this deck. Just cleared the second one of them yesterday, and the 1min one, just then
(Go into options, and turn card effects off, and double click real quick on your next dungeon. I didn't even think I'd do it, but I did. Huzzah! Realistic goal, not stupid/unachievable)

[sambojin]

Baldur's Gate 2 is on sale for $2.69 Aussie for the next couple of days (about $1.99USD). So even if it's hard to play on a phone, it's worth it just in case you get a tablet you like using one day.

3.25gig is the only downside. It's also compatible with the family library, so get randoms/friends/actual family free stuff too if you'd like. Or, like $2 thrift shop presents worth of free. Almost the same thing.

It would be hard to not get your money's worth out of this one, even if it doesn't do mods or anything like that (or if it's a bit buggy).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beamdog.baldursgateIIenhancededition

[BigD145]

Baldur's Gate 2 is on sale for $2.69 Aussie for the next couple of days (about $1.99USD). So even if it's hard to play on a phone, it's worth it just in case you get a tablet you like using one day.

3.25gig is the only downside. It's also compatible with the family library, so get randoms/friends/actual family free stuff too if you'd like. Or, like $2 thrift shop presents worth of free. Almost the same thing.

It would be hard to not get your money's worth out of this one, even if it doesn't do mods or anything like that (or if it's a bit buggy).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beamdog.baldursgateIIenhancededition

The "tablet at a later time" assumes they keep it updated to the latest android versions. That's the bigger downside. Great price though. I thought I saw the 1st game at this price a week or two ago. They might be doing a rolling sale on their titles.

[sambojin]

Been playing a bit of Knight's Edge. It's pretty fun.

Think a stop'n'shoot top-down game like Archero/ Dashero (crap) or Wizard Legends/ Angel Saga (good), but with a 3v3 multiplayer bent to it. You're simply racing the other team on how fast you can kill the boss. Whoever kills the boss first, wins the round. Each level has three parts, and thus three sets of enemies and bosses to defeat.

You can go through a portal on part 2 and 3 to invade the enemy's level and kill them. This will in theory slow them down if you kill them. But don't. They respawn in 5 seconds, and unless you're using an Axe, it'll take you longer than 5 seconds to kill two enemies, and you have deprived your team of 1/3rd of its firepower. So, don't. Stay on target, kill the boss, stay in your own arena, and butcher any poor mo'fo with a 3v1 advantage that enters your area. It's pretty simple.

There's a fair few freebies throughout the game, but I've decided to p2w the shit out of this one. Why? Don't know. It's fun, it's quick, there's a fair few weapon types (even within weapon groups, a Void Axe is pretty different to an Ice Axe in play, as is a Jolt Bow compared to a Holy Bow), and it has "Clash Royale" bracketing.

?? Essentially, since I'm p2w and have heaps of crap, I'm up to arena 6 (nearly arena 7) in two days. This doesn't actually make me good at the game. It just puts me into my "gear bracket", much like Clash Royale put you into your "did you randomly get the right cards?" bracket. And in higher brackets, you get more random free crap to play with, so the novelty doesn't wear off as quickly. But it doesn't actually mean you're "good" at the game, simply that you're more likely to meet up against or be paired with players that are (or that are as p2w as you are), so it kind of balances out.

Anyway, back to the mechanics. You've got weapons. They have different elements. Elements do what you'd expect them to do. Fire DoTs, Holy heals/inspires other party members, etc. You get Swords that are armour-tastic with a semi-skillshot Barb leap AoE, Axes that are HP-tastic with a spin-to-win cool-down (not all of them, just the good ones), Bows that have proper skill-shots and are glass cannons, and Staffs that also shoot but also sort-of do AoE as a glass cannon. Thems are your builds. About 6 weapons of each type, with a decent amount of variation on how to use each one "well", and the runes you'll want for them.

Then, yeah, there's Runes. Runes are passives on top of the weapon thingies. I'm currently running a +HP/+crit build, where I regen heaps, have a bit of +damage, and every crit gives me more crit, so by the end of the level I'm outputting some pretty sizable damage no matter what weapon I run. But there's lots of solid combos I could be running, I just like big numbers semi-regularly.

Ummm, this isn't a very good description of the game. But it's free (or can be), it's fair (gear/ arena bracketing), it's quick (about 3min a match), there are no timers or stamina (play as much or as little as you want), it takes bugger all room on your phone, it doesn't eat up much mobile data to play, and it's surprisingly fun. So give it a go


(Note: sometimes your team works with you, so I don't think they're all bots with player names. Sometimes they don't, but it would be hard to program bots to be that dumb, so there's at least some non-bot players in the game. I think.
On weapons, Void, Honed, Inferno, and Zappy Axe is good, Icy Axe is bad (no spin2win). All Swords are good. Righteous, Royal, Snow and Void Bows are good, Jolt and Blazing Bows are overcomplicated Staffs (no easy AoE with effects, although Blazing comes with +crit, which is good). And Staffs, ummm, I don't have the hang of yet. They're like, "slightly less AoE bows, maybe with more effects early-on"? Something like that.....)

((Favourite weapons are Righteous Bow (buff the party and do great DPS!), Void Axe (I swear that thing's brokenly good) and Icy Blade (it's my best sword, but it could be any sword. Swords are averagely great). I wish people knew how much that damn Righteous Bow buffs them. There's reasons I'm standing in melee range alongside you. It's because I want my damage and -cooldown buffs too!))

[sambojin]

Bit of a double-post, but bay12 posts have been known to go off into the strategy of the game being mentioned. There are a lot of completely opaque mechanics in Knight's Edge though.


My current fave rune build is:
(Lvls are just how high my runes are, not necessary for build)

Attack Runes:
Lvl3 Exploit Weakness
Crits give a small permanent attack bonus, and it gives +3% base crit itself.

Lvl3 Flurries
Unknown chance to double attack, but gives +3% base crit, so that's fine. However often it double attacks is just more chances to crit.

Lvl7 Strength Tonic
When I press the potion button, I get "+X??" Attack. And +7% base attack for good measure. It's at lvl7, so it makes me big, so +10-20% attack+ potion heal HP? Nice against invasions by the other team, so you can go toe-to-toe against high armour/ HP weapon builds. Squishy bows or staffs are at parity with the enemy, swords and axes chomp through most things. Just stay in your own arena and eat them if they come

Lvl7 Critical Escalation
Second tier of "crits give you more crit%". How much? Umm, even if it's like 0.5-1%, I tend to crit 20-30+ times a match, so it's not bad at +10-30%+ crit by the end.


How much crit do you start with? Don't know. 0-5-10% seems about right for the numbers I'm seeing. How much crit do you end up with? About 30-50% depending on level-ups chosen.

Goal is: pick extra crit ASAP as a level-up. The earlier the better, to stack +attack and +crit%. Watch exploding dice extra explode. Works even better with a Blazing Staff for +crit% multihits, or a Righteous Bow for more +damage% on-demand multipliers (that are also your AoE), so both sit nicely with a build looking for exactly those things. Especially the Righteous Staff, because the rest of the team gets *some* damage multiplier, but it's not apparent that you're their early pusher and late-game carry until they see the damage figures at the end of a match.

60k+ is pretty easily doable in Arena 9 with a lvl29 Righteous Staff with this rune build, which isn't bad for the ranged, squishy buffer of the team. I mostly outdamage everyone (because I know how important my buff bubble is) while still adding to their damage immensely.

Defender Runes:
(They could literally be anything, but bigger better carry is the theme of the build)
Regen (can't do without HP regen, tank early and hard), Consume (+maxHP on kills, tank late and hard), Persistence (-cooldown for skill use on hits, so hit lots), Renewing Hide (+armour on skill use, so use your skill a lot, for lots of hits/ crits/ and free armour, even on squishy characters).
Plenty of free +% base HP there too. Good on squishies, tanky af on sword or axe times.


(Happily enough, works fine as a passive "you'll be slightly stronger by the end of the mission" with any weapon or with any level-up skills chosen. It's nice like that. Works with any playstyle too. So you can try stuff out and not ultra-suck by the end boss, no matter what you do. Axe whirls crit lots. Sword jumps crit lots. Arrow rains crit lots. Staff bursts.... Ummm.... Sometimes help a bit....)

[Aoi]

Been playing a bit of Knight's Edge. It's pretty fun.

Okay, it IS pretty fun. I do somewhat wish that it wasn't on a touch interface and it wasn't quite so micropay, but those rather come with the territory. Pretty snappy loads, and it doesn't go berserk when I check my notifications either, like a lot of other games on my phone.

[Folly]

I picked up Figure Fantasy.

Gatcha game. Story is basically Toy Story, but with anime figurines. Combat has some serious tactical elements for the late-game stuff and some of the events, but lots of auto-grinding for the early stuff.

I'm enjoying it so far. Obviously won't be for everyone.

[sambojin]

I actually kinda liked Figure Fantasy, but for some reason it seemed to blow out my data. Don't know if it was background downloading all the early game stuff or not. Plus it was about 3gig, and I wanted to do some animations/ "art".

It's a pseudo-auto battler gatcha, but it is well done. Sounds weird for people that can hear you playing the amount of times you get called Master in it....

Umm, how to describe it? Pick 5 gatchas, put them in one of three lanes, there's tanks and supports and dps'ers, so front/mid/back in those lanes, press go, watch thingy happen. Then level gatchas up. Repeat. Story unfolds as you do.

Pity you can't actually paint them. I do "photo-retouching" as a hobby on Instagram, so yeah, everything would look transparent pretty quickly 👹
------------

Kinda getting the shits with Knight's Edge. It either has a horrible memory leak, terrible net coding, or is amazingly badly optimized. Nothing should slow to a crawl that regularly for no reason. Like, the graphics are simple, the sound is serviceable, there's about a max of 20 things to keep track of, yet I get 2-frame a second occuring just because some slimes split. It's still fun, I'm up to Arena 10 as a pretty stable gear-level, but the slowdowns are killing me.

[sambojin]

Well, up to Bronze IV in Knight's Edge. Like I said, I started off p2w af. It goes bronze after arena 10, and I'm four arenas up from that.

It actually seems like gold is the huge limiting factor in the game. Maybe higher level weapon upgrade thingies too. But mostly gold.

Which makes me feel alright about paying for those "random crap + 50,000 gold" *bargains* 🙄. It's one of those "damn I wish I knew how important gold was, and what stuff did, before I spent all that gold on random crap to try stuff out to see what it does" things. You can get about 2-5k gold a day from 1/2hr-1hr of play a day though, so you can grind those runes up a bit. A day or three a rune upgrade, or levelling weapons to lvl29 (you need hard-to-get upgrade materials after that). So, it's doable, even at high levels, it just feels heaps slower than it did at the beginning. This is about half a week into the game, it may vary a bit.

Still, I got lucky af too. I have very good runes, and lots of stuff for some very fun weapons. I'm not going to spend another cent on the game, but since I've spent about the equivalent of a triple-A title on it, I'm glad the gatcha gods went "yep, have all the really useful stuff, and heaps of random crap too". I just wish they'd said "don't spend a cent on hopeless weapons or runes, even though they might be fun, you'll need that later. Seriously!"


The player stupidity goes WAY down in bronze. Mostly. You can actually rely on people to be using their weapons and runes for what they're good for. They don't just run off and die in the opposing team's level. Well, sometimes they do. But by Bronze, people know the bosses and layouts well enough that there's mistakes and misclicks and lag, but it isn't just sheer enthusiastic idiocy that's making your team lose. It's really quite fun. I don't mind that I paid to win for this game. It'll have long enough legs as a quick time killer that I'll probably be playing it occasionally in months to come.


(Oh, and there's seems to be significantly less lag/ frame rate problems too. Maybe I uncluttered phone properly or something?)

[sambojin]

Ok, got to tier 100 of "whatever mission token thingy" there is in the game. Had my p2w pass, so got two legendary runes.

One, does a thing. It gives more armour, charge armour or something, and when you get hit lots, it does an AoE. Or something. Which is nice.

The other is Magic Potions. Which I now plan my entire playstyle around. You get three potions throughout the level normally. Magic Potions make them into a slowly regenerating cool-down skill. Use a potion? You are now slowly getting another potion. Probably like 5-8 a match, instead of 3.

Why does this matter? Because there's another Rune called Strength Tonic, which gives you more damage when you're in potion-heal mode for 10secs. About 25-50% more damage.

How often do I press the potion button now? All the time. ASAP. I'm only missing out on more damage if I don't. Plus, I get to be big, which looks silly and awesome, while I kill all the things. I now have a drinking problem (which is funny, this month's p2w costume is a pirate outfit).

So yeah, current Rune line-up is Attack: Exploit Weakness 4 (+power from crits and +crit%), Flurries 4 (potential multiattack and +crit%), Critical Escalation 7 (crits give +crit% and +critdamage%) and Strength Tonic 7 (10s more power and +power%).
Defense: Persistence 7 (hits lower weapon skill cool-down and +health%), Regeneration 5 (regen and +health%), Shadow Claws 4 (crits curse and +crit%), and Magic Potions 7 (use all the goddamn potions you want, they even make you invulnerable for 1s, and big from Strength Tonic, and +health%!).

It's weird. I'm now the Big Axe Bro of the team, almost every time. But this works with literally any weapon. But it works extra good with an Axe. It's a really nice build.
(I really love Shadow Claws. It doesn't seem like a "defense" rune. Is there a reason for it? Yep, +crit% at the start of a match. And it helps dark element users, even when you're not one. Why do they work with a Righteous Bow? Don't know. Still get my +crit% bro, that's all that matters 😎)

[Aoi]

For people that liked Magic Survival on mobile (mentioned here probably... a year ago?), there's Vampire Survivors for PC which is... uhm... phrased uncharitably, a ripoff with a Castlevania aesthetic.

An outdated version is available freely, or the latest version on Steam.

Free: https://poncle.itch.io/vampire-survivors