Mobile games you must check out: March 2020

By Team Digit | Updated on 08-Jun-2020

08-Jun-2020

LEGO Legacy Heroes Unboxed

Gameloft describes LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed as a team-battle RPG that brings to life 40 years of LEGO mini-figurine history. You get to collect LEGO figurines from select LEGO backcatalogs to form your team which can them go up against AI and other players in a turn-based match-up. Each figurine has its own unique skills which work towards the team/deck-building aspect of the game. The gameplay is practically the same as Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, a five year-old game from Gameloft that came out around the same time as Episode VII – The Force Awakens. The visuals have been updated and do conform to the block-ish design language of LEGO but when it comes to gameplay, you’ll be hard-pressed to see the difference between this game and Galaxy of Heroes. Galaxy of Heroes did start off well but it soon devolved into a tedious grind that was nothing but a cash grab. The gameplay becomes stale and the developers didn’t take any effort to remedy that. While we’re certain than LEGO might want to steer away from going down the same path, only time will tell how Heroes Unboxed will turn out to be. Right now, we can assume that they have enough fresh content for six months before they end up making the game tedious, or not. Galaxy of Heroes has survived for five years with its nasty formula, Heroes Unboxed might probably be around for the same amount of time.

AI Dungeon

AI Dungeon is an endless interactive book that spews stories out via OpenAI’s text generator. The basic premise is that the app can mould and shape a narrative according to ANY information you give it, to get it going. No, seriously, you can even tell it to blow up a city, and it will find a way to write it (semi)convincingly into the story. You kick off every story by selecting a selecting a setting – fantasy, apocalyptic, mystery, zombies and custom. Based on your select selection, you then pick a character. Lastly, you enter your name and you’re ready to delve into this AI-generated narrative. The AI responds to all your inputs on the fly, while keeping in mind the setting, character and previous inputs… for the most part. There are times when the AI goes through a rather severe case of amnesia and completely switches around everything. You’re a scavenger in an apocalyptic setting searching for food? We inputted, “cook the food”, and half expected the AI to throw in some cannibalistic sh*t where we horrifically cook our friend, but no. It magically conjured up some steak that we were merrily cooking. Boy, would we love to be a part of this world where wishes conjure up just about anything. Despite the obvious kinks and inconsistencies, AI dungeon proves to be a novel experience. The thing we liked the most is that the stories are not stale, even if you enter monotonous or boring inputs. It almost always stirs up some mystery, some conspiracy or action. Overall, the AI engine definitely needs some fine tuning, which it will get over time, but the game is unique and seriously quite fun. Oh, and hilarious too!

Vengeance

Vengeance is a barebones ARPG for mobile that is very reminiscent of old-school ARPGs like Kingdoms of Amalur, Gothic, or Two Worlds. When we say barebones we mean that the moment you start the game it feels pretty barren. To top it off, you aren’t really given a tutorial or any introductory text, you’re just thrown into the game and left to fare for yourself. This might appeal to some, and if you’re familiar with RPGs, then you’ll quickly figure things out. It’s a generic RPG experience, where you run around town collecting quests and then you head out through a portal (Diablo style) to the region you need to kill/collect stuff in. Controls are standard, with the movement on the left side of the screen and your attack and ability actions on the right side. In the middle of the screen you have a few additional actions. The aesthetic is alright, we don’t hate the old-school look it has going, but it might not be for everyone. Even character models appear rather bland and combat animations and such are also pretty generic, which is still fine considering the plethora of turn-based “action” RPGs that go overboard with the animations. If you get into it, like we mentioned above, it’s a decent old-school RPG experience.

Tetris

Tetris has a new home with the producer handing over licensing rights from EA to N3twork. More than ten years ago, EA introduced the first Tetris game for smartphones, and that was an overpriced cash grab. Over the years, there were multiple apps released, all stuffed with unnecessary microtransactions. Now, all these apps have been pulled from the stores, and N3twork has released a new version of Tetris. It’s a very simple game, and the classic version of Tetris. There are five themes available at the moment, and you can set an avatar. The leaderboards are also minimal, with no global or local rankings, the only person you can beat on the board, is you. It costs `399 to disable ads, and that is the only microtransaction on the app. Now, the gameplay is close to the classic version. You can save a single block on hold for later, and the rest keep coming down. Getting too many rows too fast means that the pace increases too quickly. Unfortunately, the game suffers from the same problems that plagued the original Tetris on smartphones over ten years ago. There are mistaps aplenty, and rotating the blocks is not extremely accurate. At times, you may just propel the block on a downward journey at the wrong moment. So, yeah, the tactile feedback of the physical buttons is a major missing feature for this particular implementation. Even a simulated rotate button, available as an option would have easily solved this problem. It is not a fully fleshed out experience, which makes the price for removing ads kind of steep. But then again, Tetris has always been expensive. Thing is the Tetris app on the store right now is just a teaser for the upcoming Tetris Battle Royale game by the same developer, N3twork. However, if you want to play a Tetris game right now on mobile platforms, this is the only official version. And just like the initial release, it just about works.

Gwent : The Witcher Card Game

The mobile platforms. It released on iOS a year after PC and consoles. It is scheduled to launch for droids on 24 March. It is essentially the PC version of the game ported to mobile platforms. You can carry over the game to mobile from the PC, if you have been playing. However, for those who have played Witcher III, don’t expect this to be the version of Gwent in the game. To start with, there is a loading screen with some strange Arabic visuals, which look nothing like the setting of Witcher III. The game additionally has all the usual trappings of mobile titles, including daily rewards and pay to win microtransactions. You have to use things like card kegs, meteorite power, ornaments and packs, which are all really unnecessary and make you spend time away from playing the game. The gameplay is primarily PVP and competition oriented (each season lasts a month), and there is also an AI mode to “practice” on. Everything takes an insane amount of time to load. Instead of 3 lanes, there are only two. There are a ton of additional cards, all with different modifiers and powers. Essentially, you have to relearn the game from scratch. But if you look beyond all that, it can be an engaging and involving title. The game rounds are reasonably short. There is a fair amount of strategy involved in managing the deck and using the cards. Even the ranking system is fun to get into. There are all kinds of rebalancing updates, including an occasional changes in the gameplay mechanics. This is a polarising title, either you will love it or hate it, just like Gwent in Witcher III.

Evony

This is one of those horribly programmatic base building titles. You have to build up a base where there is no strategy involved, just micromanage the time sinks and construct the predefined buildings at their designated locations. The game is also plagued with microtransactions for consumables, advertisements and subscriptions. The tutorial lasts into days because that’s how unnecessarily complicated the game is, and the developers want to draw you in with an illusion of depth, which is basically a clone of every other base building title out there. You get to pick some heroes and backgrounds, with each region having unique advantages, but these do not really go a long way in changing the gameplay, and you can change the region on the fly without actually affecting the game at all! Anyway, the reason why we are mentioning this abomination at all is because of the puzzles. Every time your base is upgraded, you get to solve a bunch of redonkulous puzzles. These involve moving platforms, removing keys, and handling lava or water effectively to make your hero reach his treasure. There is no fall damage, but your hero can drown, burn, run into spikes, get pounded or punctured in what looks like a sadist medieval torture dungeon. The animation is horrible, and we did not even want to give the music a chance, but the puzzles are actually pretty neat. They can prove to be pretty fun, and are the only redeeming aspect that you can expect for as long as you are patient enough to play this abomination of a game.