Random Game Reviews

Reigns

December 20, 2021December 20, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

Reigns is the first game in the Reigns series, first released in 2016 – developed by Nerial and published by Devolver Digital. The concept of the game is brilliantly simple and effective. You are a king (if you would like to be a queen, you can always try Reigns: Her Majesty) at the head of an unruly kingdom faced with many decisions. Each decision is basically a Yes/No decision made by swiping left or right, reminiscent of everybody’s favourite dating apps (Tinder, Bumble, etc). Every decision will affect the 4 key factions that you need to keep in check – the church, the people, the army and the treasury. Deplete any one of those and you will be killed; allow any one of them to max out and you will be killed – dying will end your current reign and you will start as a new ruler. There are some really interesting characters, decisions and surprises that will keep you on your toes at all times.

Worth it?

Reigns is a wonderfully simple and yet surprisingly deep game. Some story lines and characters immerge after several lives or even the devil himself. The game will set you back around £1.99 (or $2.99), which is quite worth it, even more so if it is on sale. My single biggest issue with the game is the rotation on mobile – it doesn’t listen for the phone’s rotation (even if locked) and will auto-rotate, making it quite annoying when you’d like to keep the game in portrait, like if you are lying down. Other than that it’s really hard to fault the game. Occasionally if you close the game mid-reign it may not save your progress.

Overall it’s a nice looking game, with simple yet entertaining mechanics, a surprising amount of depth, loads of achievements and objectives to unlock. It’s cheap and has loads of replay value; perfect for either short time-killing sessions or lengthier runs.

Tips

The little dots above each of the factions indicate how big an effect that decision will have, however you don’t know if it will be a positive or negative effect
Decisions that continuously affect your standing with a faction will increment it constantly, meaning you can wait for it for a minute or two to fill/deplete before making a decision
Build the barn – this will come in handy if the people decide to turn on you, giving you an extra shot
Understand what adds to a faction’s standing and what detracts – over time you will get better at keeping them all in check
For tips on a long reign, check out the wiki: https://reigns.fandom.com/wiki/Strategy

Useful Links

Wiki: https://reigns.fandom.com/wiki/Reigns_Wikia
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reigns/id1114127463
Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.devolver.reigns&hl=en_GB&gl=US
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/474750/Reigns/

Punch Club

December 10, 2021December 13, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

Punch Club developed by Lazy Bear Studios and published by tinyBuild is a pixel graphics fighting simulation game. With elements reminiscent of Sims and loads of references to cult classic films there’s quite a bit to unpack with this game. The game has a fairly simple and straightforward gameplay loop consisting of training to level up your stats, working to earn cash and fighting your way to becoming champion of the world (technically you watch your character fight).

Every day you will have to balance exercise, work and other tasks to progress, at the end of every day you will lose a significant chunk of your stats. There are three main attributes that you can develop – strength (red), agility (blue) and stamina (green). Different gym equipment will level you up at different speeds, exercise too long on one piece of equipment and you’ll start earning less points, so make sure to change up your routine as soon as that happens. Your stats tie in to your fighting abilities and skills. After each fight you will learn skill points which can be spent learning new skills, moves or perks. As if all of that wasn’t enough you also have to ensure you’ve got enough food, energy and happiness each day. In the early game finding the balance between working to earn money and training is particularly difficult, so you’ll probably be stuffing yourself with frozen pizzas for quite some time.

The story focuses on a character who dreams of becoming a great fighter and avenging his father’s death. As you become a better fighter more elements to the story will unfold, as well as some side-stories, which actually get pretty weird after a while. The game world is packed with references to movies like Fight Club, Rocky, The Simpsons, John Wick and even Jay and Silent Bob (if you look outside the store) and some truly beautiful pixel art.

Worth it?

This isn’t an easy game. Especially the early game can be particularly hard as you balance working, training and fighting. Once you start to unlock better jobs, some home equipment and more skills things begin to get a bit easier and the game starts to click. The mid-game (from Din Kong) onwards begins to get a bit easier, however it is also worth noting that this is an extremely grindy game. While losing some stats every day makes sense and is an established mechanic it also makes the game really hard and you will be spending an extremely long time levelling up your stats (especially for the final fights). While it is quite punishing, it also makes for a good challenge. Some story lines will also present you with choices which will affect them, potentially making completion for those story lines unachievable.

You can get the game for around £1.50 on sale, which is absolutely worth it. The game provides a good challenge, is wonderfully aesthetic, has an interesting story and loads of film references to keep you going. It will take you quite a few hours to complete your first playthrough and you may be tempted to do a second one after (maybe even a speedrun). The sound track can get a bit repetitive after hours of grinding and the game itself can get a bit repetitive and grindy towards the end, but other than that it is quite difficult to fault it. If you see the game on sale, grab it.

Tips

In the early game meat is the most effective cost per food item, however pizza is better at recovering your health
Making money is only difficult in the early game – focus on getting your own equipment at home so as to avoid the daily cost of the gym
The skip attack skills is very useful if you are draining your energy very quickly
Adapt your strategy from round to round – try out different moves, counters and defensive moves
Fights will teleport you directly to the location so you can save yourself the walking
Keep skills just above a level if the day is about to tick over, so you can easily get it back up again at the start of the new day
Focus on unlocking the extra skill slots early in the skill tree
Look ahead at what gets you where in the skill tree, plan ahead
Once you are living with Din Kong focus on upgrading daily allowance asap, money will also become a trivial concern pretty quickly then
You can collect the prize from Mickey in the trailer park twice
Skill unlock cost caps at 25
The flower locations for Adrian are: Roy’s garden, the Warehouse, the Bar, Mick’s office and your house
Check out the wiki for more tips/tricks

Useful Links

Cats & Soup – Relaxing Cat Game

December 3, 2021December 3, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

Looking for an aesthetically pleasing and chill idle game, love cats? Cats&Soup – Relaxing Cat Game by HIDEA is an amazingly beautiful and cute idle cat game. Purchase various stations – making soups or juices, prepping ingredients or places to relax and then hire some cute cats to perform those actions. As they make soups and juices you can sell them to start making some gold. As you make gold you can upgrade your existing stations or purchase new ones to add new ingredients. The game also offers some other ways to make money, including a grabber game or fishing. Your cats can also be upgraded, clothed and have their “rooms” with furniture, wallpaper or various other decorations.

The attention to detail in the environment, each station, each cat and its animations is really something amazing. The aesthetics are paired with relaxing music and sound effects making it a truly blissful experience. Apart from money there are also a few other types of currency: recipe points, furniture coins and gems (premium currency). There are ways to earn premium currency and furniture coins in game.

Worth it?

Overall a very relaxing and aesthetically pleasing game. However it suffers with some of the symptoms often seen in idle games – little to actually do (apart from checking in every so often). The mini-games are things we’ve seen before and get boring quite quick. Completing daily quests will require you to watch a good deal of ads too. You’re not necessarily forced to watch them but if you’d like to make quicker progress or unlock more you will need to watch your fare share. Progression is reasonably paced, however other than the cat customisation and the idea of unlocking new soups/ingredients there’s little to keep you coming back longer term. The game has some depth in terms of unlockables and new stations to build. The most interesting area of the game is combining various cats and their buffs with specific jobs and clothing – you can experiment by mixing and matching them to find the optimal setup.

Tips

Cat “room” customisation items can be bought form the “item” tab in the gift shop
You can use tickets that you earn in game in the “item” tab of the gift shop to get instant cash or recipe points.
Upgrade your stations using the button in the bottom left in order to improve their yields.
Focus on upgrading your stations rather than saving for new ones (you’ll earn gold faster if you upgrade).

Useful Links

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hidea.cat&hl=en_GB&gl=US
Apple Store: https://apps.apple.com/ph/app/cats-soup/id1581431235?ign-mpt=uo%3D2

Valthirian Arc – Hero School Story

November 14, 2021November 14, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

Valthirian Arc – Hero School Story by Agate Games is a rather weird, but strangely addictive game available on PC, PS4 and Switch. A quirky art style and a mix of anime and cute characters make this quite an interesting game. There are two aspects to Valthirian Arc – on the one hand you are a principal managing a school for heroes. You will need to build and upgrade various classrooms and facilities around the school while also upgrading your students and crafting them new gear. At the end of each academic year you have to graduate some of your students in order to obtain a large lump some of cash and experience.

The second aspect of this game are the actual missions that your students are sent on. These are essentially little randomised dungeons in which you usually have to find some items or kill some mobs. This encompasses the core gameplay loop in which you go out on missions, find loot, gain experience, followed by levelling up your students and eventually graduating them and enrolling new ones to repeat the process with. As you advance the story and acquire more experience your school will grow, allowing you to place more buildings and unlock specialisations for your students.

Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story_20210930205408

Worth it?

The game is available on Steam for £11.99, I got it on sale on PS4 for around £2.50. Realistically, the game isn’t really worth much more than £5.00, but it does have an addictive quality about it where you keep thinking to yourself – “just one more mission or one more graduation”. The gameplay does get quite repetitive quite quickly, but the prospects of improving your students further and further and unlocking the various specialisations can keep you engaged for quite a while.

Overall the story isn’t anything overly compelling, although it does appear to have a couple of variations on the end result. There’s an interesting variety of mechanics, from managing and building the school, to crafting gear and upgrading students. It has a weirdly addictive side to it that does make you want to keep playing for some time. If you focus on doing only the main story line missions you can probably complete it in around 5-10 hours, however doing side quests and favours is a great way to earn more cash and upgrade your students even more. If you spot this on sale, it’s definitely worth a try if you fancy something a little bit more quirky.

Tips

Do not send all parties on idle missions (ones that play out on their own) as time advances really slowly when you are not out on a mission.
Always ensure you have on party with which to play out missions while the others can go on idle ones. You can use the main party to advance time by completing the missions.
Don’t get too attached to your students, you will have to graduate them at some point as newer students joining will have a higher level cap.
The dirk is a great weapon for the lowest class students.
Always buy everything you can from the travelling merchant.
There’s little point in crafting most of the lower class weapons as you’ll tend to find a lot while out on missions.
Invest in buildings and rooms that give you extra cash early on, you can always delete or replace them later on.
Item drop rate is capped, regardless of how many rooms you have that buff it.
Look out for students’ base stats when enrolling them – you can specialise them based on these. Focus on their strengths.

Useful Links

Card Guardians: Deck Building Roguelike Card Game

October 28, 2021May 9, 2022Random Game Reviews1 Comment

The Game

Card Guardians (as it should be called) is a deck building turn based combat game by Tapps Games – PT. The game has likely drawn a good deal of inspiration from the popular Slay the Spire. It is a simple concept based around fighting various mobs using a deck of various cards. Every time you beat an enemy you will advance on your current adventure – you will get to choose a card to add to your deck (for this adventure only) and a choice of what to do next. Sometimes you will get to choose a way to improve your deck or heal up, other times you will have to choose which enemy you would like to take on.

Your adventures will get you gold and armour – armour can be upgraded in quality by merging 4 alike pieces. Each piece of armour can then be upgraded using gold to increase the base stats that it provides (gloves boost attack, helmets boost defence, chest pieces boost health). There are different types of armour and armour sets that provide unique set bonuses which will give you a better chance at the start of the battle.

Worth it?

Overall the game takes some clever and familiar mechanics and delivers an enjoyable and challenging experience. The game is also easy to pick up and drop as it will save your progress on your last run. My biggest issue with the game is that in a way you are “forced” to watch videos after each battle to get the better loot. While you don’t have to, if you want more gold and a better card selection – it will be in your interest to do so. One slightly annoying aspect is that it seems you need 4 piece of the same armour to upgrade the quality as opposed to 3 (which is sort of what the UI suggests). The game currently has two playable characters which are completely different – giving the game quite a bit of variety in terms of play style.

The ad-free version is £6.99 which is a bit on the expensive side for what it actually offers – the key benefit being a free way to upgrade your loot after each battle and a free revive if you die on an adventure. If the overall price was 15-20% cheaper it would make a lot more sense to go for as the perks are pretty useful. Gameplay is fairly repetitive but the randomness of the cards you may get allows you to try different tactics and ensures that each run is completely unique.

Tips

You can use defend or magic cards once you’ve filled up your super power without resetting it.
Exile cards can only be used once per battle, but will return to your deck in your next fight.
When offered the shop choice – you can buy multiple cards using gold.
Your armour will be lost on your next turn so don’t overextend your use of “Defend” cards.

Useful Links

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tapps.roguelike.rpg.cardguardians&hl=en_GB&gl=US

The Survivalists

September 11, 2021September 11, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

The Survivalists is a pixel-graphics survival game by Team17. You are stranded on a deserted (or is it?) island in the middle of the ocean with nothing but the clothes on your back and the wreckage of your raft. It’s up to you to build up your base and arsenal of tools and weapons and eventually make your way to other islands and even back home. The game shares a lot of similarities with other popular survival games (like Don’t Starve), but is also quite forgiving and can be quite chill at times (rather than the hectic panic that other such games induce). There are regular attacks by the goblin natives of the islands – you will always be warned the evening before these occur and you’ll have a good amount of time to prepare yourself for the impending attack.

Where The Survivalists really comes into its own is it’s unique monkey buddy system. While exploring the islands you will run into monkeys who will need your help – sometimes they’ll be capture in a cage that needs breaking, other times they will need a specific item. Once you’ve helped them they will join you on your adventures and quite literally follow all of your orders. The monkeys allow you to automate production, construction, resource harvesting, combat, etc. as you can teach each monkey to perform one of the roles described above. This is quite a unique mechanic and makes for some pretty interesting scenarios, especially as you amass a bigger and bigger following of monkeys.

The game also features vaults and labyrinths, which are basically dungeons with cool loot and secrets to be uncovered. These are scattered throughout the world and up to you to find on your adventures. The labyrinths will require special keys to be purchased from the Mysterious Stranger. There are a few other NPCs and some quests that will keep you busy when you get bored of building up your base and gathering resources. If that’s not enough for you, you can also play cooperatively with your friends online (sadly no couch co-op options available).

Worth it?

The game has all the classic survival game mechanics you’d ever want and the monkeys give the game something truly unique. I would even argue that they make the game what it is – they take away the tediousness of crafting and resource gathering and allow you to focus on the bigger picture problems like layout out your base, exploring or even just watching them to all the hard work while you take a nap. The game will generally set you back around £20 but is often on sale for around £10 (you really can’t say no to that). I played the PS4 version and have very little to fault it on there.

Overall it’s a very enjoyable game with a great amount of depth to it – it can be quite chill at times, at other moments you may be fighting for your life. As with all such games, things to tend to get a bit repetitive after a while and the loop of finding better materials for better tools to get better materials starts to become a bit tedious – that would be my only major criticism. Other than that the game has some truly unique elements to it and will keep you busy for hours on end. It also has that addictive moment where you just keep thinking to yourself: “one more day, one more job” and then you find you’ve actually played a few hours longer than expected.

Tips

Only go up 1 difficulty when moving to a new island, otherwise you won’t be able to gather resource and will probably get killed.
Gather as many monkeys as you can.
Setting monkeys to follow you and giving them weapons will allow them to fight alongside you.
Vaults aren’t too difficult, especially on the first island – they often contain monkeys as well.
You can give a chest to a monkey to carry as a way to have more storage space when out in the world.
Try to get to the 3rd difficulty island asap as you will find the materials for portals there – this will help you massively with navigating the world.
Find the Mysterious Stranger to buy the Mysterious Chest (36 slots) for 500 Doubloons – this will help you massively when adventuring.
Complete 3 quests for the Beastmaster to unlock the first backpack upgrade to be purchased from the Mysterious Stranger – these will then appear on the 2nd page of the crafting menu.

Useful Links

Wiki: https://thesurvivalists.fandom.com/wiki/The_Survivalists_Wiki
Steam CD key: https://www.kinguin.net/category/77596/the-survivalists-steam-cd-key?r=rndgamereviews
Deluxe Edition Steam CD key: https://www.kinguin.net/category/79217/the-survivalists-deluxe-edition-steam-cd-key?r=rndgamereviews

Botworld Adventure

August 28, 2021August 28, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

Botworld Adventure by Featherweight is an mobile open world RPG games focused around collecting, upgrading and battling various bots in a huge open world. There’s an overarching main quest line and various contracts (as the game calls daily quests). You can unlock new areas and zones by upgrading your boat, which serves as your home base. As you progress you will unlock power ups, gadgets and various other aspects that will enhance your combat abilities. The main story isn’t something unique or new by any means, but the size of the areas and the variety of quests make this quite a solid open-world RPG, especially considering it’s an Android game.

You will be able to choose the appearance and race of your character before you start. Then in a Pokémon-esque fashion will need to pick your started bot from three available. Then your adventure truly begins. You can upgrade your bots, they will also gain XP and level up which will allow you to pick skills that will enhance them even further. There’s different tiers of bots and different classes – each with it’s own stats and abilities. If you get tired of battling wild bots and bandits you can take your bots to the arena and take on other player’s teams.

At the start of each battle you choose your bots starting position – placing 3 of them in the fighting area. They will then proceed to fight on their own, using their abilities against the enemy bots. You will have access to some special abilities that you can use to influence the battle – these specials can buff your own bots or damage/inhibit enemy ones. The game also makes it look like there are other players wondering around – although these are likely just NPCs made to look like other players.

Worth it?

This game is big. It has a lot to offer, especially considering it’s a free Android game. The low poly graphics and aesthetics are quite appealing, Botworld is brilliantly colourful and vibrant. The world is well designed, lots of nice details and well thought out. There’s a slight downside to contracts (daily/mini quests) as they can take quite a few hours to reset, but you can watch and ad to do so faster. However, it must be noted that there are no in-game ads and there’s no obligation to watch ads or pay for premium versions (there’s a premium currency and you can purchase the Mayoral Membership, which gives you access to extra rewards for around £7.49).

Another way that the game limits you is through battery packs – each time you venture out into the world you will use one up (you have about 5 to start with) – these take time to recharge, although they can be rushed by watching ads. I haven’t found myself needing to watch one. Finding materials for your boat and specific ones for your bots is where the game starts to get a little harder. I found the boat materials quite hard to find and was usually going out on missions solely for that purpose.

Overall the game has a lot to offer and given it’s a free game it’s absolutely worth checking out. Sessions on the game can last anywhere from 10-15 mins to a couple hours, depending on how many batteries you have. The ads aren’t intrusive and there’s no need to spend any money to get the most out of the game. The game itself is quite big (~490MB) and after some time it does tend to get a bit repetitive in terms of quests and offering overall. The combat, the upgrades and the variety in bots gives the game a considerable amount of depth worth exploring, there are also plenty of regions and a long main story line. It has enough elements that will keep you coming back to it every day for a good few weeks minimum.

Tips

Remember to always collect the free materials from the shop (sometimes it’s worth buying the ones on sale as well)
Pick your fights – there are ways to run around wild bots/bandits so you don’t waste your bots on pointless fights if you have a set objective
To get the most out of each battery pack (traveling out into the world) keep fighting till you lose as there’s no penalty for that
Your recruits will use the bots you haven’t got equipped – so make sure to upgrade them as well
Place your weakest bot last so that your enemy can’t put more of their own bots near it
Use auto-battle if you are just grinding familiar enemies or wild bots, however be weary of auto-battle as it doesn’t always place your bots very well
Run over critters to capture them
You can exit the game at any time and it will continue where you left off

Useful Links

Exponential Idle

August 8, 2021November 23, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

Looking for a new idle game to play? Exponential Idle by Conic Games is a minimalist, maths-inspired idle game in which you upgrade and improve a mathematical formula as a way of grinding cash. While the game may seem quite basic at first, don’t be fooled by this appearance. The game has a bit of a story line too it in which you start out as an undergrad student working on this formula. The more you progress the formula, the more you progress through your phases of education – adding variables or expanding on the function every so often.

There are two primary things to spend money on – upgrades and variables – both of which accelerate the rate at which you acquire cash. Quite shortly after you are introduced to the prestige mechanic, which allows you to collect a new currency (μ), however soon you will find out there’s an even bigger type of prestige where you can even reset your μ currency for even more substantial upgrades. Throughout your gameplay you will earn stars – these are the truly persistent currency and upgrades that you want to invest in, but stars are hard to come by in the early game. Stars can be earned through tapping, automatically over time, through mini games or through the achievements. Looking at the list of achievements will give you a good sense for how deep and far this game can go.

Worth it?

This slick game will keep you coming back for quite a while. Overall the game offers a surprising amount of depth and new things to discover and add to your formula. There’s puzzles for active play or just the main game for passive (check your phone once in a while) type play. The depth on the objectives and new additions will keep you coming back for quite a while. There are no ads, unless you want to watch them to boost your earnings – for £1.39 you can purchase the ad free version, where you will get a permanent boost to your dt that you would normally get from the ads. The loose story and the quantity of achievements will keep you coming back regularly as you try to break through to the next phases of the game. I would recommend it as a great game for short sessions a couple of times a day when you’re trying to kill a few minutes or just to check up on progress.

Tips

In the early stages prestige as often/as early as you can
Prioritise buying the auto-buyers
Have a look at some of the formulas suggested in the Reddit/wiki for the auto-prestige and auto-supremacy
The Puzzles can be quite hard (if you don’t know the algorithms by which to solve them) and will require active play in order to farm stars
When you have the ability to get theories – focus on getting 20 graduates and then respec to get the first one, investing in theories will make it much easier to get more graduates
Try and stay on a theory long enough before graduating students in order to pick up the next theory immediately

Useful Links

Wiki: https://exponential-idle.fandom.com/wiki/Exponential_Idle_Wiki
Developer site/github: https://conicgames.github.io/exponentialidle/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ExponentialIdle/
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.conicgames.exponentialidle&hl=en_GB&gl=US
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/exponential-idle/id1538487382

The Final Earth 2

July 18, 2021July 18, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

Looking for a slightly different city builder to play on your phone? The Final Earth 2 is just that. A game developed by one person (Florian van Strien), The Final Earth 2 lets you build a cubical vertical city on series of small floating platforms. The game revolves around various building types and resource management – ensure you’ve got a steady supply of wood, stone and food, adequate housing and keep adding to your never ending tower blocks.

The game starts you off with some simple scenarios which introduce you to the various types of building and resource. There’s a constant loop of creating housing, ensuring there’s enough work and providing happiness boosts to your population. This makes for some pretty addictive gameplay in which you’re constantly adding and expanding your city. The various buildings synergise with each other, have a variety of upgrades and some can even be customised aesthetically. The building synergies will challenge you to think about your layout and you may find yourself going back to redesign and rethink certain areas.

Worth it?

A simple but effective game. A very clever concept with huge potential for additions and growth. There are loads of new buildings to unlock as you build up your city and various upgrades and improvements to purchase. The game is quite light on ads – there’s a boost option (for watching an ad) that will temporarily increase your production. There are also some ads in between scenarios, but other that no annoying constant ads or gatchas. There’s an ad-free version for £2.69 or a premium edition for £4.49 which ads some new buildings, creative mode and removes all ads – this is definitely a great deal and is an awesome way to support the developer. The game is better suited for longer play sessions when you’ve got time to kill, because trust me you will find yourself glued to it. The game only plays in landscape mode – it would be interesting to see if it could also work in portrait (resources on top, controls on the bottom).

Overall a very satisfying game to play for medium to long play sessions, lots of buildings, upgrades and new things to discover. I would definitely recommend giving it a go if you like city builders.

Tips

When setting a job priority – if you want everyone focused on that job up the value to “Max” – that will ensure all these jobs are always filled first
Build lots of stone mines and rock teleporters
Focus on establishing your basic resources before adding new ones – you need a sold supply of stone and wood before starting to thing about machine parts and refined metals
Don’t worry about happiness too much at the start of a city, but don’t completely forget about it either
Surround labs with 4 farms or tree plantations to get the most out of them
The Living Research Center allows you to upgrade all generic houses to a specific type of house

Useful Links

Developer Website: https://florianvanstrien.nl/
Itch.io (Play games in browser): https://flori9.itch.io/
Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FlorianVanStrien.TheFinalEarth2&hl=en_GB&gl=US

Grim Quest – Old School RPG

June 27, 2021June 27, 2021Random Game ReviewsLeave a comment

The Game

Grim Quest – Old School RPG by Goran K is a game that’s popped up as recommended several times in my app store and I decided to give it a go – I just wish I’d done so sooner. As the game’s name suggests it’s an “old-school” RPG game that focuses on exploring dungeons, turn based combat and purchasing/upgrading spells, skills and equipment. The game also features has crafting as a method of creating powerful buffs and potions. You can also accept and complete bounties for XP and gold.

Each dungeon is essentially a square grid – these vary in size. Each turn you can choose one of the adjacent squares to move into it – at that stage you can either encounter enemies, a random event or the exit to the dungeon. You are discouraged from walking back over already revealed tiles as there’s a good chance you will get ambushed. While navigating the dungeons you need to keep an eye on your health, sanity and supplies. I quite like that there’s no mana to maintain, spells are just based on a number of charges that resets before each battle. If you’re low on sanity your fears will start manifesting themselves into monsters that attack you; run out of health and you’ll be kicked out of the dungeon. You will also find various items that buff you for that specific dungeon run. There are a decent variety of dungeons, monsters and a great selection of skills and spells to learn and combo.

Worth it?

One thing that needs to be mentioned is that this game was made by one person, which instantly propels it to a whole new level of excellence. Simple/minimalist graphics combined with classic mechanics and a great amount of depth make for a pretty amazing mobile gaming experience. You can pick this game up for a casual dungeon crawl or run after run attempting to beat a dungeon boss. There’s an ad-free version for £5.49, but it must be said the ads are essentially non-existent – apart from a bottom banner and the option to watch ads for cash every time you return to town (you don’t have to do this if you’d like an extra challenge). Personally I do feel that that price is a little steep – if it was 15-25% cheaper, I feel I’d be a bit more inclined to purchase it. There are some quality of life improvements that could be made like an option to sort your stash or being able to see the spell description at the Alter of Oblivion.

Overall it’s a brilliant game with familiar classic mechanics, simple but effective aesthetics, customisation options and a huge amount of spells, skills, crafting and enemies to take on. It’s also quite a challenge, especially early game until you’ve got some upgrades and good spells. The game will keep you thinking – just one more dungeon, one more level. It’s great for both short and longer sessions of play. A must see for any RPG/Turn-based aficionados out there.

Tips

AOE spells and attacks are very helpful
Hold on to ingredients that can be used in the cauldron
Make sure you always have as many bounties as possible on at a time
If you have an item already in your possession/stash you can complete item bounties
Items can be used to buff yourself on a particular dungeon run (very useful for boss levels)
Always check the vendor for steel ingots or other upgrade materials
You can reset/forget spells and skills at the Alter of Oblivion (Level 1 spells cost 0 to forget, but higher level ones will cost more)
Reddit Guide for beginners: https://www.reddit.com/r/GrimQuest?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

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