Another game that came and went from the mobile scene without drawing too much attention, Shadow Quest has been de-listed from both the Play and Apple stores and even appears to have had its official website removed some time ago. The game had a shaky start that saw the initial release plagued with login errors that prevented players from progressing properly, and saw a re-release in multiple countries with Magicindie Softworks getting support from Nova Games.
The endless tide of Match-3 RPG hybrid titles seems to have slowed down of late, and attempts to really dive into a blend of the two that goes beyond ‘Match-3 that resembles combat’ have become rare. The original Gunspell was released on mobile and Steam in 2014 and stood out in the crowd of anime-styled titles by have a strong WRPG vibe and modern supernatural fantasy setting. It’s sequel arrived early 2020 and looks to build on that formula. Continue reading
It’s often the case with mobile stores that great indies get swept under the rug in the wave of freemium efforts from AAA developers trying to break the market or the latest release from the big-boys of the mobile space. Fairy Knights is one of those games that’s managed to fall through the cracks for many, but manages to be a creative entry into the Puzzle-based RPG scene.
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Once upon a time there was an amazing game called ‘Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes’ that showed the world that match-3 RPGs could not only be good, but they could be exceptional. After seeing an original release on the DS it was given the HD makeover treatment in a lush edition for PlayStation 3 and was subsequently ported to iOS, Android and Steam. Sadly, despite being a paragon of the genre, a sequel was never made. Enter King . . . Continue reading
An enjoyable shift in Social RPGs in recent months has been a growing trend in putting the focus on storytelling. Earlier this year we were pleasantly surprised with the amount of inter-character sequences in Dissidia’s mobile outing from Square Enix, Nintendo has managed to finally give ‘Fire Emblem: Heroes’ a compelling arc with its second chapter, and now we have Sdorica Sunset to add to the list of genuinely interesting narratives.
You’ll often hear us bemoan the presence of a strong narrative here at MBU when speaking on the topic of mobile or casual titles. It seems that in an effort to trim the RPG experience into a suitably streamlined format for use on tablets and phones the focus is always shifted to combat and nine times out of ten the narrative experience (what some would argue to be the ‘role playing’ aspect) is lost in favour of grinding levels. This is not the case with Celsius Heroes.
The curious element of mobile gaming lies in its ability to strip down a genre to a single element and put a unique focus on it. In the case of RPGs this is normally grinding and levelling through combat, as seen in ‘Avengers Alliance’ and other popular titles. Where Rune Raider is different is in that it takes the concept of moving through a dungeon corridor to the exit and turns this into the whole game.
Shifting their attention to the mobile market for the first time, long-time online game creators Artix Entertainment focus on bringing their hugely successful browser setting (as seen in solo title ‘Adventure Quest’ and MMORPG ‘Adventure Quest Worlds’) to a new audience.
Poker Knight slipped past the radar here at MBU for quite a while until a bored afternoon browsing through older RPGs on the iStore led to its discovery. What we found was an extremely satisfying take on blending poker rules with RPG themes.
Puzzlewood Quests is a fusion of quiz-like puzzle game and light social RPG that seems to hit the sweet-spot between the two. At no point does it feel like it’s compromised the RPG mechanics to make way for more complex puzzles, whilst resisting the urge to become too fiddly with stats and character pimping to be a good quiz.
My Boxed Universe 