During the summer I spent several weeks in a small town in Eastern Finland, obviously without my dear personal computer(s). At some point I felt like testing few games on my newly bought (second-hand) Samsung Galaxy S10. Might write a word or hundred about the games I tried, after I'll get to that.
This new old flagship model S10 replaced my 2015 model Samsung Galaxy J5, which was not very good for playing in a long run - performance was acceptable, but with only 8 GB of total internal storage it was not good. It could be acceptable if the 8 GB would have been actually available, but OS and bloatware took already away like 6 GB of it, and even while SD card can be used, most applications do not support running from SD card. Android 6 Marshmallow (best the J5 would officially support) would have feature of using SD as extension of the internal storage, but Samsung had decided to disable this feature in their OS version... So anyway with my old J5 it was therefore inconvenient to even have more than one or max few games on the device to begin with...
I suppose those smartphones could already take their own post, but this is what happens when not writing anything for five months. To be honest, also each of the games alone could have been worth one separate post, but now I'll try to be short and pack a line or few of several, since I know I'd otherwise have a long hiatus between each comment. This already was supposed to be written two months ago. Work, studies and family do take their toll in time consumption - and actually just now a little hungry beast came to tell me that it is foodie time. Very well, I'll continue in a moment.
Originally I intended to write also about games Girls X Battle 2 & Game Dev Tycoon, but I think writing this all took long enough to make it two-part post. Maybe it won't take me months to get the second half of my summer 2020 games reviews written - those two are after all games I clearly liked more than the two following ones I tested first.
D&D Style Choice Game
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| You have chosen... poorly |
"You have found a clichéd Dungeons and Dragons inspired game for your smartphone. You are at your childhood home and feel bored. Nobody is around. What should you do?
A. Play the darn game!
B. Forget it, find out if there are some other people around.
C. It's already late. You can rest and wake up another day."
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| Actually there are quite a few pictures in the game. Ads too. |
The first game I tested was named in very generic fashion: D&D Style Choice Game. Well, I guess that pretty much tells what to expect from a game amidst endless hordes of other games one can download and at least try for free. So yes, it is a text based game where you'll read the story and then pick a choice, according to which the game continues and narration branches.
This feels to me something really ancient; choice based text adventure games were a thing already in my childhood in 1980's (including analogue variants: solo adventure books, where results of choices are determined by turning into page X or Y). Those pretty much seemed to lapse into obscurity for most parts by 1990's, although not necessarily as deeply as parser based text adventures (which I believe were deemed as more advanced stuff in 1980's than choice based games). Then of course there were this related genre of visual novels, which were not as familiar in the West despite being constantly around during the decades in Japan.
I think it's fairly truthful to claim, however, that visual novels and even pure text based story games have gotten a renaissance also in Western gaming culture during the past ten years or so. Some material have clearly gotten inspirations from Japanese visual novels, however, these pure text based games have a bit different and more traditionally Western feeling on them. I also partially got inspired to try some of these, since I've been also testing Twine, which is sort of a game engine for making text based games (essentially as HTML pages). In addition could imagine that this kind of a game suits well on a mobile device, and I suppose I still agree with that.
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| Narissa, the dream girl of every RPG nerd - she's even cladded in proper armor instead of a bikini mail. |
The game itself is essentially an "interactive novel", which is not exactly consisted of award winning narration as such. In fact the text reminded me a lot about my own high fantasy short stories I'd written as a teenager, riddled with a very traditional RPG fantasy setting (healer clerics with mail and mace fighting goblins etc.) not forgetting to gasp upon how hot every randomly encountered NPC female is. At least some of them are also well suited in combat against various beasts and abominations. This being said, in addition to sexual innuendo there is a fair deal of violence as well, so clearly it is not for children either. Maybe this is for someone who likes Twilight and Divergent?
The story might well surprise the reader though at times, as there didn't really feel like being much limit or rule upon what might get encountered by the narrator's random encounter table (the game events themselves are not random), but as such it also makes everything kind of meaningless, since pretty much all the characters lack depth and plot twists do not really need to follow any mature logic. Seen worse in games though, don't get me wrong, but the main point I believe is that I'm no longer the target audience for youth high fantasy which might have felt fresh to me in 1990. Age reference is a bit unfair though, since the cultural reference points feel rather like 21st century instead of 20th century, although with some impression that the author is not necessarily too familiar what was already written in the previous century. On the other hand while like insinuated in the beginning, I think the game developer has been either at late teens or young adulthood, yet he seems to develop as a writer as the chapters go on.
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| "Selling a quality virgin!" Is this an obvious bad choice? |
For game mechanics could mention that there are also items and few stats like health and strength which might increase or decrease during the gameplay. So that if for instance health and magic powers are in high level, can be fairly safe to take some risks or cast spells in order to reach for something more valuable.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed several chapters of adventures, until at some point my hiatus become infinite so far. One can get more adventures unlocked for free after finishing previous parts, and as light entertainment without better stuff available it's fine - and like said, it's also free. Then again, also libraries are free, if I want to read something.
Grading (5 star maximum):
Esthetics: **
Graphics are limited to few quite nice looking drawings and there are but few insignificant sound effects; mostly it's just text which wouldn't outshine even J. K. Rowling's texts.
Playability: ***½
Keep it simple sugarpie. There are options and some else, but mostly it's just picking up text choices by tapping. However, playing is frequently interrupted by ads as a free player.
Value of time and money: ***½
It's a free game but not world class literature.
Content: **
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| Lunchtime! |
Challenge: **
I don't think this is meant to have real challenges but that the player can just keep progressing the story. You can choose wrong though (and have no way to determine without trial and error which choice causes bad results), but it's also always possible to just try again.
General grade: **½
If you have nothing better to do, enjoy generic adolescent aimed high fantasy and want some light written entertainment of that kind on your smartphone, it's free to try. Arguably the narration and hence the game gets gradually better as the story goes on.
King's Throne: Game of Lust
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| Where choices matter not. |
I could have mentioned more clearly about the Wizard's Choice and other Choice game chapters above that as a free player there are actually stops for ads quite frequently, which on the other hand seem to be a commonplace anyway. Commercial propaganda claims that advertisement are for conveying information, so maybe in this context it's fair to admit I first came across this King's Throne - Game of Lust with advertisement while playing the previously reviewed Choices game. The advertisement gave me impression of a game which would be likely more or less stupid but also seemed to have some potential as a kingdom management game. However, even if I expected not much, I still was disappointed and didn't feel like playing this one for a very long time. In fact I would not really feel like even writing this short review of mine, especially as I'm not hired to do so by anyone else but myself. I should ask myself a raise, but that is hard as a voluntary worker.
In any case, the subtitle of the game obviously is a reference to Game of Thrones. While that series obviously contains stories of lust (2nd hand knowledge - I've never gotten aquaintanced with the TV or book series), having lust included in the subtitle makes it sound like the game's carrot is being intentionally lewd. There are hentai games with great narration apart from their often absurdly unfitting and out of the blue appearing lewd sections, and this didn't seem nearly as frivolous after all, so I figured maybe it's something tolerable. In the modern world the audience might not believe it, but regardless I have to say that this lustness part was not something I really looked after, but the kingdom part and potential narration and doing meaningful choices.
Well, unfortunately choices matter only to the degree whether you'll want a bunch of soldiers or bag of gold. Kingdom management is all about tapping more resources with no effect to anything whatsoever, no matter if you're being a tyrant to the peasants or order your troops to seize some highwaymen, the choices are just very thinly veiled selections of tap to get more resource A or B. That is very boring.
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| There are no tactics to employ. Numbers are absurd and all victories are pyrrhic. Every battle ends up as a bloodbath no matter how strong you are. |
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| Some math might give an impression about grinding efficiency. |
It also doesn't help that there are like half dozen of similar resource boosters that will only give a small amount a time, you can tap them like max 7 times (can't remember exact counts) and then they'll regenerate one in 5 minutes. This means that you'd need to keep the game constantly open and keep tapping every few minutes to get almost nothing useful. Really grindy in the worst mobile game fashion, if I'm asked, and it doesn't help that nothing really has narration or anything that actually matters either, even while almost everything is attempted to be disguised as something that there'd be some "story potential" around. Or well ok, there is sort of storyline which starts by beating rivaling relatives or something, whom you'll get them imprisoned, can't bother to remember and didn't really seem to matter. Wars also are like you'll need a million soldiers to beat enemy's 10000 troops, yet those numbers also are just very meaningless numbers of resources. YAWN!
What about the lustful side that was advertised? In the ad actually there was like choices of save the princess (and get laid with her) or let her rot in prison. Well one resource source is to "find" maids, and this actually seems to be some of the most sophisticated content of the game. After a maid is found, you can flatter and bribe her to make her like you more until she becomes another wench of the lord whom he just screws alongside other maids in order to breed kids, who can then apparently be married with kids of other players and so forth. Didn't ever get to really see much of it as playing seemed so effortsome and boring. There also is the town where it's sort of possible to go get random encounters with citizen and even find more maids, but everything just seems so much like there is core by no content. These advertised choices also do not really exist in such fashion as the advertisement gives the impression - obviously I've noticed a long time before already that advertisement of mobile games usually contain very little truth of the actual game, but I was semi-hoping that there could have been something like quests in Fallout Shelter for instance.
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| In this game women are around to provide sex and offspring. Also the main point in the game? |
(Speaking of Fallout Shelter, Hustle Castle, a blatant clone of Fallout Shelter, was also in some advertisements. Those advertisements gave the impression that HS would also have similar quest mechanic as Fallout Shelter. I started wonder if it is true nowadays, since such features did not exist back then when I tried Hustle Castle maybe two years ago. Like said, ads are generally full of lies when it comes to mobile games, but at least this time the ad was implemented by actual game graphics - not necessarily from actual gameplay, and I doubt they'd have it even close to the ad really, but at least characters were the same kind of figures as in the game. Also like said Fallout Shelter had that stuff already a long time ago, so it would make sense if a clone game gets the same content. Didn't bother to try though.)
As some final nails in the coffin I felt that humour is bad and some parts of graphics and representation are just made in bad taste. Like the mechanics of prisoners. They're just extra resource sources, but the representation of "interrogating" them is just disgusting: essentially the player needs to tap the prisoner to torment him until blood has been spilled sufficiently. I'm not sure if it has been meant as fun, but I don't find it so. Again, even while I would not get so enthusiastic about violence in games anymore, back in the days I've found over the top violence rather entertaining already decades ago like in executions of Commando Libya, excess jumpy slaughters in Cannon Fodder and gruesome torture chamber murders of Chiller. However, something just doesn't feel fitting at all in King's Throne's torture chamber.
Overall the lord seems like a douchebag, and you're forced to play as that character without a choice. Maybe the developers have thought about it, having just forgotten to leave any potential of philosophical aspects openly implemented or even mildly insinuated into the game. Honestly though, I doubt it. Too bad, as actually with some decent content writing the game frame could have made something acceptable.
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| This is how I felt playing the game. |
Grading:
Esthetics: ***½
Drawings are fairly good looking, and I guess the style is even more or less personal comics style stuff. Although I dislike the modern animation style where drawn characters are "bent" back and forth in stupid looking fashion to make them look more lively. However, content of the drawings just tends to put me off. I can't remember much about sounds (I usually turn them off after testing, since sounds would likely bother other people around), but I don't think there was more than some generic sound effects and not much of music.
Playability: **
Interface is quite standard no problem modern mobile game, but there are too much unnecessary menu layers (disguised as castle sections or such, which of course sort of improves atmosphere). Unfortunately there is way too much tapping here and there to get bits of resources with both too long and too short regeneration times of charges.
Value of time and money: *
A free game with micropayments for this and that. Actually in the current state I felt like I should get paid instead to bear to play the game any further.
Content: *
Under fairly pretty cover this cake is both hollow and rotten inside.
Challenge: **
Actually I played too little to comment much about challenge. If you pay, all gets faster no doubt, if you play for free, price is sanity. However, I suspect the sanity is lost in any case if the game is played much further.
General grade: *½
I don't know if the game lacked a proper content designer who'd actually try to make the game enjoyable and interesting, or if this person was just not given resources to do anything as intended. Frame seems fairly alright, but design solutions are mostly just poo for what I'm concerned.
