OK, Warcraft Arclight Rumble, you have my interest

When I was gone on vacation, Blizzard made two big mobile game announcements. First was the news that Diablo Immortal is launching June 2nd with PC cross-play. And to that I say, “Cool.” I’ve pre-registered, I’ll give it a shot. I like the idea of a mobile Diablo for sure, but I am less sure of how well it’ll handle and perform on my phone.

But I was substantially more excited for the studio’s next announcement, which was the reveal of Warcraft Arclight Rumble. This is sort of a PvE Clash Royale, a quick-session real-time strategy game where you build up armies and send them on maps to grind out gold and make progression.

It’s weird to say, but I think this is a perfect fit for phones. It looks like a portrait-style game (which I prefer, since you have the option to play with just one hand and look like you’re doing Serious Adult Stuff) and the bite-sized sessions are ideal for what I want in a mobile title. It’s got the Warcraft art style and charm, and there’s progression (including talents), dungeons, raids, guilds, and so on. Second to an actual mobile WoW, I’m pretty satisfied with the announcement.

No launch date yet, which is a bummer because I don’t like getting my interest all piqued and then be told to wait for an unspecified date in the future. This summer? This fall? In any case, Arclight Rumble has my attention. Here’s hoping it’ll pull off that old Blizzard combo of being polished and addictive.

Hero Park for iOS review

When I’m looking for a new iPhone game, what I want is something that I can enjoy in bite-sized amounts — think three to 10 minutes — and isn’t overly complex while still being engaging. A good pick-up-and-put-down kind of game.

I evaluate a lot of these and discard as many as I download, because there’s so much trash out there. Yet every once in a while I find something that gets a stay of execution, and this week, it’s Hero Park.

Hero Park is a little like that old RTS Majesty and a little like Kairosoft’s Dungeon Village. The idea is that you (and your trusty unicorn, why not) are rebuilding the ol’ village to be a theme park of sorts that draws in heroes and fleeces them of their money through shops, services, and freshly stocked dungeons. You build structures, stock inventory in each, and send out the unicorn to entice heroes to check you out. From that point, it’s all in watching the heroes wander around doing whatever they want to, while you make money and restock stuff.

Very simple stuff, so it comes down to the presentation and Fun : Annoyance ratio. The presentation is just on this side of acceptable. I like the colors and generally happy tone, although the whole game looks a bit closer to a Flash title than I’d like it to be. It is colorful and cute, with winking skeletons and appealing-looking tavern food.

I’ve found it fun — again, in bite-sized amounts. It’s something to boot up, fiddle with for a few minutes setting things up, and then watching the hordes descend to spend their dough. There’s definitely some strategy in how you set up and grow your buildings. Hero Park also gets some points for being a fast game to boot up and play.

Annoyances? Well, this being F2P, of course there are timed chests and energy mechanics and a grind. But so far, none of that’s seemed that intrusive or bothersome. I don’t want to play it for an hour, so it doesn’t mean anything if my unicorn poops out and can’t recruit people for a bit.

There are quests that you can try to accomplish, like selling 20 potions in 5 minutes, that’ll reward you in a chest, and I like to take up these challenges. It keeps things fresh, at least. If I had one wish, it’s that the dungeons would look more interesting than a static screen with little icons taking swipes at each other. Let me set up rooms and watch heroes wander in and out!

Anyway, it’s been a breezy enough title that I thought I’d pass on a guarded recommendation for those looking for dumb bite-sized games.

Mobile gaming comfort food

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got folders of untested mobile games on my phone that I steadfastly ignore while returning to sometimes five- or even ten-year-old games that are tried and true. I am remarkably picky in what I want in a quick phone bite-sized play session, and so the ones that have met these inner qualifications end up sticking around.

So lately I’ve been playing a few old classics. My go-to for any three minutes of spare time is Clash Royale. I think I’m pretty good at it — at least I win far more than I lose — and I’ve been trying out some different deck builds that have been more effective than what I’ve used in the past. But the real key to winning is all in timing. It’s all in knowing when to hold back, when to push, when to save a nasty counter for later, and when to really frustrate your opponent by attacking both sides of the board at once.

Another one that I’ve dusted off as of late is Knights of Pen and Paper. I’d play the sequel, which had more content and better strategy, except that a few years ago the developer completely retooled it as a pay-to-win grindfest while stripping away paid purchases. And hey, I’ve never fully beaten the original, so why not? I really like that it loads quickly on my iPhone 7 (yeah, I’m the cutting edge of 2016 here), can be played in portrait mode, and lends itself to quick or lengthy sessions. It’s been ideal for my kids’ soccer practices, I can tell you.

And I just found out that Knights of Pen and Paper 3 is on the way, which totally made my month! There’s even gameplay video out there, and my body is so ready for this.

Looking back at 10 years of Tiny Tower

I suspect that most of us have a game or two on our phones that fill the purpose of “pick up and play” for a short period of time. Toilet time, or elevator time, or I-have-two-minutes-until-the-kids-get-out-of-school time. They’re our comfort games, trading depth and intricacy for immediate satisfaction and enjoyment.

For about a decade now, one of these pick up and play iPhone games for me has been NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower. I remember getting it a decade ago the week I went on a mission trip. At night, as I was trying to sleep on a very uncomfortable cot, I was enthralled with this tiny pixelated world and its money-generating inhabitants.

Tiny Tower’s simple gameplay loop — expand a tower and stock floors with workers to generate coins for more floors — was such a hit that it spawned countless knock-offs (and even several NimbleBit developed titles like LEGO Tower and Vegas Tower). But none had the simple charm of the first with all of its gorgeous pixelart and dorky “bitzens” who would chat to you on “Bitbook.”

It’s been a while since I last played, but I recently re-downloaded the game and have fallen for it all over again. Part of this is thanks to the massive 10th anniversary update, which added several great features like a little dude who parachutes in with gifts and actual player housing. I’ve been diligently saving up the enormous amount of currency needed for a house while stocking my floors with dream job bitzens.

I think the personality is the big appeal here. Each floor is covered in so much detail even though it’s, well, tiny, and I like outfitting my bitzens and giving them pets and helping them find their dream jobs. A while back I paid for the one-time VIP purchase, which gave a lot of quality-of-life improvements, such as an auto-delivering elevator, and I’m still reaping the benefits of that today.

I hear that NimbleBit is working on a big update to Pocket Planes, which is another favorite, and I hope that comes true. The Tinyverse that this studio created with its several titles is awesome, but none has been so addicting as this simple tower that I can play in portrait mode while pretending to be checking stocks or something.

Playing with my new (old) iPod Classic

Spending time reminiscing about MP3 players of the past certainly got me in the mood to use one again. I actually spent a lot of time researching the best (and most affordable) modern devices, but my mind kept wandering back to the iPod Classic. After realizing that I could pick up a refurbished iPod on eBay for $40 that would easily hold all of my music, I decided that would be better as an impulse purchase than the $200 Sony Walkman that I had been eying.

A week later, and a very small package came in the mail with the unit, a charger, and earbuds. The iPod in question is the 5th Generation, AKA the iPod Video, so named for its ability to play movies and TV shows in addition to tunes.

What startled me is that I was expecting a much chunkier device — probably memories of the 3rd generation there in my head. The 2005 iPod is not that fat at all, maybe a little thinner than my iPhone with the battery case attached that I always carry around. Another surprise came when I discovered that the iPod synced up just fine with the modern version of iTunes. Now, I will never defend iTunes — it’s such a clunky and annoying app — but that’s nice that I didn’t have to research workarounds just to get music on the iPod. About a half-hour later, my core library of 4,500 tracks was loaded up, and I could just sit back and fiddle with it.

It was truly a wonderful trip back to the past, and I marveled over how elegant the click wheel functions here. Compared to the multitude of options with a smartphone, there’s so little to actually do here — adjust settings, scroll through music, play a trio of games — but really, the whole point is to focus down on just music. I think that’s the real appeal of going back to single-use devices, a kind of purity in what you use them for. I do enjoy reading on my Kindle more than, say, my phone or tablet, and here I just like that it’s all about music and nothing else.

My four-year-old son became fascinated with it as well. When he saw me listening to it on the couch, he sidled up to me and I popped one of the earbuds into his ear so we could enjoy the same music. Very quickly, he took the iPod from me and became obsessed with turning the volume up and down. I guess it’s that heady burst of control?

I can tell you that there’s been no buyer’s regret from me on this. It’s not something I’m using super-frequently, but it is really nice for when I’m just reading, or going for an evening walk, or knocking off at the end of the day. I know that I could get it modded out — maybe with a solid state drive and better software — but I’m happy to know that it works perfectly fine as it is right now.

Nostalgia Lane: MP3 players of the past

Lately I’ve been enraptured with the idea of getting back into the practice of using a dedicated DAP — digital audio player — despite having my music on my phone, computer, and even a flash drive in my car. I haven’t really thought about DAPs or MP3 players in a long time, other than having a sports one for biking, but ever since I’ve been reading up on the modern player scene, it’s been making me totally nostalgic for the gadgets I’ve had in the past.

My very, very first MP3 player was a Creative Jukebox Zen, which I got in the early 2000s back when iPods weren’t playing nice with Windows. This was a very bulky and heavy unit, but I fell in love with the ability to take all my music with me on the go, especially when I took plane trips. The device and interface wasn’t the most user friendly, which was typical of the era, but it definitely tided me over until I was able to afford an Apple product that would interface with my computer.

And that happened in 2004, when I sprung for an iPod Photo. This was part of the 4th generation of the devices, and it was an absolute beauty to behold. To this day, I think the click wheel is one of the best interfaces I’ve ever experienced on a gadget, and I’m really bummed that Apple doesn’t make iPods with these any more.

In any case, I cherished the heck out of this device, loading it up with all my music and even a few pictures. I liked that it had some simple games, too. Remember, this was before smartphones were everywhere, so the iPod was kind of *it* for my on-the-go entertainment. I could listen to music, look at a few pictures, or play solitaire or breakout. That was surprisingly enough!

I had one other iPod purchase after that, which was the 5th generation iPod video. I’m a little fuzzy on when I bought it, I think maybe 2007 or 2008, but I do know that it had a massive amount of storage for the time (over 100 GB). I loved the idea of being able to watch movies on the go, and I had loaded up a few to view in my car between classes at seminary when I had some free time.

It was an improvement as a device in every way over my previous iPod, but you know what? I’m still more nostalgic for the older curvy white model. I think once other functions started to invade my MP3 player — videos for the next iPod, apps for the iPhone — then I found myself getting distracted away from listening to just music. It’s exactly the same deal with Kindle on the phone versus the Paperwhite. It’s nice to have everything-in-one gadgets, but sometimes it’s better to have single-function devices that lets you focus on just one thing.

Idle Life Sim is the casual sim I didn’t know I needed

My relationship with mobile gaming is worlds apart from how I approach PC gaming. Mobile gaming is, for me, something to fill a couple of spare minutes — maybe when I’m waking up or having quality time in the bathroom. So these days I’m not looking for super deep or involved experiences, but rather something I can open up, having fun for a minute or two, and then walk away without feeling like I’m dropping the ball.

With that standard in mind, Idle Life Sim is perfect for me. It’s like someone took the basic concept of The Sims — outfit a virtual dollhouse and have an autonomous character fiddle around in it — and merged it with a clicker game. It’s nothing deep, but it is enjoyable to mess with for a little bit of time here and there.

In Idle Life Sim, you start out with a single character and a one-room house. Your character has a career of your choice and generates money from this on a constant timer. That money can be spent to upgrade his or her career, buy more outfits, purchase furniture, or upgrade to bigger houses. You also have to increase your popularity (which is accomplished by dressing up right for parties). But seriously, that’s about it.

Yes, it’s a total ad-driven game, in that they want you to watch ads to generate even more money or special currency. I don’t do this that often, to be honest, but the option is there. It doesn’t feel that grindy, though, and I think a lot of that has to do with the presentation.

Everything here is so laid back. Unlike most clicker games, Idle Life Sim isn’t about fighting. Most of the time your character is interacting with your house objects while you take trips over to the always-rotating in-game store to see what wallpaper, carpet, and furnishings you can afford. There are objectives to accomplish for premium currency, but I think the real objectives here are to make your sim and house into what you want to see. 

I do like the presentation here. It’s cute without being that derivative of any other mobile game I’ve seen. The interface is very fast and intuitive, and there are a lot of little details that are fun to check out (such as the outside changing seasons). The whole package has personality, and that’s pretty much why I find myself logging in to tweak my little house day after day.

Anyway, a light and breezy recommendation from me today.

TMNT: Mutant Madness and the weird appeal of gacha games

I wouldn’t call myself overly fond of or a big supporter of shady or aggressive business models in mobile games. These games are riddled with them, especially the free ones, and your enjoyment of a title is usually tempered by how bad the practices are and how much you can ignore or work around them.

One in particular that I’m bumping into a lot these days are games with gacha structures. Gacha is a format where your characters aren’t acquired or leveled up through fighting or questing, but rather opening up an obscene number of random-item packs for tokens inside.

Yet I do keep coming back to these because they do present a very attractive front. The latest mobile diversion that I’ve been enjoying is TMNT: Mutant Madness — an auto-battler with the whole TMNT franchise that is riddled with gacha silliness. You keep throwing your guys into battles, and if they can’t numerically or strategically overcome the opposition, then you sit at that wall until your “lair” in the game generates enough character-growing ooze or you manage to buy more hero packs to tip the odds in your favor.

I always feel that the meta of these games is not my little characters against other little characters, but me against the game developers and their marketing team. I want to beat them literally at their own game by enjoying it without spending any money. And usually there is a path to do that — as there is here — but it’s slower and requires a lot more in the way of delayed gratification and patience. I do appreciate that it’s not as in-your-face annoying with the gacha as these games sometimes are.

Until or unless Mutant Madness gets too frustrating, I can see myself opening it up for a minute here and there. It’s fun. The presentation is slick, and it definitely captures a lot of nostalgia I still harbor for the old ’80s TMNT cartoon. I like shaping a team and picking members that have complementary skills, and since the battles are so quick, it’s no problem to me if they lose. Can’t advance? I’ll just let the game generate free currency while I’m offline, then I’ll spend it later and see if I can clear that next hurdle.

I do see the TMNT franchise as being perfect for this. I forgot how large the cast of characters it has, so it’s already stacked with possibilities. And there’s just a smidge of base building and story to go with it, so it’s not a completely brain-dead experience.

Cowabunga!

Mobile gaming: Battle Legion and Hearthstone

Happy Monday! This morning I’m going to talk about a couple of mobile games that I’ve been dipping into as of late.

Probably the most interesting to both me and my children has been Battle Legion. Please ignore the uninspired title, because this is actually a pretty fun experience. You remember how you’d set up huge armies of plastic troops as a kid and have imaginary battles? Now you can do that with tons of digital troops.

Battle Legion is basically a PvP RTS game without any base building or map crawling. You have an allowance of points to spend to set up an army, and then you unleash that army to fight automatically against other players’ builds. At first, the game is pretty basic with just spearmen and archers and the like. But as you climb up in the ranks, more options are added to your arsenal, and before you know it, you’re using monks that can cast shields, plague throwers, catapults, ninjas, and so much more.

Even though the very quick (less than 30 seconds) battles are completely out of the hands of the player, there is a lot of strategy here in what units you pick and how you arrange them. For example, the assassins will instantly teleport to the very opposite spot at the start of a battle, so if you can guess where the enemy is going to position weak troops, then you can get an edge.

Some players like to bunch up their units on the top or bottom. Some build forts. Some opt for numbers, others for fewer higher-point specialists. In any case, it’s impossible to create a perfect army, but it’s fun to keep trying and refining while you let the game auto-battle over and over again.

I haven’t touched Hearthstone in years, but in building up a new World of Warcraft account, I keenly felt the absence of my trusty Hearthsteed. I loved that mount because it looks great on both land and air (I hate flying mounts that waddle around with wings when they can’t fly), and I knew I wanted it for Shadowlands.

So I had to create a new Hearthstone account as well and play long enough to win three games and unlock the mount. And that was fun enough to get me to log back into my old Hearthstone account, which is practically drowning in cards at this time. I’m pretty rusty, but it might be something to do on an occasional basis in the future.

iPhone games I’ve been playing: Disney Sorcerer’s Arena and Endless Cards

I don’t even want to TALK about my mobile gaming backlog, because it’s ridiculously huge and not likely to be tackled by me during my lifetime. Maybe my grandson’s. The thing is, in the rare moments when I do whip out my phone or iPad to play a game, I want something simple, mindless, and not requiring a lot of effort to learn. New game discovery just isn’t high up on my priority list; I usually gravitate toward old and tested staples.

That said, there are two new (to me) games I’ve been enjoying lately that I wanted to share, with the first being Disney Sorcerer’s Arena. This is, I realized, a Disneyfied version of Dungeon Boss, an old favorite of mine that involved slowly collecting and building up a team of heroes to run dungeon gauntlets. In this game, the big changes are that every character is from some Disney or Pixar animated film and that it’s more like stationary battles on a field rather than running through an instance.

Like Dungeon Boss, Sorcerer’s Arena is monetized within an inch of its life as it tries to get you to spend money on everything from seasonal passes to lockboxes to character tokens. Yet if you ignore all that — and I’m very good at ignoring F2P crud — there’s a somewhat entertaining and relaxing free game here. I particularly like the animations and design, as well as an emphasis on strategy. You can have the game automate battles, but I find that I’ll do much better if I manually pick targets and spells.

It’s also kind of amusing to see this weird mix-and-matching of all of Disney’s properties under one roof. Jack Skellington fighting Elsa, Gaston squaring off against Trigger from Robin Hood, that sort of thing. I’ve pretty much only been playing this for about 15 minutes in the morning while doing my exercise biking, but it’s proven a nice distraction.

The game I really wanted to recommend to you, however, is Endless Cards. This one set me back an entire dollar, and I have to say that it was worth every one of the 100 pennies I spent. It’s a minimalistic, cleverly designed game where you try to navigate a character through a field of cards to grab as much gold and survive as many fights as you can before dying. Gear and food help with armor and health, while enemies subtract from armor first and health second when you cross paths. There are the occasional items to get, store, and use as well.

What I love here is that (a) the games are pretty quick (quicker if you can’t survive long), (b) there’s a lot of strategy in picking paths and prioritizing cards, and (c) that by unlocking special cards and new characters, you get to change the rules of the game. One character, for example, affects gravity, so any cards touched will cause others to fall up or down instead of remaining in place.

The gold gathered can be spent on new cards and characters, and I hope that the devs continue to support this with even more additions in the future. It’s a perfect solitaire fix for the RPG nerd in me, and I think it deserves some more love than it’s currently getting.