Category: Game Releases

Lunar Rescue Mission isn’t a rigorous sim of space piloting; it’s a successor to the great-granddaddy of  arcade games, Lunar Lander. You pilot a collection of fragile space vehicles with sensitive, limited controls in rescue missions that end with the horrible deaths of all involved more often than not.

It’s a good fit for mobile, with simple controls and mission stages that can be completed in less than a minute (on your four hundredth try, of course). It’s also a difficult game, and sometimes tedious, which is going to limit its appeal.

You’ll spend the most time with the lander, which requires only two buttons: they spin the craft when pressed one at a time and boost forward when pressed together. Realistic gravity and inertia make the challenge of the game. You’ll have to toss your lander sideways through narrow crevices, then rapidly spin, level and slow yourself before hitting the opposite wall. To land, you’ll need to negate your horizontal movement, and then control your vertical movement to a slow enough pace that you don’t simply pancake on the landing pad. It’s intense stuff.

There are also a few other vehicles to try. However, the land vehicles are pretty dull. You can only make them drive left and right, and they don’t have the mass to stay grounded. Consequently, these sections are just exercises in patience as you slowly and deliberately roll them over hills when speeding up and launching straight into space would be far more entertaining. Sometimes they ride elevators.

Lunar Rescue Mission is quite difficult, particularly as there is little room for error. Getting a tiny bit off track is likely to result in your rescue module slamming into the side of a cave and having to restart from the last landing. This is par for the course for the genre but is frustrating here because of the amount of time it takes to restart. It’s not immediately clear when a collision has taken your vehicle out of service and when it’s recoverable, and even a totalled vehicle takes some time to settle down and show you the restart button.

On the other hand, Lunar Rescue Mission refills your fuel tank when you restart a checkpoint, taking away one of the major points of difficulty in the original arcade Lunar Lander. In the arcade, fuel was paid for with actual quarters, a ‘micropayment’ model that thankfully has not been replicated in this purely premium game.

For me, one of the most challenging aspects of the game was simply having the patience to play it. Some missions require long, dull travel followed by only a few short seconds of intense, risky wiggling into the landing zone. There’s some really unnecessary context given for each mission with Metal Gear Solid-style talking radio heads.

There’s earthquakes; people need to be rescued; this is all information that is better communicated visually. Each mission also requires you to bring in the mothership for a landing–a task that is only occasionally interesting or challenging–and take it off again at the end–a task that is almost never interesting or challenging. These additions really feel like padding to the fun of wriggling your lander through winding caves and settling gently between stacks of boxes.

There’s additional challenges to be had if you’re a big fan of the genre: hidden rescues and achievements for completing a level with no restarts. I found the base game challenging enough, but a Lunar Lander master will appreciate it. If you really want a lunar lander game, Lunar Rescue Mission has you covered, but it doesn’t add enough to the genre to make it interesting for players more broadly.

Astrologaster is an odd bird. A sincere quack doctor dispenses both medicine and life-coaching lessons by consulting the stars and thereby inferring from astrology the true state of affairs. Born from a close, if selective, culling from Simon Forman’s writing, this game is, to put it in cinematic terms, ‘based on a true story’. The ‘medical’ dilemmas showcased are funny and insightful, and with each one Simon pulls close to his ridiculous acquaintances with affection.

The game also has a healthy dose of mockery, sailing through historical references with a modern-day sensibility and verve. The voice acting, plotting and overall characterization are leagues ahead of most games, but it is admittedly a niche offering: a wickedly amusing historical storybook with mildly branching paths. Yet the total package transcends genre, for Astrologaster is not to be missed.

Dr Simon Forman is a medical practitioner with a self-diagnosed heart of gold. Through luck or foolhardy genius, he has survived the plague, and credits his miraculous turnaround with a cure he dreamt up on death’s door. Now, he seeks to grow his practice and obtain a medical license, in that dubious order. The game’s story is linear with variant outcomes for each of Simon’s patients.

First, a quick account of the mechanics and flow of play. He treats, at the player’s direction, anyone who comes through his doors, listening to their sorrows at length. One is distraught at the thought of Papist neighbors and wonders whether they are, by nature, treasonous. Perhaps she ought to report them and protect the crown? Another wishes to know, ever-so-sweetly, whether her betrothed is long for this world. Ought she marry at all if heartbreak be right around the corner? There is a monkey sidekick for one visitor, of course. These querents are the game’s lifeblood, and they are a varied group but uniformly delightful. There are men and women, young and old, of various professions, personalities and beliefs. A motley crew, whose lives are full of twists that would be just as home in a soap opera.

So each ‘medical’ consultation is divided into four parts. The customer is introduced with a quick ditty, musically summing up their situation and character. As an aside, the songs alone are gems worth the price of purchase, packing a punch with melody & rhyme. Secondly, the guests are greeted and chat at length with Simon. When the game-flow pauses, the client’s star chart is displayed, along with some interpretations. The game deliberately futzes with ‘astrology’ as such, lifting the same terms but tweaking their import. So a Libra dignified in Neptune could mean anything, in-game. One section of the stars points to a corruption of the blood, another to a weakness of the mind, for example. Luckily, the game translates the chart into somewhat plain advice, so the player simply chooses between outcomes.

This is where things get dicier. The ‘best’ answer is the one which pleases the customer. This is not always the most truthful, or accurate, interpretation. Some prefer flattery, most everyone has ulterior motives, and others will not heed good sense. Follow your intuition based on the dialogue, essentially. The stories of these characters will advance across multiple consultations, with their approval meters sliding up and down depending on Simon’s prowess. His ultimate goal, and yours by extension, is to obtain a critical mass of letters of recommendation from these patients and use these testimonials to obtain a medical license.

But the game is amusing even in abject failure. The story length is the same whether or not you succeed in winning people over, though it might feel better to ‘win’ a license at the end. Astrologaster offers the player an ahistorical, eagle-eyed perspective to know and learn, but mostly to judge. The game is juicy and gossipy as much as it is informative. Yes, if one knows a bit about El Dorado or the Spanish Armada, a few consultations will have their proper choices jump out, but beyond some rather nifty nods to Elizabethan history and culture, the historical immersion of the game is pretty minimal. All the better to create ironic distance.

The first great pleasure of Astrologaster is its sense of intimacy and disclosure. Simon is priest, cabbie, bar-keep and shrink all rolled together. He is privy to these people’s tantalizing stories because they are trusting or desperate. Other games like Gone Home or VA-11 HALL-A also offer close glimpses into people’s (fictional) lives, heightening the sense of drama by mixing in the mundane. Astrologaster feels fun and silly, but also lifelike and lived-in, which is a difficult atmosphere to capture. It puts you in a position to know and then decide fates, based on laughably muddled astrological hints.

The game’s second great pleasure is its potential for satire. I say ‘potential’ because all-to-often satire is conflated with naked malice, lazy mockery, or sincere atrocity. No, the game’s tone itself is decidedly not neutral, but it leaves the japery and merriment up to the player. I’d give choice examples but would mangle them in the telling. Some diagnoses are inherently funny for their mixture of graphic description and antiquated language, like ‘purging from the fundament’. There are plenty of fools, luckless souls and prejudices on display here, but instead of serving up ham-fisted commentary, the whole affair is refreshing and light. Levity cuts deeper than argument. It’s not a particularly subtle game, but the brand of jocular dialogue leaves plenty of room for interpretation and imagination.

Now the game is relatively brief, I suppose, running around five hours for a playthrough depending on whether one listens to full voice-lines or skips through with subtitles. But it has a dedicated throughline, both as a whole and individually within its characters. For a fraction of the price of a blockbuster film, you can experience more wit and ingenuity across a greater length of time, all the while wondering at the fact that this game is only possible because of the fastidious case notes of the real-life historical figure of Simon Forman, whose own life and patients are, by all accounts, just as bonkers.

The battle for Auto Chess supremacy is now firmly underway, and the war has spread to mobile devices quite quickly. You’ll have seen our round-up of Auto Chess-like games available on the various App Stores, which included DOTA Underlords.

At the time of writing it was still in closed beta, but now the game is out in the wild and available to anyone who’s interested in trying the format out, but doesn’t want to deal with potential knock-offs or clones. Now, a point of order: This isn’t DOTA Auto Chess, or the mobile spin off known simply as Auto Chess (Origin), from original creators Drodro Studio.

This is a separate game from Valve, based on the original Dota Auto Chess mod, but built by an entirely separate team inside Valve. It also isn’t part of DOTA 2, like the original mod was, but a standalone free to play game on both PC and mobile. Totally not confusing at all.

When  it comes to Underlords anyone familiar with Auto Chess is going to feel very comfortable, as they share an awful lot of similarities. It’s effectively the same game, just with a ton of UI improvements, systems to make it easier to play and understand, and a few other tweaks here and there. But those tweaks can catch you out, and if this is your first Auto Chess rodeo then you are probably going to be more than a little confused.

Don’t worry, we have the ultimate guide to everything you are going to need to know to master DOTA Underlords:

DOTA Underlords Basics

First and most importantly, don’t feel pressured into trying to learn this on the fly with real players online. Unlike Auto Chess, Underlords not only has a more robust tutorial, but there’s also a Soliatire mode where you can play against AI opponents. You can set the difficulty between Easy, Medium, Challenging and Hardcore, and you can even enable an option to disable the round timers so you can take your time and play at your own pace. Matches can be paused and even left, so you can come back to them later (or switch to PC – see below). Don’t get too used to this though – live multiplayer games are kept to strict timers, so you’ll need to learn how to make decisions quickly.

In DOTA Underlords you face off against seven other players to build a roster of heroes who will battle it out effectively until the death. You buy the heroes you want, position them on the board and then let them fight it out against one of the other players in the game while you sit back and watch the carnage unfold. Lose a fight and you’ll take damage, win and you’ll stay healthy. Once a player has lost all their health they are knocked out of the game, and the last surviving player is the winner.

When building your roster you’re going to have to consider Alliances, buffs to your heroes or debuffs to your opponents, which can be earned by having multiple heroes with same Alliance types on your board. For example, if you have three Mages then your opponent will have reduced magic resistance. So combining Alliances is really the only way to win.

You’ll also get gold that can be used to buy your heroes and upgrade them should you get three of the same hero at the same level, so three level ones become a level two, and three level twos become a level three. And gold is used to level up, allowing you to put more units on the board.

Auto Chess vs. DOTA Underlords

There’s a ton of smaller differences between DOTA Underlords and the mod it was based on, Auto Chess, but there are a few that are very significant. Perhaps the biggest is the new item system. Instead of creep rounds just dropping items you get a choice of three items if you win the creep round, or just one should you lose, although creeps are way easier to beat now. Choose the items that play into your strats, otherwise you’ll be stuck with a buff to Hunters when you have none on the board.

Global items are also a new addition, these items are not equipped by a hero, but instead augment all your heroes of a certain Alliance. Some add new abilities, such as heroes exploding when they die, and others are buffs such as extra magic resistance for your team. Most are very useful if the RNG is kind and you get one that suits your strategy.

Other smaller tweaks such as new hero abilities, or the fact that interest is locked at the start of a round instead of the end of a round are significantly smaller changes that you probably don’t need to worry about until you have the basics mastered.

Underlords Strategies

In what can only be described as the biggest shock the world has seen since High School Musical not being nominated for an Oscar, Valve is listening to the community and shipping near daily patches for Underlords. So if we were to tell you Mages are really strong right now, (which they are), then there’s a good chance they will have been nerfed into the ground within a day or two.

But there are a few things worth keeping in mind. Generally speaking you’re going to want to heavily focus on one Alliance, usually one of the larger ones with many heroes, and then try and finish off a few others when you have spare unit slots on your board. Trying to go all in on Blood-Bound or Shaman units probably isn’t going to work out too well but grab a couple of them alongside another main Alliance, such as Mages, and you have a nice bonus to play with.

Some alliances provide global effects regardless of unit type, like ‘Savage’, which gives a 10% attack damage boost to every piece on your board, or ‘Warlock’ which gives all allies a Lifesteal chance. We’re also a fan of the ‘Elusive’ alliance, because the more of these pieces you have, the higher the evasion boost bonus is. Being able to evade attacks means your pieces have the chance to survive longer, generate more mana, and fire off their abilities more often.

You are also going to have to consider your positioning, a lot. Sticking weaker units in the line of fire is going to see them killed instantly and you probably coming out with a loss. However, put them behind some tanky units who will take the aggro first and you are onto a winner. You’ll also want to use the edges of your board to your advantage in some situations. Assassin units can instantly jump into your backlines at the start of a round, but box in your squishy damage dealers with tanks and the edge of the board and they won’t be able to reach them.

You’ll also want to think about putting units that need mana to hit their abilities somewhere where they can dish out and take some damage so they can get that ability off before they die. There’s no real right or wrong way to position most of the time, so play around with it, but always be thinking about it, and in the later stages position to counter your opponent’s boards (which you can see by tapping on their box on the leaderboard.)

Other top tips:

• Don’t be afraid to change Alliances on the fly. Sure you may have started out with a good run of Scrappy units, but if you suddenly get the chance to switch into Assassins, and that seems like it will be better at winning the game then go for it. You’re rarely locked into a strategy until the late game starts. And don’t stick with an Alliance just because you got an early global item for it, forcing into Demon Hunters and Demons because you got the Strange Bedfellows item early isn’t always a great move, if the units just aren’t there for you.
• Tapping on the right hand side of an entry in the kill feed at the top of the screen will “YO!” that item and send an audible “Yo” to opponents. It serves basically no point, but it’s fun to try and get into opponent’s heads by yo-ing everything they do.
• You get one gold interest at the end of every round for every 10 gold you have when it starts. So if you start the round with 10 gold you’ll get an extra gold at the end of it. Start with 20 and you’ll get 2 gold, and so on. This is however capped at 5 gold, so holding onto more than 50 gold is rarely worth it. Spend that cash, up your level or try and grab some new heroes and you’ll still be making maximum dollar.
• And finally, you can switch mid game between mobile and PC. So if you decide to kick things off on the PC version and then nature calls, you can simply grab your iOS or Android device and continue playing while on the toilet. Then you can even come back to the PC version when you are done. The future really is great, isn’t it?

Let us know if you have any other questions or need further help getting to grips with DOTA Underlords. The AutoChess genre is a fascinating new archetype and we hope it flourishes on mobile, so expect to see more like this in the weeks and months to come!

Recently, Harry Potter hasn’t always had the best games to offer to its fans, especially on mobile. Taking one quick look at Hogwarts Mystery should be more than enough proof that it’s been incredibly hit-and-miss with one of the world’s most beloved franchises.

Whether Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will change that remains to be seen. As for me, I’m personally having a blast roaming up and down my street, trying to be the best magic user that the world has ever seen and showing up Harry Potter in the process. That’s for being an arse in the Cursed Child, you tyrant!

But being the best is trickier than it looks, and if you’re not used to mobile games that feature a heavy amount of AR, as well as other time-consuming mechanics that Wizards Unite employs, you may feel similar to a fish that’s just been flung out of water. Anyone who played Pokémon GO will feel right at home, but for everyone else there’s a lot to do and things can fly way over your head.

So, here are some general tips and tricks that Wizards Unite doesn’t outright tell you, but what you should pay attention to all the same.

Keep an Eye on Your Spell Energy

In Wizards Unite, you’ll probably be completely nonplussed to find out that you have to cast a lot of spells when playing. This is because you’ll be finding traces of magic and foundables, all which will help you level up and progress through the Wizards Unite story.

However, casting spells takes up energy. Spell energy starts at 75 and can be increased by 10 using 150 gold coins to pay for an upgrade or through giving your Vault an extension which costs 475 gold coins but upgrades other things beside your spell energy. Though, the faster way is to upgrade using 150 gold coins.

Spell energy is such a useful commodity in Wizards Unite that without it, you may be waiting around a lot in order to continue playing. To minimize that waiting, we advise you to pay close attention to the glyph on your phone screen because screwing that up still wastes spell energy. So, practice!

Which brings me to my next point: Inns and Greenhouses.

Use Inns and Greenhouses

Inns and Greenhouses may not seem all that important to new players at first, but they have features that are absolutely pivotal to you levelling up and other features, such as regaining spell energy.

We have a more in-depth guide to locations and what they do, if you’re interested.

For those who have played Pokémon GO, you’ll see Inns as similar to PokeStops, a place where you can get items. In Wizards Unite, you’ll have to enter Inns by tracing the glyph that appears on your phone screen. If you do so successfully, the inn will reveal itself to you by presenting you with five dishes – which it’ll choose for you at random. After consuming your scrumptious meal, you’ll be rewarded with Spell Energy.

Greenhouses on the other hand are, in our humble opinion, much more useful than inns. For one, they too can grant you Spell Energy, with the downside being that it isn’t guaranteed to reward you with it, unlike Inns.

That being said, Greenhouses are useful for other things, such as growing ingredients to create potions. These ingredients can be grown or picked up around the map when you’re out walking or playing at home. You may not think potions are worth investing in, but you’d be wrong. Potions are incredibly useful when going up against particularly tricky Foundables, with some lowering the chance of failure whilst others will offer the possibility of more rewards during your success.

Don’t be Afraid to Team Up for Fortresses

Dungeons and Harry Potter shouldn’t really go together, but Wizards Unite is going to try and make it happen anyway.

Fortresses are areas that are found out while you wander throughout the world. When you enter them, you’ll find yourselves in a glorified dungeon that has 20 floors and is filled to the brim with AI monsters that are eager to snap you up. Thankfully, you don’t have to do these fortresses by yourself, as up to 5 players can team up and storm the area.

A trick for handling the fortress is to be well-stocked and have someone in your party that is at least a little higher level than you. This is because some floors of the fortress have level-restrictions, and you’d fare a lot better having someone more advanced at your side. Potions of your own choice would also do some good, especially if this is your very first time handling a Fortress and you’re going it alone.

Yet, as gnarly as it may sound, Fortresses offer great rewards and if you’re looking to show off your superior wizardry to your friends, there’s no better way to do so.

Maximise your Registry

Keeping an eye on your registry is one of the smartest things you can do. With it, you’ll be able to see what Foundables you’ve managed to collect on your journey, and which ones you’ve still got left to complete. Knowing which ones you’ve got to collect and which ones you haven’t allows you to plot out which Foundables you should be grinding for, and which ones to leave well alone.

Collecting these Foundables are important as they’ll not only increase your rank but will give you new items too. New items means new things to check out and make your time with Wizards Unite a fun one.

Check Daily Assignments and SOS Often

It may seem obvious, but Daily Assignments and SOS are one of the biggest ways to get ahead in Wizards Unite. SOS stands for Statue of Secrecy Task Force, and are used to progress the story, as well as the characters and players understanding of the Calamity which has befallen on the Wizarding world.

Daily assignments, however, are the bread and butter to getting great items, as well as a Hippogriff load of XP. Taking a quick check on what you have to do, you’ll more than likely find that potions, ingredients and sometimes even a Portkey. With each level of progression, the further you are to becoming a Wizarding master

Turn off AR/Turn On Battery Saver

The AR in Wizards Unite is nothing short of awesome, but it has a problem: it drains your phone incredibly fast. I can play Wizards Unite for a few minutes at 50% only to have it lowered to 20% after I log off the app. It’s annoying and can cause you to turn back on your adventuring to head home and charge, which nobody wants to do if you live in a place that has no inns, greenhouses or fortresses nearby.

So turn off your AR. Yes, it’s pretty but if you’re out and about and you want to progress a fair amount, then turning off your AR, as well as turning on your battery saver, may be the best call. Besides, nothing’s stopping you from turning your AR back on when you’re at home and can use a Portkey.

We hope these tips are enough to get you started – let us know if there’s anything you’re struggling with and we’ll try to help!

By Joe Robinson 22 Jun 2019