Category: Game Releases

Mobile games are often given a lot of slack because of their medium. We judge them in a vacuum. Maybe not intentionally, but we really don’t expect certain types of games to translate well on little screens, if they make it there at all. The dream of getting “console-quality” experiences on your phone died in darkness under the heel of free-to-play a while ago.

So when one of these gaming anomalies show up flaunting some features you don’t see much on phones and tablets, we learn to make some concessions when justifying it. Enter Grimvalor, a metroidvania that is great in the absence of the sort of ecosystems that produce great metroidvanias.

A huge reason that you never see these games developed for mobile is the limited capacity for complex and responsive control schemes. Grimvalor attempts to make up for that by replicating some of the more complicated tropes of action platformers with simpler inputs. Your main attack combo can be completed and looped by just holding down the attack button. Tapping gives you slightly more control over there cadence of the four hits, allowing you to jump at the end of a combo to get height before it begins again, for example.

The major majority of the enemies you face will wilt under this barrage with ease. A dash, that doubles as a dodge roll in the presence of attacks, will make you basically invincible to non-boss types. You eventually gain a heavy attack, which added things like guard-breaking lunges and ground pounds, but very few of the enemies you face during your travels through the labyrinthine map require anything more than the basics. Ironically, in some cases your heavy attacks can trap enemies in loops, making sure they never stand to swing on you again.

This sort of makes the Hunter sub-bosses – encounters that crib the Bloodborne/Dark Souls gimmick of a sudden outside entity coming to get you – a more congenial experience than they were designed as. Not to mention that they are rarely more than just bigger versions of normal enemies.

Simplifying the hacking and slashing is a fine gesture, though. It’s better than trying to fumble over flat tap points with no tactile response without the alternative. But to make up for the lack of challenge in any of the individual monsters, Grimvalor often resorts to overloading your screen with the beasts. Getting hit by a thrown axe from someone you didn’t even see spawn off screen is a bitter experience you’ll always keep in the back of your head. Enemies will spawn seemingly endlessly during some sections, which is a prompt to just leave as fast as possible. But it also feels like a choice to make something difficult in a way that doesn’t feel very rewarding. Occasionally, the sort of breathless transition from dodge rolling, into furious combat and out into the clear can be fun. Maybe just as often, it feels like a claustrophobic mess.

Boss fights throw a wrench in your previously established “mash until they die” strategy. Sometimes, especially at first, they feel completely over-tuned, like they are compensating for how generally harmless the standard mobs can be. As you gain new abilities, level up your character, and find new trinkets and items, boss fights start to really make sense. They become a test, where the answers involved finding ways to string all of this swipes and taps together to get the most out of the openings they give you. If Grimvalor ever comes close to providing that gritty, AAA action-RPG vibe, it’s during some of these fights.

Another mechanical concession is the platforming. Platformer staples dashing and double jumping are here. Wall running is an option, but like combos, it is semi-automated. If you jump into a wall, you can just run up it for a short period of time. Many levels are designed around this fact, so spaces tend to be wide and tall so there’s plenty of ground to cover. But some jumping puzzles, like one in the second act that involved interacting with elements in mid-air, can feel janky and broken because of all the wall running. You can ignore paths and make your own in some instances, and you can still make it through fine. In a way, it’s offering you a sort of mutable space for creativity. In another, Grimvalor doesn’t take its own design seriously enough.

The world of Grimvalor leaves some to be desired. Even when travelling to different regions, through giant doors or magical mirrors or massive elevators, they all look and feel the same. Cracked up stone from abandoned and blown out buildings are the back drop for every zone in some form or fashion. The color scheme doesn’t seem to vary much from grey and brown, though the occasion greens of Earth’s possessive overgrowth can be seen.

It takes a too long of a time to see something different in the environments. When you do run into something unique, like a world overgrown with massive roots and thorns, it can be fascinating. But I wonder how many players are willing to stick around till act three or so to get something truly special.

Characters themselves are sparse, and they’re designs also range from generic soldier guy to striking magical beings. Again, Grimvalor’s more inspired stuff doesn’t show its face until later than it should. It’s a shame because the concept art and stills are great. Up close, even many of the textures of some of the mightier foes are well detailed. Some of the camera cues when you’re traversing long halls or staircases really convey that sense of you-versus-the-elements scale and isolation. Short of some awkward times with some of the stranger creatures in the game, the game looks great in motion.

When they were Touch Foo, the team that is now Direlight was the only people out there still trying to make the mobile platform’s first Symphony of the Night. Grimvalor is absolutely leaps and bounds better than Swordigo, their previous attempt at this genre. If we narrow the discussion of Grimvalor simply to a in comparison to other action platforms you can play from your pocket, then you’ll be hard pressed to find a better, more intuitive option. Move that conversation out of the shallow pond of the App Store, and into the general gaming arena at large, then it would be very easy to find a game that does everything Grimvalor does, but better.

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. We’ve got a ton of great sales this week as well as a couple nice new gaming options.

In case you missed it, we had a couple of cool new reviews drop as well, SEGA Pocket Club Manager, and the newly released Reigns: Game of Thrones (more info below). We also dropped a new list looking at the best games to play with two people, whether together or over the internet. 

Richard also revived his compendium of top free games for our android readers.

Out Now

Reigns: Game of Thrones (iOS Universal and Android) (Review)

Odds are good this game needs little introduction. Reigns invented a genre with its clever swipe to choose mechanics and compelling gameplay that has you play a monarch and balance the needs of four different groups under your rule. Piss any one of them off too much and it could all come toppling down. Much like HBO’s epic series Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series, where more than one ruler has made choices that led to an unfortunate and untimely end.

The two are now combined with Reigns: Game of Thrones, where you can rule the uncomfortable Iron Throne as Cersei Lannister, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa Start, and others. You’ll need brains, wit, and cunning to be a player and not a piece in this game as you seek to balance complex relationships and get your way. The game explores all kinds of new scenarios by using Melisandre’s visions as the narrative device. Reigns: Game of Thrones also features a soundtrack by Ramin Djawadi, who does the music for the show as well. Check out our review for more on this one.

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A particularly warm fall sounds good right about now. If your fall is anything but warm as well you can at least pretend with Digidice’s latest game Indian Summer. It’s a follow up to Uwe Rosenberg’s Cottage Garden and the second game in the trilogy. This one is for more experienced players but still presents a calm and colorful experience where players help do fall’s work by filling the forest floor with colorful piles of leaves and earn points in so doing. You earn extra points for discovering animals and collecting berries, nuts, mushrooms, and feathers. The game offers single-player and online, asynchronous multiplayer. 

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Sales

Sentinels of the Multiverse (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $.99 on iOS

The excellent hero-versus-villains card game Sentinels of the Multiverse is just a buck for the base game. 

Bardbarian (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $1.99 on iOS

Real-time-strategy game Bardbarian features Brad the Bardbarian who gathers warriors to lead around defending his village from waves of tower-defense-like attacks.

Baldur’s Gate (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $1.99

Overhaul games is moving it’s games through the sale cycle, this week it’s super old-school RPG Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition‘s turn, down from $9.99 to just two bucks.

Talisman: The Horus Heresy (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $1.99

Also $1.99 this week is classic strategy wargame Talisman: Horus Heresy. It’s on sale now and again but this is the lowest it’s been since early this year.

Tsuro – The Game of the Path (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $2.99 on iOS

Tsuro – The Game of the Path is a great tabletop to digital conversion. Your goal is to lay tiles to create as long of an unending path as possible across the game board and as measured in actual centimeters. You can play solo against the AI or online with up to 8 players.

Beholder (Review) (iOS Universal and Android): $2.99

If you’re ready to make some tough choices in a grim, dystopian future, now’s your chance. Beholder, a game where you run an apartment building and must spy on and rat out your unpatriotic neighbors or face the consequences of disloyalty, is also on sale.

The Quest Games

Classic role-playing game The Quest and the Islands of Ice and Fire expansion are both on sale. Check out our five-star review of The Quest and then get going with some old-school adventuring.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

HBO’s sweeping Game of Thrones television adaptation has always been the weekly opportunity for many fans to take a seat and proselytize the best course of action for one of its many characters on course to take the Iron Throne to they friends as it plays out in real time.

Meanwhile, Nerial’s Reigns and Reigns: Her Majesty are consistently some of the most entertaining mobile experiences out there, inviting mere peasants on iOS and Android to try their hand at royal decision-making. It’s no surprise, then, that the two would be a match made in heaven. Reigns: Game of Thrones is not only the best iteration of Reigns  to date, but it also happens to be the best Game of Thrones video game adaptation, with an expansive set of storylines,

For those unfamiliar with Reigns, it adopts a Tinder-like formula that only requires one real thing of players: swiping right or left. In the first two games, you took on the role of a fledgling king or queen and lived out many moons as royalty until you inevitably perished (which you do, quite a lot). Citizens, advisors, and strangers flock to you with favors, advice, and other tasks that require you to mull over decisions on, with a left swipe for no and a right swipe for yes.

Some may seem frivolous, but the ramifications of your choice can echo throughout later happenings. Some appear disastrous at first but may end up a boon for your kingdom. It’s simple enough to get the hang of, but you never quite feel as though you’re making the right decision in your heart of hearts. That’s the beauty of it, and perhaps what keeps you coming back for more.

Luckily, the icons at the top of the play screen give you a tiny bit of insight as to which aspects of your rule will be affected by your decisions. So when you mull over whether you should prepare for battle to take the land of Meereen back as Queen Daenerys Targaryen, the first character unlocked in Reigns: Game of Thrones, you should check said icons.

You’ll see your standing with the Sept, or the religious segment of the Game of Thrones world, your military power, how to people view you, and your money reserves. Each decision will move a meter up or down so that the icons can become completely full or empty. Emptying is denoted by a red cast to each icon, while filling it is green.

The key here is to remember that neither filling the icons nor emptying them is vital to your success. In fact, if you fill them at all, you’re going to be headed for an ending, whether you’re poisoned, killed by a crowd of angry villagers, run into a particularly angry dragon, or fail to survive one of the most punishing seasons in the Game of Thrones world – winter, of course. You have to walk a fine line between catering to one group too much and another not enough, just like in real life, and Reigns‘ classic formula works miraculously here.

It’s hard to tell when death might suddenly befall you, but it will, again and again. You just learn to deal with it and move on swiftly, and then come back at the game with a renewed sense of purpose. You’ll know which decisions to avoid next time, if you remember them, since the game always throws new challenges your way and randomizes situations, so you don’t get too complacent.

At its core, Reigns: Game of Thrones is, essentially, a re-skinned version of the classic Reigns formula with some new tricks up its sleeve. But thanks to a few changes Nerial opted for this time around, there are some intriguing alterations to its core design that give the game new life. For instance, the Red Priestess Melisandre acts as a catalyst for the rebirth of your characters time and time again. When one dies, you may unlock another. And then you may select which one you’d like to play as. Melisandre offers some brief hints about clues to look for when making decisions.

You aren’t relegated only to Daenerys, though. There are eight playable characters and plenty of other personalities you’ll recognize in the game, including Arya, Jaime Lannister, Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Sansa, and Cersei. Each come with their own unique sets of storylines and challenges to overcome, just like in the show, but there’s an overarching narrative too, which you’ll soon come to find out.

All of these elements come together to make a simple yet exciting and wholly addictive exercise in strategizing, decision-making, and general Game of Thrones nerdery. It’s every bit as engaging as the Telltale vision of the series, even more so in fact, and trumps the other poor game adaptations in ways that aren’t even fair. This is the best attempt any developer has made thus far when it comes to conceptualizing Westeros, its varied personalities, and the world’s political intrigue yet. And it all comes down to a Tinder-like swipe fest. But you know what? It sure is a fantastic one.