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Two New Mobile Games Worth Checking Out
I’m on the go frequently, so I spend a lot of time mashing the screen on my phone or iPad. The mobile market often comes under fire for aggressive free-to-play models or lack of meaningful content, but there are always awesome new entries that keep me going back to the App Store to see what’s fresh and interesting. Here are two titles that have taken up some of my travel time as of late that you may find interesting!
Dragon Blaze
It’s an MMO on the go! This super-popular Korean title has come to North America, and it’s fairly easy to see why it’s so popular after playing for a few hours. While the game doesn’t break the mold as far as typical collect-and-combine creatures go (Something similar in this regard to Puzzle & Dragons or Brave Frontier), you get a lot of playtime for your “stamina bar” equivalent, and you get to spend it in a variety of ways, from standard maps where you watch your mixes of healers, warriors, rogues, mages, and your main character plow through hordes of enemies with stylish area-of-effect attacks and disables to real-time raids where your allies stay at home and your main character teams up with other players.
It’s not so much new systems and features, but serious refinement and interesting implementation. The game features an art style that can be likened to Vanillaware’s Odin Sphere, and while the cash shop is pretty pricey, progress is definitely doable (and I daresay, enjoyable and fun) if you choose to play for free. Trust me, give this one a try.
Earthcore: Shattered Elements
The mobile market is flooded with digital trading card games, from SolForge to Hearthstone to BlazBlue: Battle Cards. Tequila Games’ Earthcore is a newcomer that seems incredibly simple at first, with a paper-rock-scissors wheel of three elements determining victories: Fire beats Earth, Earth beats Water, Water beats Fire. Instead of using something like mana for resources, players essentially tie card power to “risk” involved with playing them – if your 22 risk fire card loses because when all is said and done it’s up against even a risk 2 water card, you’re looking at taking 22 points of damage!
There’s a ton of skill involved in selecting abilities that will allow your cards to make the most of their victories, whether they allow you to shift to an element that will destroy an opposing card or using abilities that will allow you to turn an elemental card to the “dust” element – which will lose to any of the regular elements.
Card swapping, shapeshifting, and many other effects come into play and all tie into the element of risk, making the battles a true cerebral conundrum much of the time. Another interesting aspect to the game is the player construction and modification of hero cards that allow you to place skills from cards on others. You’ll increase the risk cost of your new hero, but have more opportunities to turn the tide of battle with your new skills. This is one of the more interesting DCGs that I’ve played in recent memory, and something well worth checking out if you’re a fan of the genre.
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