tl;dr, I've been playing this game over the last couple months, think I've got at least another couple months on it, maybe more if another update makes it interesting. It's decently designed, interesting, competitive, and overall just plain old fun, which in some cases for mobile games, does not always apply, including the last one.
k, some history. I've been playing random games on and off on mobile over the last several years, and this is probably one of the more interesting I've come across. Mobile has suffered from the fact that it's super young and the gaming world is still discovering what actually works on it. That said, this game feels very right.
It all starts out with the first time user experience. Freemium games require this to be high, since if I didn't pay for it, I'm not really invested in it, so there's very little cost to me just deleting a game after a minute of playing it for free. The FTUE on this one is solid because it's straightforward. You got a hand of cards that you play as troops, and those troops then attack your enemies towers while your opponent does the same against you. It turns out to be a wonderful mix of Hearthstone (card playing), lane based MOBAs (but simple two lanes and 3 towers per player), and Clash of Clans (deploy and let the AI take care of the rest) style game play. They have you play against a computer for these first couple matches while this start to make sense, then they throw you into the fold by having you play other players. This is when the game gets interesting.
While the gameplay is straightforward, things get complex in the fact that you build your 8 card decks out of various cards. At this time, there's about 40 cards available (>7.5 million permutations!) and you unlock and upgrade those cards over time, so not only do your options get more varied, you also become stronger (this is a freemium game that needs options for players to pay their way to the top after all). With each troop being a different permutation of various health, damage, speed, targeting preference/ability (troop v building/ground v air), area of effect, cost, or not even a troop (support/damage spells as well) the permutations and synergies quickly stack on top of each other into a form that can form players of differentiating abilities, strategies, and styles. For example, air is strong because it evades some attacks, but tends to have less health so they can get taken out by direct damage, but direct damage is not enough to take out tankier units, which push lanes well but can be easily directed away from the towers so they soak up more damage, from hoardes, but those are countered by area of effect units...
So now for what's wrong with the game. NO CAMPAIGN! Growing up I sucked hard at RTS games, but the part that I liked most about them were the campaign modes that forced me to play the game in different ways which also proceeded me through a story. Sure, that doesn't line up precisely with their freemium model, but it at least gives you something else to do outside of always competing or just playing the practice arena. Another option could be Co-op play, but that starts to get complicated, but potentially in a good way, which is what I'm really looking for.
Okay, enough ranting. I need to work on my game communication, but I guess that's what this is about. This game is fun, has some potential to do some other interesting stuff, could get boring but will probably last at least a little longer once they release the next content set.
Anyone else play this?
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