Supercell's next game coming out May 29th. This is an interesting game, but lots to be left desired at this stage.
If you're wondering how to play this game, you have to make a Google account in one of the soft launch countries and download it from the playstore. APKs don't work since it asks for email verification that's based off on where your account is from. This means using a VPN to a soft launch country and creating a Google account. There, open your playstore and search for it. Download it and you should be able to play. If that doesn't work, wait for May 29th.
GAMEPLAY:
The gist of the game is battle royale-like where 10 players compete with one another building up their resources by killing energy mobs and buying characters from past Supercell games. When players get enough gold from killing mobs, they can open chests that offer 3 characters that can be chosen to use alongside. Each character has its own powers and collecting 3 of the same character causes a fusion where they combine to 1 giant version of that character. The point of each match is to build up your army of characters and collect gems. Gems are used for the battlepass of this game that unlocks rewards where buying the premium version gives you more rewards.
There's different modes that's randomly selected at the start of the game, but players are limited to 5 and will need to play more to unlock more characters and modes. Players progress by achievements and collect character shards by opening chests. These shards allow players to evolve their units to become a stronger version than its past self.
GOODS:
● Matches go by pretty quickly where players will want to keep playing as it can be pretty addicting.
● There are some fun modes that make the game a bit more interesting.
● Pretty cool to see other Supercell characters all come together. Some of them are units you can unlock. Some are enemies.
● Just gotta go for top 5. In the game between 10 players, you just have to go for 5th place of higher. This will allow you to keep a winstreak going on and get more rewards at the end.
BADS:
● Game is very pay 2 win. In the game, you can open chests with consumables that do a variety of things. For instance, when you open a chest and you don't see anything good. You can buy a reroll dice to reroll your options. Another consumables are keys where it allows players to insta-unlock a chest. So... yeah, while you are randomly picking the best out of the 3 options you get, another player can use consumables and get the best units.
● Consumable mega units. Game has regular units that range from common, rare, and epic. And there's something called mega units, which is a super rare unit that players can get in the battle pass. If you're free to play, you can unlock it but the unit is a consumable. It can appear in chests but once you pick it, you can't get that mega unit anymore unless you get another mega unit consumable. And in order to get another these consumable, you either hope it appears in the shop or you go through the battlepass the 2nd time and get the next mega unit consumable. Also, did I tell you that they're very strong? Yup, these units are pretty strong and have a lot of HP.
● Unlocking characters. When you play a lot of matches and open chests that unlock characters, you'll notice that you'll be missing some characters. Even if you progress to the next world that offers new characters, those characters you haven't unlocked? Yeah, they'll still be locked. I'm currently in the 3rd world and I am still missing 4 characters I can't seem to get.
● Not that much strategy. If you see gameplay and played it yourself, you'll know there's not that much strategy involved. Only skill involved is how lucky you are with what units you're offered and maybe how well you move. The game is essentially move around and hope your units hit the right target. You don't control the character's attacks really since they can only attack if you are standing still.
● Unlocking spells on a timer. In the game, there are items players can pick up throughout the map. These are spells that do a variety of things depending on which one you picked up. There are ones that heal your team, power you up, throw a bomb, etc. As yout progress more in the game, you get the opportunity to unlock a new spell that takes forever. You unlock it either through in-cash gold or spell pickups. Picking up random spells will help progress it where some spells require players to get 300 spells to unlock. It's not that bad until you notice that this unlock is on a timer. I'm not sure what happens when the timer ends, but I'm guessing it goes away for a bit and comes back for players to try again. If you don't unlock it quick enough, players who unlocked it early will already be on the next spell.
At this point, there's probably more issues I haven't said like for instance the lag on some of the matches where players are picking witch and having skeletons fill up the whole map (makes the game play in powerpoint mode) or how some characters are more stronger than others (hopefully some get buffed later on).
MY THOUGHTS:
Overall, it's a fun-ish game that has problems with it. There's many elements of pay 2 win that really shouldn't exist in the match in my opinion. Outside the matches like character shards are okay, but in-game consumables leave a bad taste since pretty much everything in this game is RNG to get the best characters. Will this game be successful? Probably yeah. If there are things people can spend real life money to make themselves more powerful and win, people will pay for it. Aside from microtransactions and gameplay, unlocking new characters is the biggest issue as many players are left with characters they haven't unlocked in past worlds. Hopefully SC fixes this and makes it easier to unlock new characters.
Rizline is the 2nd mobile game made by Pigeon Games. The one behind Phigros. Instead of traditional rhythm games played horizontal, the gameplay is all vertical where notes come from the top and go down.
For gameplay, it only has taps and holds so no swipe notes. Notes are categorized into either tap or no tap so getting a 100% is achievable. The game starts off with giving a tutorial of the controls but everything is in Chinese at the moment. You start off with 3 songs with 3 difficulties right off the bat: EZ, HD, and IN. Game is pretty simple where the notes follow the lines and there's a health bar at the top. You get these orbs in each song difficulty (5 per song difficulty) and they can be collected. Not sure at the moment on if they're redeemable or not.
There's a total of 30 songs shown (might have more but not sure at the moment), but 3 is given for free. The rest of the songs have to be bought in a subscription fee? or either a one time fee to get access to the other songs. That costs $1.00 but if you're like me who's in the US, it doesn't seem to take currency at the moment. I tested with Google Pay and Paypal, but both doesn't work.
Overall, pretty excited to see more development to this game and hoping for a English release. Song choices are great as some of the songs from Phigros have been brought into this game.
Some cons at the moment are:
game still in Chinese (hasn't been localized yet),
can't get rid of the tapping sound when tapping,
needs a test that can make the timing for the notes correctly (instead of manually doing it),
can't access other songs (only limited to 3 at the moment)
Basic rhythm game with the usual taps, holds, and swipe. Song selection is great and difficulty is there for veteran rhythm players.
The twist behind this game are the color notes where the player has to switch the background color to match the note color. These switches are on the left and right side of the screen where the player has to alternate between red, blue, green, and yellow. Not matching the note color will result in color GREAT score compared to a PERFECT score.
Great game to get into. UI is a bit outdated and option settings are in Japanese, but looking forward to see future updates.
Squad Busters
3.3Supercell's next game coming out May 29th. This is an interesting game, but lots to be left desired at this stage.
If you're wondering how to play this game, you have to make a Google account in one of the soft launch countries and download it from the playstore. APKs don't work since it asks for email verification that's based off on where your account is from. This means using a VPN to a soft launch country and creating a Google account. There, open your playstore and search for it. Download it and you should be able to play. If that doesn't work, wait for May 29th.
GAMEPLAY:
The gist of the game is battle royale-like where 10 players compete with one another building up their resources by killing energy mobs and buying characters from past Supercell games. When players get enough gold from killing mobs, they can open chests that offer 3 characters that can be chosen to use alongside. Each character has its own powers and collecting 3 of the same character causes a fusion where they combine to 1 giant version of that character. The point of each match is to build up your army of characters and collect gems. Gems are used for the battlepass of this game that unlocks rewards where buying the premium version gives you more rewards.
There's different modes that's randomly selected at the start of the game, but players are limited to 5 and will need to play more to unlock more characters and modes. Players progress by achievements and collect character shards by opening chests. These shards allow players to evolve their units to become a stronger version than its past self.
GOODS:
● Matches go by pretty quickly where players will want to keep playing as it can be pretty addicting.
● There are some fun modes that make the game a bit more interesting.
● Pretty cool to see other Supercell characters all come together. Some of them are units you can unlock. Some are enemies.
● Just gotta go for top 5. In the game between 10 players, you just have to go for 5th place of higher. This will allow you to keep a winstreak going on and get more rewards at the end.
BADS:
● Game is very pay 2 win. In the game, you can open chests with consumables that do a variety of things. For instance, when you open a chest and you don't see anything good. You can buy a reroll dice to reroll your options. Another consumables are keys where it allows players to insta-unlock a chest. So... yeah, while you are randomly picking the best out of the 3 options you get, another player can use consumables and get the best units.
● Consumable mega units. Game has regular units that range from common, rare, and epic. And there's something called mega units, which is a super rare unit that players can get in the battle pass. If you're free to play, you can unlock it but the unit is a consumable. It can appear in chests but once you pick it, you can't get that mega unit anymore unless you get another mega unit consumable. And in order to get another these consumable, you either hope it appears in the shop or you go through the battlepass the 2nd time and get the next mega unit consumable. Also, did I tell you that they're very strong? Yup, these units are pretty strong and have a lot of HP.
● Unlocking characters. When you play a lot of matches and open chests that unlock characters, you'll notice that you'll be missing some characters. Even if you progress to the next world that offers new characters, those characters you haven't unlocked? Yeah, they'll still be locked. I'm currently in the 3rd world and I am still missing 4 characters I can't seem to get.
● Not that much strategy. If you see gameplay and played it yourself, you'll know there's not that much strategy involved. Only skill involved is how lucky you are with what units you're offered and maybe how well you move. The game is essentially move around and hope your units hit the right target. You don't control the character's attacks really since they can only attack if you are standing still.
● Unlocking spells on a timer. In the game, there are items players can pick up throughout the map. These are spells that do a variety of things depending on which one you picked up. There are ones that heal your team, power you up, throw a bomb, etc. As yout progress more in the game, you get the opportunity to unlock a new spell that takes forever. You unlock it either through in-cash gold or spell pickups. Picking up random spells will help progress it where some spells require players to get 300 spells to unlock. It's not that bad until you notice that this unlock is on a timer. I'm not sure what happens when the timer ends, but I'm guessing it goes away for a bit and comes back for players to try again. If you don't unlock it quick enough, players who unlocked it early will already be on the next spell.
At this point, there's probably more issues I haven't said like for instance the lag on some of the matches where players are picking witch and having skeletons fill up the whole map (makes the game play in powerpoint mode) or how some characters are more stronger than others (hopefully some get buffed later on).
MY THOUGHTS:
Overall, it's a fun-ish game that has problems with it. There's many elements of pay 2 win that really shouldn't exist in the match in my opinion. Outside the matches like character shards are okay, but in-game consumables leave a bad taste since pretty much everything in this game is RNG to get the best characters. Will this game be successful? Probably yeah. If there are things people can spend real life money to make themselves more powerful and win, people will pay for it. Aside from microtransactions and gameplay, unlocking new characters is the biggest issue as many players are left with characters they haven't unlocked in past worlds. Hopefully SC fixes this and makes it easier to unlock new characters.