As I’m sure we all know by now, finding a decent game for mobile phones isn’t exactly an easy task. They exist, but it seems like for each solid experience, there are thousands of microtransaction-riddled clickers and idlers. However, despite the odds, I managed to find one of these elusive halfway-decent mobile phone games, and I beat it today:
This is a platformer. You have your standard left/right movement, as well as a jump button and an attack button. You also have a “special” button, which uses whichever item you equip on the pause menu. It defaults to your shield (and at first, it’s your only “special” item), but as you progress, you get more abilities like different projectile weapons and a healing ability. Most of these extra items have a limited number of uses per level, but sometimes, enemies will drop ammunition for said items (and sometimes, you’ll find a chest in a level that will increase the max amount of a special item you have). There are also gold statues throughout the game, and when you first encounter one, it levels up your sword (each time afterward, it heals you to full health).
Something I’d like to point out is that, even though the game uses touch-screen-buttons, it’s implemented in a way that isn’t completely terrible. You see, rather than have the buttons (and, by extension, your thumbs) obscure part of the screen like in Ducktales Remastered (or practically every mobile phone game that uses touch buttons), this game is built around a smaller screen that ends where the touch buttons are located (I know this is a port of a java-phone game, but still, this game is on to something). I also never had an issue where I’d accidentally hit left instead of right.
It’s still possible to miss one of the buttons due to the nature of touch-buttons, but this rarely happened during my playthrough.
This game isn’t a straight shot to the end, though. Similar to the Legend of Zelda games, you’ll need to get one item in order to unlock another area. This in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but either the language barrier is a huge issue or this game is a bit unintuitive. For example, on the second map screen, there’s an ice palace at the top, but if you go there, your health will slowly start to decrease. Maybe you need to go somewhere else first in order to get cold-immunity? Nope; what you have to do is go in the ice palace anyway, then kill the yetis until one of them drops fur (hopefully before you freeze to death), then go to town and have someone use the fur to knit you a sweater or something, and then you can explore the ice palace without taking damage. Another part of the game that threw me off is when you beat the boss of the ice palace and you get the eye special item. No new areas are unlocked, and using the eye item doesn’t appear to do anything. What you have to do is go to the temple on the left side of the second map and use it at the end of the hall to reveal a hidden door (there’s a golden statue there, so it’s not like it’s a suspicious dead end). It turns out this level’s gimmick is using the eye to reveal hidden doors (you never use the eye item in any other level), and the item you need to progress is found in a branching path in this level rather than by beating the boss of the level like it used to be. The final boss was also rather annoying, as it starts off immune for the first few seconds of the fight, then a cut-scene happens showing an NPC destroying a crystal before joining you in your fight, at which point the boss’s pattern changes. However, the boss is still immune to your attacks. At first, I thought that I had to do something to make the boss vulnerable, but apparently I just had to dodge its attacks and wait until I noticed its health bar show up. These kinds of things aren’t too common in the game, but it’s still a good idea to have a walk-through handy (I had to consult one a couple times).
As a side note, the final boss is quite a difficulty spike compared to the rest of the game. For most enemies and even bosses, you can just go up to them and wail on them with your sword (honestly, the level design in the game is quite simplistic as well), but the final boss shoots out so many projectiles that it wouldn’t be out of place in a shoot ‘em up. It isn’t so hard that it lessens the experience, though.
Overall, this is an okay game. It may not be able to hold a candle to most non-mobile-phone platformers, but as far as I could tell, it doesn’t do anything overtly bad. If you can track this game down, give it a chance.
P.S. Honestly, I kinda wish the sequel was ported to Android as well, but unfortunately (for me, at least), that game remains a java exclusive.
THE NEXT STORY!
THE WORLD’S GRINDIEST RPG GETS A LEVEL PACK EXPANSION! ALSO A LEVEL EDITOR.
COMING NEXT SCENE:
“INCONVENIENT DECISIONS.”
Hope your next game is better!
And regarding eyes being drawn over hair, recently just saw people talking about eyebrows and think it’s the same vein. Instead of limiting what hair a character has by not having it cover their face (and therefore hiding expressions) easier to just draw on top.
It’s funny you mention that as a reason, because whenever I’ve seen the eyes drawn in front of the hair, it’s always been in a situation where it’s noticeable, but you’d still be able to see the character’s eyebrows (and, by extension, expression) if the hair were in front (just take another look at the game’s banner image). I don’t remember a scenario like the one in your example.
Yeah I dunno, just thought I’d share since their convos got me thinking. Only one that comes to mind that I really appreciated and think it added to it is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, though it’s obviously different from the art style shown above.