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chuckroTiny Dice Dungeon - I’m wondering if I should declare “casual game with rpg elements” to be a genre that appeals to me, but as a completely separate thing from a real action-rpg or classic rpg. This sets you on a series of dice battles against sequences of opponents: You can roll your dice as many times as you want and the damage accumulates, but rolling a 1 means the entire turn is a miss. As you level up, you can make special dice that inflict poison, multiply your rolls, restore your health or (best of all) never roll 1s. The dice-crafting system is the heart of the game, and also the developers’ money-making endeavor: You can grind raw materials for new dice, or just buy them.
Welcome to the Dungeon (W2D) - This game’s insistence that you sign into Google+ and connect your account irritates me greatly, but other than that, but’s a cleverly-disguised mon-battle game wrapped in a shell of “You’re an evil overlord luring heroes into your dungeon.” Pixel-style artwork, a lot of randomness and “sign in every day” gimmickry. Amusing concept, but it gets old fast.
Crystareino - In a cute and I think admirable move, this is a 16-bit-style rpg that is free to play, but some portion of the storyline is paywall-locked, so if you like it you need to buy the full version to finish the game. I generally like “try before you buy” schemes; I’m reminded of the old Shareware setup. In this case, the game itself is vaguely intriguing if troperiffic (hero from another world is summoned too early and doesn’t know what he’s doing; he and his magical animal companion must find out the truth of the world they’ve been pulled into). The menu system irritates me greatly; I think it’s just because it requires too much time and too many button-presses to navigate for simple things like equipment.
Unlucky Hero - Another unapologetic jrpg, this one starring Jasper, an asshole misanthrope mage who just wants to be left alone to his expositing. Evil mage Malachi is gathering mages to conquer the humans, but when Jasper refuses him, he burns Jasper’s house. Fortunately, fleeing Jasper runs to a country of generous humans willing to teach him the true meaning of friendship. The translation is…rocky, at best. There are typos and awkward constructions. The system is standard, but occasionally irritating in the lack of useful things Jasper can do. But the free version of the game is only the first hour of it—this is also a “try before you buy” sort of setup—which I think actually worked out great. I don’t think it’s worth paying for, so I’m not going to pay for it, but I got a good feel for the game before having to decide that. Good for them!
Minute Quest - A noble pixelated hero sets out from the castle on a quest to…get as far from the castle as possible. The only real controls are moving and entering buildings; you attack automatically as you run into monsters. There’s a huge assortment of equipment and you’ll gain a level or two on every outing before dying, but it takes a lot of trips (and a lot of grinding) to get strong enough to reach stronger weapons and armor than what you start with, or even the first dungeon. This is a “I’m bored and want to waste time” sort of game, but not even a particularly interactive one. It’s free and doesn’t try to sell you anything, but you’re getting what you pay for.
Nimble Quest - Another cute take on the “casual game with rpg elements”, this is based on the old DOS “Snakes” game, where you needed to collect numbers without running into your own ever-growing tail. In this case, you grow your tail by recruiting more heroes, and you need to get close to the wandering monsters (without running into them or the walls) to attack them and get them to drop treasure. It’s more of a “free trial” than “free to play” sort of game, though, as you only have a limited number of tokens (and you need at least one each time you play the game, and also to retry stages or level-up your characters) unless you pay for them. I found it an intriguing concept but with a limited shelf life; like the original, it gets hard very quickly and is very repetitive.
Terra Battle - And this one is in the “mon-battle game that loves pinging the server and prodding you towards paying for things” genre, but their unique twist is a tactical battle system based on Othello, which made a very good first impression. The battle system involves flanking enemy tiles and lining up combo attacks, and it’s something I haven’t seen before. I don’t know if that will get me to invest serious time in the game, but it makes it stand out.
Cookie Breaker - There’s a pile of cookies. You receive gold for destroying them. Set up artillery and support devices, then spend your gold to buy upgrades so you can destroy more cookies and earn more gold. If you buy the right upgrades, you’ll keep destroying cookies even when you aren’t playing. You keep thinking to yourself, “This is totally dumb, why would anyone play this?” and then it’s ten minutes later and you’re still playing because you can upgrade your coins and you just want to destroy that one platinum coin.
Welcome to the Dungeon (W2D) - This game’s insistence that you sign into Google+ and connect your account irritates me greatly, but other than that, but’s a cleverly-disguised mon-battle game wrapped in a shell of “You’re an evil overlord luring heroes into your dungeon.” Pixel-style artwork, a lot of randomness and “sign in every day” gimmickry. Amusing concept, but it gets old fast.
Crystareino - In a cute and I think admirable move, this is a 16-bit-style rpg that is free to play, but some portion of the storyline is paywall-locked, so if you like it you need to buy the full version to finish the game. I generally like “try before you buy” schemes; I’m reminded of the old Shareware setup. In this case, the game itself is vaguely intriguing if troperiffic (hero from another world is summoned too early and doesn’t know what he’s doing; he and his magical animal companion must find out the truth of the world they’ve been pulled into). The menu system irritates me greatly; I think it’s just because it requires too much time and too many button-presses to navigate for simple things like equipment.
Unlucky Hero - Another unapologetic jrpg, this one starring Jasper, an asshole misanthrope mage who just wants to be left alone to his expositing. Evil mage Malachi is gathering mages to conquer the humans, but when Jasper refuses him, he burns Jasper’s house. Fortunately, fleeing Jasper runs to a country of generous humans willing to teach him the true meaning of friendship. The translation is…rocky, at best. There are typos and awkward constructions. The system is standard, but occasionally irritating in the lack of useful things Jasper can do. But the free version of the game is only the first hour of it—this is also a “try before you buy” sort of setup—which I think actually worked out great. I don’t think it’s worth paying for, so I’m not going to pay for it, but I got a good feel for the game before having to decide that. Good for them!
Minute Quest - A noble pixelated hero sets out from the castle on a quest to…get as far from the castle as possible. The only real controls are moving and entering buildings; you attack automatically as you run into monsters. There’s a huge assortment of equipment and you’ll gain a level or two on every outing before dying, but it takes a lot of trips (and a lot of grinding) to get strong enough to reach stronger weapons and armor than what you start with, or even the first dungeon. This is a “I’m bored and want to waste time” sort of game, but not even a particularly interactive one. It’s free and doesn’t try to sell you anything, but you’re getting what you pay for.
Nimble Quest - Another cute take on the “casual game with rpg elements”, this is based on the old DOS “Snakes” game, where you needed to collect numbers without running into your own ever-growing tail. In this case, you grow your tail by recruiting more heroes, and you need to get close to the wandering monsters (without running into them or the walls) to attack them and get them to drop treasure. It’s more of a “free trial” than “free to play” sort of game, though, as you only have a limited number of tokens (and you need at least one each time you play the game, and also to retry stages or level-up your characters) unless you pay for them. I found it an intriguing concept but with a limited shelf life; like the original, it gets hard very quickly and is very repetitive.
Terra Battle - And this one is in the “mon-battle game that loves pinging the server and prodding you towards paying for things” genre, but their unique twist is a tactical battle system based on Othello, which made a very good first impression. The battle system involves flanking enemy tiles and lining up combo attacks, and it’s something I haven’t seen before. I don’t know if that will get me to invest serious time in the game, but it makes it stand out.
Cookie Breaker - There’s a pile of cookies. You receive gold for destroying them. Set up artillery and support devices, then spend your gold to buy upgrades so you can destroy more cookies and earn more gold. If you buy the right upgrades, you’ll keep destroying cookies even when you aren’t playing. You keep thinking to yourself, “This is totally dumb, why would anyone play this?” and then it’s ten minutes later and you’re still playing because you can upgrade your coins and you just want to destroy that one platinum coin.
