I don’t spend much time on apps like TikTok, but when I do, as I love video games, the ‘algorithm’ decides to serve me up some ads of video games. In May it served up several GoG ads, with launch data of May 15th I believe it was. It reminded me so much of a mobile game I played before called Portal Quest, that I thought I had to give it a go.
Portal Quest was a really fun heroes based game that while initially really fun to play, turned on the money making heat through the competitive multiplayer element of its guilds section. Being a rather competitive gamer I enjoyed dropping a few $$ on the game every month to ensure I could remain in a top guild, however this soon turned to needing to spend $$$ per month, and it was at this point that I rejected the game and left, bitter and disappointed that they went too far in their money making endeavours.
I believe in all kinds of business models for games, but pay to win is not one of them, don’t get me wrong there must be a pay element otherwise there would be no games, but I believe in fair pricing, something reasonable, you know compared to say your cable TV fees etc, I do draw the line, when it looks like the game makers are just out to squeeze every penny out of competitive players and are only interested in players that can drop $$$-$$$$ per month on it.
Any way I have been playing GoG for over 2 months now since a week or two after its launch, and as with PQ, a is really fun game to play on my mobile in spare moments of down time.
As a player you get to use summoning tablets to summon new guardians via a crystal / portal, with a random chance of getting better guardians. Each guardian that joins you can be upgraded with the right upgrade items in your possession, crystals, tablets, coins etc.. With each upgrade of 10 levels a guardian gets either a new special power / magic or otherwise or increase in existing one. The battles are fun and intuitive, and it doesn’t take long before you start really strategizing on how you can maximize your attack with each encounter. You can play auto, but you won’t get very far, you definitely have to engage in manual for this game, timings of super powers / power attacks / magic power attacks and healing spells is key. Generally, very fun, and I had hoped to get into a fun social but competitive guild (where you join other players as a team and compete against other guilds for leader board status and more in game prizes)
I won’t mention the numerous bugs, as there are far too many, and as each day their team releases fixes for them it’s just a nuisance. The game is still very much playable, if not annoying sometimes with bugs here and there.
However now the bad part…
1 – Need for a crypto wallet, at first the game does not mention this, you get to play and have fun, build your team of guardians / heroes each with unique magic abilities to help them and your team in battles. However after a few days or week of playing you will soon find out that some features are locked until you get a crypto wallet with Immutable. I played for a good 4 weeks not doing this, but realised that my guardians would never be the strongest they could be as the max upgrade path, included a game feature called ascension which was only available if you tied up a crypto wallet to the game. To many people this would be a big red flag, but I persisted as I really wanted to unlock the Guilds element of the game.
2 – Eventually I unlocked the Guilds section, and I have had this unlocked for 2-3 weeks now. Each day I apply to up to 3 Guilds, and every day I get accepted and every day I leave as soon as I browse the inside of their guild. You see I am looking for a guild that will have guild chat, a guild that posts a chat app invite link, and while I found several guilds posting a chat invite links I also found that the links were stale / expired. The last 3 guilds that I have joined this week: the founders did not think to add a chat invite link in their welcome message, so really what is the point of joining a guild where there is no possible way to communicate with guild members? So I just leave and apply to another set. I am persisting on this, but I know that if I do not find a guild that has posted a working chat invite link soon, then I am going to have to completely forget about this game.
3 – The game has an adventure section where you have to clear out some dungeons on various maps, each dungeon has 3 levels and a recommended Guardian Level, well I have been trying to clear out a the second dungeon on the first map for weeks now, it says ‘recommended guild guardian level 65’ and my guardians are now level 80 and I still can’t clear them out. Most of my guardians are also maxed out in terms of stars (so 5 stars).. This is really annoying I can only think it has something to do with the ascension element of the game, which now requires me to add coins to my crypto wallet, which I am not going to do, sorry GoG creators, if I wanted to do crypto, I’d buy crypto directly, not have it infiltrate and pollute a video game with its vile reputation of rug pulling!
4 – Cheating, staring down lopsided leaderboards I am concerned that many players have figured out how to cheat, I see my ranking in leader boards with a score of a few thousand, and then the top guys are in the tens of millions, I would have thought as an honest player, playing since virtually the game’s release, doing all the daily grinding tasks, and even dropping some in-app purchases, I thought I would be in the top 10% of players on leader boards, who knows I might be?, but the top people in the leader boards I am convinced are likely cheating as the points difference between 9kand 76m is just too large to believe as a fair score. I can’t seem to find a single guild where I can communicate with another person, and its all very frustrating, at this point I do not even know for sure if their guilds feature actually works, as I have yet to unlock it, I would think with almost 2 months of full on gameplay, I would have unlocked it by now, so yeah, very annoying.
5 – Verdict It really disappoints to see crypto integration, it certainly has all the hallmarks of a good game if managed well, but it seems to me that their objectives probably lie in money making. Communications in game seem one way from the game makers to the players, no easy way to communicate back other than join discord or twitter etc, the discord seems to be filled with crypto chatter, I could find very little to no chat on actual game play, just crypto bs drops etc, get rich quick promises..
Verdict, this game has promise, but if I were to start again, I’d probably have avoided the game altogether!
About me: I’m a passionate solo indie developer who has dedicated 7-8 years of my spare time to create a game that captures the essence of classic RPGs from the late 80s and early 90s. My game, Shadow Quest Adventure RPG, is a nostalgic journey for those who love old-school RPGs. If you have fond memories of those golden years of gaming or simply want to support a solo indie developer, I invite you to check it out.
Shadow Quest Adventure RPG is available on app stores for a small one time fee, though finding it on Android can be a challenge. Even if you search for the full game title, it sometimes appears far down the search results. Despite this, challenge its had a fair number of downloads and has been very well received by players in this genre, and I am really grateful to anyone that supports it.