These are some of the mobile games I've been playing recently. None of them really stood out as anything super special, but they are nevertheless good learning experiences for me as I explored different ways games can be fun/unfun!

Eternal Senia

Eternal Senia is an idle tapper game that surprised me. On one hand, the game feels kind of pointless. There is no strategy involved, no world to travel to, and no new ideas. The task of this game is even more mundane than my monotonous day job. On the other hand, it is quite relaxing to play. It looks nice, it feels good to destroy those cute things like a pinata. I didn’t expect to like the game at all but now I think it is okay. It is a game that abuses the simple “Input and Output” model of rewards to create a fun experience. 

Due to its relatively simplistic nature, Eternal Senia is a game with a very clear core gameplay loop. Tap to defeat enemies -> Get Gold from enemies -> Upgrade items, characters, unlock stories and get pets from defeating enemies -> Move onto new levels where the enemy is upgraded to match your strength -> Tap to defeat enemies so that you get Gold that upgrades you to defeat the stronger enemies. 

The story utilizes the trope of “saving your closest ones” and creates scenarios that allow that journey to flourish. Story events occur after nearly every boss level, and each story lasts from 1 to 2 minutes with relatively short dialogues. ~30 lines of communication. 

I think Eternal Senia does a nice job of solving one of the innate design problems:Which is when the core gameplay loop can get too repetitive and boring. 

Solution (1): Realm events occur occasionally when you are fighting non-boss characters. It gives the player a chance to win a large number of gems and rewards. It is easy to win those fights, but hard enough to feel pumped up about it. 

Solution (2): Story. It lets the players rest their hands from repetitive tapping, and also lets players get a little bit emotionally involved in the story and characters. 

Monetization Techniques

The bosses at first were relatively easy, which allows the player to pick up and learn the core mechanics of the game without feeling bad about losing. The progression of the game slows down in the middle, where it gets harder and harder to defeat the boss unless you spend in-game currency. That is when it becomes relevant: 

Treasure chest: If you watch a 30 seconds AD, you get 2X/5X amount of Gems. 

In-game store: Get X amount of purple gems depending on how much you pay. The more you pay at once, the dollar to gem ratio goes up. 

The player gets ~200 free Purple Gems, the real value gem. The gems can be used to revive you when you die or spend it on buying Gachas. Once the free gems run out, it is more likely to be tempted into reviving yourself after death when the player knows how good it feels. 

Gacha mechanic with Pets: 200 Gems to get a 2-5 Star Pet. Pets can be upgraded when you get multiple copies of them. 

Overall Thoughts

Pretty fun. A lot of the time when we talk about games, we are always looking for the next “cool thing”, whether it is cool mechanics, a heart-wrenching story, or a unique perspective. Eternal Senia is none of that, it is a soulless game that feels like a simple service, for the bored people who are tired from life, and it is cool that this exists!

Crystal Soul Arena

Crystal Soul Arena is a 1v1 CCG. It has a really cute art style and mechanic-wise, it is a decently fun and interesting card game. It is comparable to any other TCGs as it uses the same “beat each other’s nexus from X to 0”, however it does feel like a glorified Rock Paper Scissors match. 

Game Mechanics

Each round, you draw 3 cards. Both players pick 1 to play blindly. Then the creatures fight against one another and activate abilities that are various forms of Deal Damage, Heal, Power Boost, and Resource Generations. If the fight result is W/L, the loser side gets 1 Gem. If the fight result is a draw, then both sides get 1 Gem. 

However, how does one decide what unit to play blindly? Is it just pure luck who wins or loses? This choice is not random as there are a number of factors to consider: How many gems do you have? How many gems does your opponent have? What is your opponent likely to do in this situation? What are you more likely to do? 

In Crystal Soul Arena, winning a fight does not always mean winning a fight. For instance, if you play a creature with 3 power against the opponent's 2 power creature. The opponent takes 1 damage, but they receive 1 gem, which is typically more valuable than 1 health. Typically, the power dynamic is like this (without accounting for special abilities): 

Draw = Draw. 

Small win (dealing 1 damage) = Win for the losing side. 

Medium win (dealing 2 damage) = Draw, slightly favoring the winning side.

Big win (anything 3 damage or more) = Win for the winning side. 

Players usually have to choose between development, medium, and burst. Development is strong against the medium, medium units can survive against burst, the burst can destroy development. It varies from color to color. 

I find that there is a nice variety of color identity and ability variance in a game where it only has ~60 cards in total. Red has the ability for a power boost and burn damage, green has the ability for healing and countering, blue has the ability to prevent draws. There is also a decent mix of cards that benefit from multi colors decks. Whenever I play the Union mode, I always feel that every deck I play has something unique and fun to it. 

Nevertheless, Crystal Soul Arena games feel like a race from 0-15. In a game like MtG in comparison, there is much more ebb and flow, where unexpected draws and tempo swinging cards can change the scope of the game from 100-0 to 0-100 real quick. Crystal Soul Arena does suffer slightly from the case of “lame duck” syndrome, where everyone knows who will win, but the game keeps dragging on. However, since there seems to be a lack of reward mechanics for getting leads, the cases of “lame duck” are much less severe. A comparable example is “Street Fighter”, the difference is that cards don't have the same hype comeback potential as Street Fighter, as there is no room to “outplay” from an extreme deficit. 

But the real “problem” is that the game feels relatively like a race from 0 to 15 most of the time, with a few “hype” cards. I think the reason why this occurs is the lack of synergy between cards. Most synergies in this game are built around Gems generation + Gems usage, instead of a unique mechanic that generates a different play pattern. Every game it is: Fight, deal damage, get gems, use gems to deal damage and heal, oh your health dropped to 0 first. 

A Life in Music

Wasn’t impressed with this game in comparison to the first two titles. The story isn’t great. It is the typical “I am a loser” but now I meet the love of my life kind of story. Well, the premise itself can be exciting, but the delivery of this story was way too awkward for me. 

What is interesting to discuss is its rhythm game mechanics. I didn’t like it but it made me appreciate what Phigros had to offer more afterward. Here are some of the problems I found: 

Terasene

I didn’t play this one much as well. But the premise is pretty funny. You play as a Sun who wants to protect a girl who is scared of the light from evils. You protect the girl by burning away the evil dark things. The sun has a projectile of light that deals DPS to enemies, but the control is simple yet tricky: The projectile automatically turns counterclockwise, and you tap it to turn it clockwise to hit the enemy.

It is tricky because you have to control the sun well enough that you burn the evil without burning the girl. Which requires very precise tapping to accomplish or that your reaction is fast enough to burn the bats before it reaches the girl.