Wednesday 3 February 2021

Simply Mobile: Sword, Swordcery and Solitairica

Two games clearly designed for mobile devices, played on PC!

Superbrothers: Sword and Swordcery

Its a woeful task with some groovy music.

Obviously designed for a mobile device, this game sets you on an epic and somewhat musical quest set in a strange tone. Despite the blocky art style the environment is beautiful and so are the tunes provided by Jim Guthrie, who features a fair bit in here. The controls do take a bit of getting used to, but are otherwise serviceable for navigation and combat.


It's a bit too groovy and chill for the setting.


There are numerous "find the spot" puzzles too, which aren't too hard to work out if you pay attention to the hints - or failing that, just click randomly to get an idea of what is active in a scene. There is one section that does irritate me though, and that's where the game forces you to wait for the correct phase of the moon. In real.

Yep, you have activities that require both the new moon and the full moon and while there are cheating ways to get around it, it is simply a bad design - and one that led me to not completing the game. Why wait on this one when there are so many others to play? Anyway. Interesting enough to try out but not enough to recommend. I give it 1.5 gogolithic mass out of 5.

Insight: Don't worry about how to fight at the start. Only when you run into an enemy do you get into the two button combat mode. Also, click repeatedly on the cigar smoking guy or the game will never start.

Solitairica

Makes the old new, and then gets old quick.

On paper, this game is pretty simple - its a set on 18 one on one battles against enemies until you reach and defeat the big boss. Each bad guy has a solitaire type set of decks in front of them, and to win the battle you just have to clear all their cards, simply by matching the numeric sequence to be one above or below your current card. If you hold a 2, you can clear an Ace, then a King, then a Queen, and back to a King etc.

Cards are also powered with various powers and once you have enough of one type you can activate one of your abilities, but the whole thing is pretty much complicated by two things: firstly the enemies DON'T play with cards. If you can't match anything and have to draw a new one from the deck, your opponent can deal damage or do a random ability - like drain some of your powers or add cards to each column.


Not compelling at all.

The harder part with this is the randomness, as bad guys can literally change the cards in front of you and there are numerous times where I only had one card left to clear, but I simply couldn't find the matching adjacent one in my own deck before the enemy killed me. Frustrating.

Not one I enjoyed much and not one I'd recommend. Expect to grind out enhancements, item slots, or simply new character decks if you are looking into this one. Two beards out of five.

Insight: Healing and armor abilities are almost mandatory to survive.

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