Category: Mobile Game

Devolver Tumble Time

If you search for Devolver Tumble Time, you find an article describing the games genre as “Puzzle and Monetization.” Presumably because this article was written with ChatGPT. Apparently, the AI that wrote the article thinks that “Monetization” is a genre of mobile game. And the worst part is, I don’t think it’s wrong.

This is evidence that there is no hell but Earth, and there is no devil but man.

Usually I’d include images of the game. Tumble Time hasn’t earned that, so here’s an unrelated panel from the manga series Chainsaw Man.

Okay, so the game for a moment. Devolver Tumble Time is a “Tumble Matcher.” I don’t know if that’s what the genre is called, but I know full well it’s not the first game to do this mechanic. The first paragraph here should give you a taste of how this review is going to go. This game will get the same level of charity from me that Salvation Army gets, which is say: FUCKING NONE.

(On a more serious note for one moment: the Salvation Army is terrible. Don’t give them your money or stuff. Okay, now back to talking shit about a bad mobile game.)

The game’s primary mechanic is that a bunch of objects fall down, and you match them. Unlike something along the lines of HuniePop, or Beglitched, there’s an aggressive timer. As such, it’s almost always best to just make any matches as fast as possible. Ultimately, this means just tapping the screen semi-randomly as quickly as you can. There are levels, and there are collectible characters, but the tumbling is the game’s actual “mechanics.” I won’t be talking about the mechanics again in this review because they (mostly) don’t matter.

The other thing is, that even though there is an aggressive timer, you can always watch a longer-than-10-seconds ad to get an additional 10 seconds of game time to complete the level. So as long as you’re willing to expose yourself to infinite ads, it is literally impossible to lose. Or if you just spend money. That also makes it impossible to lose.

I think Devolver Tumble Time is trying to be something of a parody of mobile games. Is it satire? Well, Jonathan Swift didn’t go out and eat the Irish, when he wrote “A Modest Proposal,” so I think not. And while it may be ironic that a “good” indie publisher is trying to profit off their IP back catalog by tossing it all together into a standard “good simple game mechanic wrapped in microtransactions for mobile” thing, that’s done by literally every triple A publisher in the world. So I don’t think it’s ironic either.

So, Tumble Time is trying to be a parody. But I’m not sure it’s a very good one. The tone of some of the writing has a light mocking touch to it, poking at the greed of capitalism in general, and a bit at mobile games directly. But the game is also engaged in everything it seems to be trying to poke fun at. There’s a big fancy $99 dollar package you can buy that unlocks everything permanently, but only appears after you pass certain levels that you don’t get any rewards for, because they get “stolen” by the capitalist character, because you didn’t unlock other special characters.

That’s not a parody. That’s classic “One Time Offer” FOMO with a ridiculous price tag. “Ah” you say. “But isn’t it poking fun at the prices and values of items in mobile games?” to which I say “Not really.” That button isn’t a joke. If I press it and enter my password, I’ll be charged $100 dollars.

I could buy 6-7 of the other games the characters are from with that money. I could buy every single Serious Sam game.

The same is true of things like the Daily Login bonuses. These are just tried and true tactics of habit building. Same with limited hearts system, which yes, I can buy infinite hearts for $3, but that’s still $3. And infinite hearts doesn’t unlock all the characters which I can still spend REAL MONEY to do.

Putting on a clown suit, and clown nose and going “Haha, look how silly we are, we’re so silly” isn’t making fun of clowns. It’s being a clown. Clowns are supposed to be funny. Likewise, putting a thin veneer of mockery over an in-app purchase, daily login bonus, or limited hearts system doesn’t make it parody. It’s still the exact toxic bit of design you seem to want to make fun of.

The design that Tumble Time is guilty of.

A friend called the game “Self-Aware,” which I think might be more accurate. But self-awareness and nothing else is a cop-out. Being aware that you’re an awful person, like being aware that you’re a terrible generic cash grab game, and doing nothing to fix it, doesn’t make you better.

So, fuck you Devolver Tumble Time. I actually quite like a lot of games Devolver publishes. The ones I don’t, usually just aren’t for me. But Tumble Time can go die a trash fire. It’s a greedy and manipulative exemplar of every issue present in mobile gaming. It’s self-aware, while not trying to do anything different, and that’s what cements its guilt.

If you want a good puzzle game, go play Beglitched. I refuse to link to Tumble Time here. It hasn’t earned it.

Mobile Game Double Feature

I spend a lot of time on this blog tearing into things that are probably a work of passion and love. As such, it seems only fair that occasionally go the other direction, and spend some time tearing into things that were a work of “How much fucking money can we make selling lottery tickets to children?”

Maybe this approach won’t be great for optics. But if I can analyze indie games that have interesting mechanics buried under crude art or lackluster technical implementations, it seems only fair to look mobile games that have mechanics locked in Skinner boxes.

Mobile games are kinda like indie games, but there’s an entry fee of how much your kidneys would currently go for on the black market.

Starting with…

Knight’s Edge

There’s a GDC talk somewhere in Knight’s Edge. It might be about how they managed to add in a cash shop, battlepass, and a billion other pieces of bullshit. Maybe it’s art direction-related. They could make a “How To” guide on ripping off that Clash of Clans smooth minimalistic art style that somehow has less personality than a furry OC that’s just a Sonic recolor.

Or maybe they could do one about how their cool little 3v3 battle brawler ended up tied to all the bullshit above. Actually, I can do it for them.

Anyway, now that I’ve done their presentation for them, they can spend some time talking about their actual mechanics. Knight’s Edge is effectively a combo of micro-brawler and roguelike. Your team of 3 is pitted against another player’s team, and you’re thrown into a tiny little dungeon. Whichever team makes it to the end of the dungeon and kills the final boss first wins!

It’s a simple little idea, and there’s really only two other things to mention about it. First up is that at certain points, you can invade the enemy, and attempt to kill them or mess with them to slow them down. But at the same time, it’s risky because your team won’t have your DPS during the invasion. The second one is that whenever you destroy enemies, you get EXP. Get enough, and you’ll level up, which gives generic stats. More importantly, leveling up also lets you pick between various buffs, which are determined by the weapon you’re using. This gives the whole thing a sort of micro-roguelike vibe.

Before you say “That’s kind of a lousy screenshot,” know that I took it from their app store page. This isn’t on me.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about Knight’s Edge. Is there a cool idea here? Yes. But it can’t make it out from under the monetization. Also the controls sort of suck. Your actual agency to influence a given round often feels like playing a slot machine with the upgrade system.

But anyway, enough about Knight’s Edge. Let’s talk about…

Cross Duel

I’ve written about Yu-Gi-Oh mobile games before on this site. There are a surprising number of them. Their monetization ranges from “Something resembling reasonable” with Duel Links to “Its own category in a list of shitty business models” for Master Duel.

Anyway, Cross Duel manages to sit somewhere in the middle of trashy pricing, which is to say “Typical Gacha.” But we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about Cross Duel itself.

If you’re going “Wow, seems dynamic!” that’s because I stole this one from their app page, and Konami is better at marketing then whoever makes Knight’s Edge.

I think one of the most interesting things about Cross Duel is that it shares very little with Yu-Gi-Oh mechanically. While ideas like like Monster Cards and Trap Cards are present, it’s easy to see how Cross Duel could stand as a separate game, or even potentially as a legacy board game. The deckbuilding only allows 20 cards, and only 1 copy of any single card.

Cross Duel is a four player lane based game. Everyone draws a hand of cards, and simultaneously places them. At the end of the starting “Main Phase,” monsters move down their rows if they were in attack position, or stay put if they were in defense position.

While many of the terms sound similar to Yu-Gi-Oh, there are a lot of mechanical differences. For starters, while the game can end if one player manages to knock out 3 others, it also just ends after 8 rounds are played or if even a single player ends a round with zero life points remaining. In addition, everyone starts with a single “Special” card in their hand serves the role of a panic button or can be used to apply heavy pressure.

Those aren’t the only differences. Players gain life points when their monsters inflict damage to enemy players. Unlike normal Yu-Gi-Oh, this only happens when a monster hits an opponent directly, not when they just attack another attack position monster and win. Damage is also maintained between rounds, meaning that a powerful bomb card can quickly be chipped down by multiple weaker cards.

Anyway, the result of all these mechanical changes is that you can actually do decently in some games of Cross Duel without selling your kidneys. Often, the players with more powerful cards are forced to fight each other, instead of wasting resources to knock you out.

The game also has what seems like a fairly interesting system for playing around with card skills and abilities. Unfortunately, it’s locked behind the usual grind and bullshit, so I don’t have much to say about it other than it seems neat.

In Conclusion

I was going to close with “There’s no moral to today’s writeup.” But that’s wrong. There is a pretty clear moral: interesting game mechanics can be found everywhere. In every terrible prototype, or miserable whalebait app store installation, it’s possible to find something interesting or clever. Is worth going to try to find those mechanics? I mean, for most people? Probably not.

People who play games casually would rather just play good games. People who work on games would probably rather be making games than playing other designers’ terrible ones.

But I guess for me, someone I view as sitting in the middle, it can be interesting. Hell, at least it’s something to write about.