For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Geo Gods, another game developed by Arnold Rauers as i had previously checked out Miracle Merchant https://youtu.be/kpCxEvBWk4w, with art by Alba Ballesta González and sound and music by Marie Havemann. I played this on iOS but it's out on Android, too.
Geo Gods is an interesting card game in that it doesn't matter if you win as your score is an average taken from 6 games. each card is a god and the gods are placed onto a garden. each god has an ability that affects the field or the gods in your deck and each god has an elemental type. by the side of the field are 6 elemental power crystals, each with a power target. the goal is to get enough of each type of god on the field to activate a power crystal with bonus points awarded for getting all 6 in a round.
That was the first hint that it may be difficult to get all 6, and in the 6 games i played in this video i never got all 6 crystals. It's an interesting challenge as each god card has an ability that can have a positive or negative effect on either the garden field, your deck, or mana that's needed to put down the god cards. each spot in the garden also has a cost needed to put a card on it, but also a reward that it earns for activating a power crystal.
This sounds difficult, and in-game the lengthy wordy tutorial does make it seem that way. but the game is still very playable. i may not have got all 6 crystals when i played and i may not have fully understood it, but as i played and tried again i did feel like i was learning and getting better. so it's very playable.
For me tho, some of the wording made things unclear. like after a game it says quit or restart. i feel that both words are wrong as quit sounds like the 6 games are ended and restart sounds like you start the 6 again from the beginning. i also felt that some of the card abilities didn't work as i expected them to from their description. maybe in trying to get the description to fit on the card, their choice of English was perhaps not clear enough.
But those are fairly minor and don't get in the way of some good card playing. what did frustrate me was learning on the home screen that i don't have all the cards because i haven't bought the game. this also meant that mode, clearly labeled on the home screen, was also unplayable. it left me wondering if i actually can't finish the game because i don't have all the cards, whether those locked cards are more powerful. essentially, it was a bad user experience.
But as the game has no intrusive adverts, or any adverts, nor does it have an additional download once started, i would say it's a great game to pick up and play. it's a little rough around the edges and that can be patched later. thankfully the core card game experience makes it a game that you can play one match of quickly or sit down and play 6 like i did in this video.
