For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Boori's Spooky Tales: Idle RPG from SuperPlanet Studios. I Played this on my iPhone 14 Pro, but it's also out on Android.
I was really interested in trying out this game after seeing it in the app store. it's name got me curious is if was an idle game broken up into stories or if story telling was a big part. Idle games do have story, but often it's just a basic premise to justify the idle game play. Looking at the screenshots, it was clear that it looked like a good game, too, with some ideas and themes from Japan or the Asia region. I was really interested in how it would bring it all together.
The main menu screen was the first hint that perhaps it wasn't as polished as i had hoped as the background animation didn't loop. it gets to a point, stops, and restarts from the beginning. This is something that happened with the music in the sections where you learn magic as it's really noticeable.
After, there's a nice introduction that got my hopes up as it seemed to align with how i thought the game was going to tell a story. we're an exorcist who's trying to defeat ghosts and find their body. Whilst there are some specific boss level ghosts we encounter, what it actually meant was the enemies we're fighting are all ghosts.
One little quirk about the idle fighting is that if you get to a level you can't beat, instead of repeating that level over and over again as i expected would happen, you actually end up being sent back a few levels and have to work you're way back. It's not a big deal, just something that caught me off guard.
In general, the idle part of the gameplay is solid. you earn money from defeating ghosts. the money can be spent on getting stronger and gaining more health, which in turn means you can defeat more ghosts. defeating them also completes missions which earn you gold, as do other specific things. you spend the gold on "loot boxes" to try and find better gear. by equipping said gear, you get stronger and can go further. There's another currency that can be spent on upgrading the gear.
There's also another currency that unlocks magic. these seem to fire out at when their cooldown has finished but they seem to fire randomly and during the boss encounters they didn't seem too useful compared to our main staff attack that seemed to have better lock on and Ai behind what it targeted. Another aspect of the game that seemed to suffer from bad Ai was the ninja style teleport move. Like a lot of things in this game, it wasn't really explained or given an in-world explanation. so pressing the button seems to move our character to a random near by location. i tried to use it when my character was getting swarmed, but it rarely sent me anywhere i thought was useful.
Whilst the gameplay was fine and mostly easy to understand, the lack of "why" and in-game reasons did start to get annoying. Our teacher is also the tutorial character and whilst they are useful in pointing us the to the right things to press, they're painfully silent and it just feels like a wasted story telling opportunity. The further into the video i got, the less useful that character became until he stopped showing up leaving me to try things out for myself. For example, the equip menu has something called "Synthesis" and i have no idea what it does. maybe it gets rid of duplicate equipment, but if it does i don't seem to get anything for doing so. there was simply too much left unexplained. other games put it in a tutorial, others put an "i" on it so the player can press and read what it does. this game, at a certain point, just seems to stop helping the player. it really sticks out because the game tries to help out early on.
And there's the story. we get a bit at the intro, and that's about it. when we're given tasks to defeat bosses, it never felt like we're being given story. it just felt like we're given a quest. The is titled "Spooky Tales" but other than maybe our goal to find out body, i don't remember any other tale being told. i can't workout how the game's title applies to the game. Maybe it's a translation error?
Boori's Spooky Tales: Idle RPG has got the basic gameplay correct. it's just the game built around it doesn't quite match it in quality. there only seems to be one song but thankfully it's decent. the art is mostly fine. i do like our character, but there are a few enemies who don't seem to look quite right in this style, namely the fox ghosts. If you're into gameplay, something quick to play for a few minutes then Boori's Spooky Tales: Idle RPG is a good choice. but if, like me, you came to it expecting something unique and deeper, you'll probably be disappointed.
(Version 1.10.26 Played)