For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out AFK Journey, from Farlight Games, on my iPhone 14 Pro.
There had been a little fanfare about this game, with it being available for pre-order on thee iOS store. looking at the screenshots and video on the app store, it was clear the game had good graphics but i was also interested in the character creator and how or if they would incorporate it into the story.
Unfortunately, we start with a download choice. we can either download everything, about 2.5GB, or we can download about 94MB and have the game continue to download in the background when it needs to. i don't recommend this as it's not clear when this will happen or how much it'll download. you really should play the game on Wifi first and then play it out and about once the download is finished. there's not much to do whilst you wait either, other than some good music that is.
We get a cool opening cut scene that hints as to our purpose in the game and once the game starts its also clear that it's a good looking game. it's not long before we're set to leave for the outside world and then the game introduces the character creator as a way for us to hide that we're Merlin. this was such a great way to incorporate a character creator feature within the game's universe.
AFK Journey also introduces it's "Loot Box" mechanic in just as a smart way, too. the premise is that we're going to need support on our journey so letters are sent out requesting help and when we get a reply it's either items that help or characters that can join our party.
The tutorial starts off being useful, with the game using our amnesia as a way to give us a tutorial. it's a clever way of incorporating it into the story, but it doesn't pay off as well as the two previous examples. it feels more bare bones. i feel like it could've leant into the amnesia more, giving us reminders to upgrade, or asking us if we'd like reminders. The tutorial does a poor job at explaining the busy UI around the edges, too. it's not incorporated into the story, and when the AFK button was introduced i didn't understand what it was for.
With how well so much of the game works, having such an average to poor tutorial really sticks out. but there are some other things that became noticeable. a big one was when we were going between two locations. there are optional battles and the enemies have their level above their heads. but this is a meaningless piece of information as it doesn't tell us how strong they are. it's not one on one battles, it's a group vs a group. the information we want is the strength of the group as well as the strength of ours. that information is only present when we're on the set-up before a battle, and it's not overly clear if we're about to retreat or not, there's just some non-descript arrow.
It's great that the game has amazing graphics and music, i'm also enjoying the story. but there's just enough wrong with it that it doesn't automatically leap to game of the year. thankfully, i found the story engaging enough that i do want to come back to the game, but maybe not right away. But AFK Journey is well worth downloading and trying out, just be aware that there are a few little issues with it.
Version 1.1.173 Played.
