For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out LEVELS II, from Flow inc., on my iPhone 14 Pro.
I had played Favo from Flow inc. before and i'm familiar with tile merging games so i had a rough idea of what to expect from LEVELS II, but i was more curious if and how they'd lean into the RPG aspect of the game. Games likes Three's and 2048 have a simple idea and you play until you can't make any moves and that's it. it's all a little basic. so i came into this hoping that as a sequel, LEVELS II might offer more than just a gameplay mechanic.
It doesn't. LEVELS II doesn't even have a home screen, it loads straight into a game. there's no dungeon theme either, it's a plane white screen with the game board. thankfully there is a great tutorial waiting for us and it goes over nearly every aspect of the game simply and straight forwardly. apart from the Lightning mechanic. what i took away from the tutorial and what actually happens in the game were two very different things and it really needs to be made clear that the tutorial gives you a free one to use and after that, you have to watch an advert to get another or pay for the premium version of LEVELS II.
The adverts in LEVELS II come when you finish a game and start another. there's no warning, but thankfully that was the only time when an advert would start. As i say in the video, if the button was worded to say "watch an advert and start a new game" then i would've had no issues with an advert then starting.
There's nothing wrong with the mechanic of merging tiles, LEVELS II has done it in such a way that there's great depth of strategy to it. it works well with the minimal style of the game. But with this being a sequel, i was expecting more than just gameplay refinement. this could have a fun Quest mode where you're given tasks to defeat a certain number of specific enemies. there could've been an option for a dungeon background instead of plain white or black. there are no summons, no persistent character level, and none of the money we collect carries over for us to buy stuff. we could use the coins and buy decorations to decorate the game screen. It wouldn't surprise me to see LEVELS II re-skinned in the future with a different theme, like Christmas, because there's so little to it.
I would highly recommend getting LEVELS II, it is fun and there's a lot of strategy, and maybe luck, to it's gameplay. But there's nothing else to the game.
Version 1.0.6 Played.