Mobile Friday - Wizardry Variants Daphne - Good Music, Controls, Graphics, And Extra Data Download!

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried Wizardry Variants Daphne from Studio 2Pro and Drecom on my iPhone 14 Pro.

This is the final Mobile Friday game of 2024 and this year ends with a good one. i'm not familiar with the Wizardry series, only really hearing about it earlier this year when Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord came to consoles. So going in, i didn't know what sort of RPG it was or what to expect, but the screenshots on the app store did help as i realized that it might be a first person camera style game were you navigate an area step by step.

It starts off with a tutorial that's simple but it gets the basic controls across and it gives us a little time of using the them before the twist happens and we start the game proper! Then, around 8 minutes into the game we're greeted with an extra data download scenario. i'm not a fan of these and Wizardry Variants Daphne has good and bad points about this. the bad point is that for those who download the game, start it to check for a download and find there isn't one, they're going to find out that there's extra download once they've left Wi-fi. most games with extra data do it before the game starts, having it around 8 minutes into gameplay is different and maybe not something mobile players will be used to. on the other hand, the way it's incorporated into the story is brilliantly done and not only that they have smartly covered up the extra download with a questionnaire that helps with creating your character. my character creation was done just moments before the download finished so i got to see some of the trailer that runs afterwards. it's a risky move having such a different extra data download section and i commend the devs for trying it. but i can't help but thing that letting players download it from the start, before the game starts, would also be an option.

Another one of these is seemingly the inability to change the game from right handedness to left hand. i played most of this video with just my right hand and it feels like the game's been cleverly designed around mobile play with a single hand. so not having an option to switch things up from right to left does seem a little weird. Another odd choice is how the text and speech are done. i was surprised by how much of the game is voiced, but when you start the text appears in the bubbles far slower than how it's spoken. it's so much slower i started to get frustrated by it and it really slowed down the gameplay. i think this needs to be clearer in the options or even something that we can choose before it starts, like the handedness i mentioned earlier.

Other than those mostly small things, the game is great. in a way for me, surprisingly so. for how good i thought this game was, i'm surprised that i've heard no one talking about it. i thought the music was great, from the background stuff to the fighting music, it was all nice to listen to. the controls are simple and accessible, to the point where the game's basic tutorial was actually all i needed. gameplay is also simple to understand and graphically it was great. there's some fantastic art, in game graphics, and i actually thought some of the character art was the best looking stuff in the game.

This video is longer than most Mobile Friday videos because the story grabbed me. it's a fantastic first hour with an very early twist to keep our attention and we were in two different areas. i wanted to see what happened next and something kept happening. there's our first story, our second story, what ever happened to our companion, what happened to the king, and the overarching story of what happens every 100 years. 

One nice thing i didn't know was in the game was it's Gacha mechanic. like most good mobile games, they found a way to have one if Wizardry Variants Daphne that fits into the game's story. our character has an ability and we pick up bones early on. by the end of the video we find a place where we can use both and there we have new party members. in a way it's a little strange, but the video we get to watch as it happens is unlike any other gacha i've seen and yet it all fits into the game we've been playing perfectly.

I highly recommend Wizardry Variants Daphne. i think it's an approachable RPG for newcomers, it's well designed for mobile gamers, and for someone like myself who's never played a Wizardry game i never felt like i was missing something. you'll need to play to get the extra data download out of the way, but after that it makes a fantastic commuting game.

Version 1.2.0 Played.

Mobile Friday - Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC - A Blockchain Clicker With Cool Style And Poor Tutorial

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC from Drecom. I Played this on my iPhone14Pro, but it's also out on Android and PC via Chrome.

This is much more complicated than i expected. i didn't fully read the App store page for Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC, so i went in just expecting a dungeon crawling clicker game. But after recording the video and looking more into it, there's much more about this game than i thought. But, in a way, this confusion is also a criticism of the game that in the near hour i played in this video it failed to convey what it actually is, but it's also praiseworthy because what Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC also is didn't get in the way of gameplay.

The gameplay is what i came to the game for. in the App store what caught my attention and why i wanted to play it was the claim that "...you can play endlessly with strategy and taps." i wanted to see how that would work. The game starts like many clickers i've played, with one character on screen doing damage and my clicks doing damage. what's striking is the character art and the style of the game. the backgrounds work well with the theme of the game, the monsters all look interesting, but our character design did remind me of My Sims Heroes with how square the heads are.

But it works and it does look great. the U.I is a little busy and cramped. One reason is that this game doesn't make full use of the iPhone screen. It's a little surprising how little it uses. On one hand it might be to make it easier to click on the screen where the action is taking place, but i would also say that it kinda works with the top of the screen and sets the mood for a dungeon game. But i feel the bottom of the screen could be used better.

Another issue the U.I has is that it isn't fully explained. The game does have a tutorial that, for the most part, offers help through to the end of the first play through. But then it stops just as more icons appear. I also started to unlock new things and there wasn't even a simple finger pointing, like it had been doing. I'd argue that the tutorial needs to continue for the second play through to explain not just all the new things but also to help offer some reminders on how the gameplay loop works.

The loop is typical of a clicker game. in Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC you go into a dungeon and defeat monsters. you earn money from it which can be spent making your clicks more powerful or you can make your heroes stronger. Like typical clickers, there becomes a point where you're unable to make any further progress. In Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC, you're meant to leave the dungeon and go back to town. this will earn you rewards which can help improve your team for the next dive into the dungeon.

What i noticed about how Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC differed from other clickers i've played is that in this whole video i never found anything that would click for me. Nor did the game indicate that there would be anything that would be click for me. there was only the damage my team mates were doing.

But there's a whole another aspect of the game that it only teased when i played it. i wondered why it wanted me to make a wallet, but i thought it was perhaps something to do with an in-game bank mechanic that it failed to tell me about, like how in some roguelikes you're able to bank money. But actually it has something to do with the Blockchain! 

It's surprising how this unique feature of the game was never explicitly mentioned in my video. It's possible that i just didn't reach where the blockchain stuff becomes a part of gameplay. But i would argue that after an hour and a couple of returns to the town, it should've been part of my game already. it feels like a pacing issue or possible a balancing issue. It could also be a tutorial issue, or a lack of a tutorial issue.

As i didn't come across the blockchain in the game, i don't fully understand it. You'd have to go to Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC's website, like i did, to discover what it's all about. Or try to. the website tells but rarely explains the how, why, or how it's incorporated into gameplay. It could be a translation issue, but it's frustrating as a casual player how it's not incorporated into gameplay, not explained or detailed in a "casual" way.

So, as a clicker Eternal Crypt – Wizardry BC is fine. it has some nice graphics, but there are many aspects of it that haven't been detailed so it feels like i'm not getting the full experience of the game. this is doubly true when it comes to the blockchain also not being detailed or part of gameplay. It is a new release, but even the roadmap on their website doesn't make it clear if improvements to the basic elements of gameplay are coming.