For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Just One Shot: Idle RPG from developers Highbrow, on my iPhone 14 Pro.
From the iOS App Store page, i had one idea about how this game would play and i was wrong. the name implied that we only had one bullet to complete a task. turns out, One Bullet refers to an in-game mechanic where we charge up a power bar by defeating enemies with one bullet. This also means that my hopes for an interesting story also didn't come to fruition. i don't think this game has a story, it just starts.
It is possible there is a story and i hadn't unlocked it. by the end of this video, there were many aspects of the game i had yet to unlock. i like this approach. instead of bombarding the player with menus and icons, the game slowly introduces them as we get stronger and complete quests. this meant that i never felt overwhelmed and i understood how each thing we unlocked worked with the existing game mechanics.
This does not mean i think the game does a great job at explaining everything. there is a tutorial and after the initial stuff it reappears when we unlock something new. it's just that i don't think it's quite successful at the teaching part. you'll see that i wasn't totally sure how the spell book system worked other than it made me more powerful. i guess with Just One Shot: Idle RPG's simple mechanics, it's mostly easy to work out that most things make us stronger or help to make our equipment stronger.
The tutorial wasn't the only thing that was a little disappointing about playing Just One Shot: Idle RPG. it's from South Korean developers and unfortunately they haven't finished translating the game into English. it's mostly playable, but very noticeable when Korean characters appear. i was also disappointed with how poorly the UI has been implemented. the Dynamic Island hasn't been taken into account so there are times when names are not seen on my screen because they're under the Dynamic Island. at the bottom of the screen, the bar also blocks names. the iPhone 14 Pro also has rounded corners which meant i was often missing a letter or number from the stuff placed in the corners.
Just One Shot: Idle RPG is a good game. the art is great, the music was nice and not noticeably repetitive, and the mechanics are well tied into each other. i mostly played this game one handed which would make this a decent game to play whilst commuting. but the issues are numerous and noticeable. personally, until this game gets fixed it wouldn't appear on my top 5 games of the year. but it's fine to play as it is.
Version 1.3 Played.
