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The prospect of playing a free-roaming biking game that's focused on speed, precision, and stunts sounds like one of the worst matches for touch screen controls that I can imagine. This is precisely what Descenders is, and–unsurpsisingly–the controls are kind of troublesome. What is surprsing though is that my near constant fight to control the game's chaos has turned out to be a big reason why I keep coming back to it. There's something about the wild speed and structure of Descenders that makes it hard to put down, even in arguably its worst form factor.

Speed vs. survival

Descenders is a game about downhill biking. You control a cyclist and try to steer them effectively through various environments, some of which have carved dirt tracks and ramps, where others have no track at all. Your ultimate goal for each run is the same (make it to the finish), but you also receive a randomized sub-objective on each track that might ask you to perform specific stunts, finish the run in a certain amount of time, or complete the track without braking, among others.

Each track in Descenders only takes about a minute or so to complete, but they are connected in a web of tracks that you are supposed to move between before completing a “boss” track that lets you advance to a new region with tougher terrain and challenges. Your biker has a limited amount of health that you lose any time you wreck or wipe out, so a big part of Descenders is trying to balance your own survival with the speed and challenge of completing tracks and their objectives.

Bike hard or die trying

If this sounds a little bit like a roguelike, that's because it totally is. Descenders takes a well explored structure from more combat focused roguelikes like FTL or Slay the Spire and just drops it into a game more like SSX or Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. It's kind of genius, and works surprisingly well. Tracks are appropriately tough and tempt you into taking risks to earn things like crew members who can grant you new abilities and bonuses like better bike stability, higher jumping, etc. On top of that, tracks are procedurally generated but feature a lot of variety, including special challenges like first-person races, sponsor opportunities, and more.

Outside of this primary mode, Descenders also has a Free Ride Mode, different bike parks you can tool around in or compete for leaderboard ranks on, or even play multiplayer (though it kind of seems DOA. No players on release every time I've checked since). If you are playing tracks that other players online are currently riding, they may also pop into the environment, no matter which mode you are playing.

Touch and go

The action in Descenders can be harsh, fast, and unforgiving, but the whole thing works in large part because of how much granular control you have over your cyclist. In addition to basic steering controls, a second directional input allows you to flick in directions to jump, skid, or even wheelie your way around tracks. Essentially, you are given both control of your bicycle and the weight distribution of your character riding it, both of which you need to pilot effectively to make it through even some of the most basic challenges in Descenders.

The elephant in the room regarding these controls is obviously how they work using a touch screen device. In short, they definitely aren't great, particularly if you don't regularly play action games via touch. Even if you are comfortable with touch controls, there are times where you can lose track of how your thumb is dragging a virtual stick that can lead to accidental skids or trying to perform stunts unintentionally. These issues can and will be the reason for ending some runs sometimes. But, probably because it's easy to just hop back in and keep playing, I'm not bothered by them too much (though only if playing on a larger screen like an iPad). If this sounds like a deal-breaker, also just know that Descenders has full and perfect bluetooth controller support that sidesteps all control issues I just named.

The bottom line

Despite seeming like it shouldn't work on mobile devices, Descenders offers up such a fresh take on action sports games that it almost doesn't even matter. I can't say the App Store version is the best way to play it, but if it's the only way you'll end up spending time with this game, then it's well worth picking up.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/descenders-review/

It's always exciting when a game from Tinytouchtales releases. Since 2012, Arnold Rauers has been using this moniker to collaborate with artists to put out one of the most consistently praise-worthy lineups of releases you can find anywhere, particularly on the App Store. This is all a wind up to deliver the probably not-so-surprising news that Card Crawl Adventure, the newest game from Rauers et al, is yet another great card-based roguelike that is well worth playing.

Crawly thief

If you've played Tinytouchtales games before, the easiest way to describe Card Crawl Adventure is as a mashup of Card Crawl and Card Thief. If that doesn't mean anything to you, first: go play those games. Secondly, it essentially means that it's a card game where you build your own deck of cards based on a character class and mix that in with a dungeon deck to create a grid of face up cards you can trace a path through to activate abilities, defeat monsters, unlock treasure, and escape to your next challenge.

If that sounds really abstract and a little confusing, you'd be absoltely right to think so. Despite a reasonably coherent tutorial, Card Crawl Adventure's early-goings definitely feel like a trial by fire where you have to learn the precise nature of how a rich, interlocking set of ability types and systems interact the hard way.

Charmingly challenging

Even if you find yourself getting stopped early in your quest repeatedly, it's hard to fight the allure of trying again. Some of this magnetism certainly comes from Card Crawl Adventure's art style. More than that, though, the overall presentation of dungeon-crawling is so whimsically framed such that your adventures show you playing this card-based game across the table from the bosses and barkeeps contained within the decks, which is then set against the backdrop of a cozy tavern full of unique patrons ready to take a turn at the game.

Once you start clearing dungeons and have seen most of the card variety there is in the game, Card Crawl Adventure continues to open up and offer new challenges thanks to an achievement system, “Weekly Crawl” leaderboards, a “Cursed Mode,” and a unique scoring system that only celebrates how much gold you've managed to collect and not spend across your journey.

Valuable variety

Card Crawl Adventure is listed on the App Store as free with in-app purchases, and you can enjoy almost all of the modes I've named in this review without spending any money just fine. It is only when you want to permanently unlock access to any additional character classes beyond the Scoundrel, participate in the weekly leaderboard challenge, or gain access to an equippable item that makes the game get easier as you fail runs that you are asked to pay any money. All of these items are offered a la carte, so you can spend as much or as little as you want to get the exact unlocks you want.

There is plenty to play with using just the Scoundrel on the free journey to let you know if you want to pay to unlock more variety. These purchases are well worth their asking prices if you want a deeper experience with Card Crawl Adventure, but it's nice that the initial download is free so you can test out if you can decode the somewhat arcane rule system ahead of buying in to the experience.

The bottom line

Card Crawl Adventure is easily the most ambitious release from Tinytouchtales. As a result, it does ask you for quite a bit of patience and perhaps even some trial-and-error before you can really start to wrap your head around it. Once it does, though, Card Crawl Adventure is immensely rewarding, particularly if you opt to unlock everything it has to offer.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/card-crawl-adventure-review/