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There is no shortage of roguelikes on mobile, and great ones at that. I feel like I'm writing about some new hotness in this space every other month. It's a pace that feels unsustainable, and yet, the hits keep coming. Slice & Dice is yet another incredible run-based dungeon-crawler that is more than capable of standing out in front of its excellent competition.

Rolling deep

In Slice & Dice, you “control” a party of adventurers as they battle their way through a set of increasingly challenging combat encounters. You do this by rolling dice for your team and choosing to lock in specific abilities before using them to deal damage, buff your team, etc. Each of your party members has unique sides on their individual die that is determined by their particular class and the items you have equipped on them.

After each battle, your party gets stronger through gaining a choice of item or a somewhat random offer to evolve one of your heroes' classes. Through these layers of chance, you are supposed to try and create some degree of order that allows you continue to survive fights and forge on. But, if you don't, there's always next time, and chances are good your next run will have some new unlockable to play with.

Variable variety

It may seem like Slice & Dice is a total crapshoot given how chance-based every facet of its gameplay is, but if that was the case I probably would have stopped playing it well before writing this review. There's some design magic at work here that I can't quite put my finger on, but you never feel totally out of control or unable to right the ship on any given run of Slice & Dice. At the same time, you always feel like you're on a razor's edge, as one bad turn or roll can also spell disaster and stop even the most promising runs short.

If at any point you do feel like you're starting to master (and grow weary of) the game, Slice & Dice offers a ton of different ways to prevent that. Between different hero classes, new modes, harder difficulties, and several other modifiers you can mix and match together, there is a whole lot of game to explore that will feel fresh for a really long time. Oh, and if the prospect of playing Slice & Dice to unlock all of these things also sounds draining, there's a little check box in the settings menu that can just unlock everything for you.

Dice pocket

Slice & Dice is available on PC as well, but I can't imagine a better home for it than on mobile. The pacing of the combat and overall run structure fits incredibly well for on-the-go play, and layout of the action looks great in both portrait and landscape mode. The game doesn't have cloud saving for retaining progress between devices, but that doesn't feel all that important for a run-based game where unlocks can all be bypassed.

Something else nice about Slice & Dice is you don't have to take my word for all of this. You can try it out yourself for free and see what up to 12 fights of a run feel like, which should give you a really good sense of whether this game is for you and if you like it on mobile. If you decide you are all-in on it, a single $8.99 purchase unlocks the full game.

The bottom line

There's so much possibility space in Slice & Dice and the game is designed expertly to let you explore all of it on your own terms, all while delivering a super satisfying and strategic roguelike experience. There's not much else I could ask for from a game like this, except more ones like it, I guess.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/slice-and-dice-review/

Something I had an epiphany about last year was why so many visual novels go out of their way to lose focus or just get a bit goofy with their storytelling thanks to PARANORMASIGHT's deficiencies in that department. Methods: Detective Competition has no problem doing this while being strange from the jump, and it makes for a jarring entry into what ulimately becomes a charming adventure, at least for being the opening chapter in a larger series.

Mysterious mystery competition

As its name implies, Methods: Detective Competition, is a story about super sleuths who have been gathered together to try and decide who is the greatest detective of them all. This creates a structure where you are regularly investigating staged crime scenes and using deductive reasoning, but as you go you also start to peel back layers about the competition, the people in it, and why it's being organized to begin with, which ends up serving as a larger mystery and driving force for the game.

If you've played any visual novel games before, the gameplay should be entirely familiar. For the most part, you are simply tapping to advance dialog between characters, though for investigation segments you may need to tap on points of interest or make dialog choices to lock in your deductions. There is a fail state for arriving at the wrong conclusions, but this game makes it very easy to reverse course and change your choices to keep the story flowing.

Curious characters

The plot setup is not the only aspect of Methods: Detective Competition that feels odd. Every character in this game is full of quirks and mannerisms in a way that is borderline offputting at first, but–by the time I finished this first game's twenty chapters–they turn into endearing qualities that also lead to some legitimately funny moments.

To match these strange personality traits, all of the game art is similarly cartoonish, with many characters often seeming misshapen or even warped. I wouldn't say this style really suits my tastes, but it does a great job of meshing with the writing style and solidifying the overall tone of the game, while also making it visually distinct from any number of other visual novel mysteries with more conventional character art.

Playing the long game

Methods: Detective Competition is a port of a PC game that came out 2020, and it's more or less the same game with one important distinction: This release on iOS is just the first part of a much larger game. As noted in the App Store description, buying this app version for $2.99 grants access to the first 20 chapters of a game that spans 100 chapters total.

For the price, this is definitely worth it, but it is important to note that there isn't a satisfying close to playing this game as a standalone experience. By the end of Methods: Detective Competition, I have more questions than answers about the mystery competition. Luckily for Erabit Studios, I am interested in seeing where things go from there.

The bottom line

Methods: Detective Competition is an enjoyable and intriguing opening to a much larger narrative that will come to iOS in the future. If this game is any indication, though, I can expect more zany reveals, clever mini-mysteries, and some pretty funny jokes and bits that are all broken down into manageably-sized chapters.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/methods-detective-competition-review/