Kiribbean’s Top 4 Menial Mobile Games
My interest in mobile games is somewhat of a recent development. As a teenager, I dabbled in Apple’s library with my then-shiny Ipod, but no particular experience stuck with me. It wasn’t until adulthood that I found myself frequently browsing the Android mobile scene through Google Play. In a flip-flop from my childhood, I pass more idle time on my phone and tablet than any other handheld console.
Typically, I gravitate towards free-to-play mobile titles that can shave off thirty minutes or more a session. This often means progression is slow and repetitive, but that’s not inherently bad. A good mobile game will make that half hour zip by with solid and overall fun mechanics.
Of course, anyone who has spent even five seconds in either storefront is well aware of the sheer amount of garbage littered about.
In my search for great time killers, I’ve also wasted my life on sour experiences. In the span of a few years, I can pinpoint four dastardly awful mobile games I had the misfortune of playing. For me, these four are the definition of a slog, too lazy to do anything other than entice real money out of the player.
Originally, the aim was to list five horrible games, but to my surprise I could only list four. As compensation, I’ll open with a couple mobile titles that (mercifully) didn’t quite make the cut.
Case A: Jurassic World: The Game
Of all the games featured in this article, Jurassic World was played the least. I dropped it within a week. For this reason, I felt my experience wasn’t conclusive enough to rank it among the other candidates. However, it still doesn’t change my negative outlook of the game.
At its core, Jurassic World: The Game is a bog-standard farming simulator, but with dinosaurs instead of plots of land. Requiring less interactivity than a Tamagotchi, you farm food for your dinosaurs to make them stronger. As you complete various quests and menial tasks, you’ll unlock special DNA Points to unlock more dinosaurs (and continue the cycle, as expected).
Your beefed-up units are then pitted against other dinosaurs in full 3D arena matches, be it versus another player or the game’s built-in AI. The combat consists of a simple but effective rock-paper-scissors-like system. It’s a fight of anticipation and luck over how many resources the enemy will place into attacking, defending, and/or storing extra energy (which carries over into the next turn). These mechanics aren’t particularly deep, but they’re engaging enough for a short-session mobile game.
What actually broke my interest in Jurassic World: The Game was something I observed in the few dinosaurs I collected. Every single dinosaur that shared the same body type (e.g. all bipedal carnivores, all pterosaurs, etc) used the exact same animations and sound effects. This meant that my Carnotaurus walked, talked, and (except for some basic stat differences) played exactly the same as my Tyrannotitan.
From a technical perspective, I get why the developers did this. Recycling animations for 3D models is an excellent way to keep your game’s file size down. Consequently, it also strips the characters of any identity. But as a character artist and animator, that’s simply inexcusable. If a monster-collecting game’s titular characters lack any unique flair, I find it endlessly distracting, and it detracts from my overall experience.
Ultimately, since I spent so little time delving into all of Jurassic World’s features, I decided to leave it unranked in my countdown. My sole reason for dropping it was for aesthetic reasons.
Case B: Summoners War
Ironically, I don’t think Summoners War is that bad (despite being in a “worst of” article). I’d even recommend it to people whom I believe fit within its niche audience.
Various Harpu that can be collected with their base stats listed
Summoners War is a surprisingly balanced and flexible monster collect-a-thon (from what little I saw, anyways). The game’s roster of unique characters is rather small, but almost every monster has a palette swap that represents the Fire, Water, Wind, Light, or Dark elements. On top of this, none of the variants have quite the same stats or playstyles as each other. Their subtle differences offer an impressive array of options when building teams.
For me, Summoners War’s biggest sin isn’t its core concept. I’m actually annoyed with the agonizing grind needed to make any meaningful progress.
Unless you pay real money to speed things up, obtaining new monsters and strengthening them is an arduous task. Most of my time playing Summoners War involved rotating between the same ten or so monsters. Building my catalogue to be flexible took more effort than I was willing to put in.
There’s definitely potential in Summoners War, but I’m not invested in it enough to reach that potential.
And now, to the list proper…
#4: Animal Crossing Pocket Camp
On the surface, Pocket Camp is brilliant. It’s a streamlined, free-to-play version of Animal Crossing for mobile devices. The franchise has always required players to wait: for new events, stores to restock their shelves, seasonal bugs and fish to appear, among other things. Animal Crossing’s formula excels in a free-to-play environment, where players are already used to being patient with other games on the market.
Best of all, Pocket Camp improves upon its arguably most important concepts: Villagers, furniture, and other cosmetics.
As players make friends with the many cutesy animal Villagers, they can actively choose who stays at their customizable campsite. The looming threat of a favorite Villager suddenly leaving is nonexistent here.
As for furniture and clothes, they can be outright crafted with construction materials. While Pocket Camp still features time-exclusive loot, the player can otherwise unlock a vast catalogue to build cosmetic items whenever they desire. This takes off a lot of pressure present in other Animal Crossing titles. If, for instance I wanted to complete the Rococo furniture set, I could collect the necessary materials to build it, rather than force myself to check Tom Nook’s store every morning (or cheat the game outright) for part of the set.
Pocket Camp greatly benefits from its streamlined approach to the usual Animal Crossing formula. Unfortunately, “streamlined” also means “gutted-out husk of the original games.”
First and foremost, the campsite can’t be expanded, but your character’s camper can. The campsite is where all your Villagers hang out, and is where most other players will view your interior design work. The camper stands in for your character’s house from previous Animal Crossing titles, but I question if anyone will honestly visit it. Even with my high-speed Internet, loading my own camper (let alone someone else’s) requires anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds to load. And if I want to view the camper’s second floor (yes, that’s a thing), it forces me into another loading screen.
The area with the most decorative space isn’t worth bothering to furnish because of this. Interior design is a key point to playing Animal Crossing, making it endlessly frustrating to be stuck with such a restricted playmat in the campsite.
Pocket Camp’s one-two punch comes from its ugliest feature: Loot Cookies. I tried to be optimistic with these items. The flashiest furniture and clothes are found exclusively in these loot boxes by another name. They (of course) require a premium “Leaf Ticket” currency to purchase, but I figured I could slowly earn it in-game. It quickly became apparent just how impossible that job was to accomplish. Leaf Tickets are given out in trickle amounts, far from enough to get a Loot Cookie without spending real money outright.
Loot Cookies take months to rotate their prizes, but there’s no way to omit or obtain reasonable compensation for duplicate items. You can guarantee an item with Stamp Cards, but one is earned every 10 Loot Cookies, with many rare items requiring upwards of 5 completed cards to trade. Add the upward struggle to resist buying Leaf Tickets, and the whole feature becomes downright disgusting. It feels like Nintendo did everything in their power to force players to spend money without having to drop the “Free” label on their game.
This may all sound ridiculous to get worked up over. Loot Cookies only offer cosmetic items, not in-game advantages over other players. Unfortunately, Animal Crossing is literally all about cosmetic items. In this case, Loot Cookies are actively taking away from the core experience. If Leaf Tickets weren’t such a commodity, I’d feel perfectly fine with Loot Cookies. But because they’re gatekeeping the chance for content, Pocket Camp stands as the worst Animal Crossing I’ve ever played.
As an aside, I encourage anyone who wants to dip their toes into Animal Crossing (while remaining portable) to toss money into a 3DS and Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I consider it a must-play out of the franchise so far. If the 3DS looks too expensive for you, go for an original DS/DS Lite and a copy of Wild World. Its graphics have aged horribly, but its experience is far more complete than anything Pocket Camp has to offer.
#3: Merge Dragons!
When I first played Merge Dragons, I was led to believe it’d be a simple yet challenging puzzle game or real-time RPG. Everything in its world can be enhanced with a Match-3 system, where movement is only restricted by “corrupted” tiles on each level. With your alliance of dragons, you harvest flowers for hearts that replenish life to the once dead patches of land.
It’s a solid concept. Unfortunately, it turns out to be an exercise in futility.
In the right hands, Merge Dragons’ gameplay loop could be fast-paced, or at least engaging. Instead, it boils down to double-tapping flowers hundreds of times to force your dull-witted dragons to harvest life hearts and heal corrupted land sliver by sliver. Most of the gameplay is simply waiting to get access to merge another 3 objects.
Some levels can have evil “Zomblins” present in them (get it? It’s “zombies” merged with “goblins”; two overdone concepts in one!). However, they don’t pose any real threat. Your dragons are invincible, so the most a Zomblin will do is re-corrupt a patch of dirt, forcing you to double-tap flowers even more to regain “lost” progress.
Failure was never a concern for me, nor was there any pressure to build a strategy of any kind. Merge Dragons is a fundamentally broken puzzle game because there aren’t any puzzles to be found.
Screenshot from Merge Dragons! Google Play page, because my save file was apparently wiped when I uninstalled this junk.
The only other goal present in Merge Dragons is to build what I call the “Trophy Room.” It’s supposed to be a hub world between missions, but it’s little more than another area to do more of the same. The Trophy Room allows you to merge objects, harvest flowers, and expand the available land… so you can merge more objects, harvest flowers, and expand the available land.
Many of the objects I found aren’t even productive. Mushrooms, for instance simply spit out smaller versions of themselves so they can be merged. Why do I even need to collect them?
I suppose I could sell the unproductive items for gold, but their value is a pittance compared to how rapidly other props burn through my reserves. As such, I simply kept those tier 5 mushrooms, leaving them to clog my Trophy Room with more tiny mushrooms.
There’s one more “bonus” feature in the Trophy Room that surprised me in its ballsiness. In this room only, all of your dragons have stamina meters. This means they can harvest flowers and other plants a few times before requiring a period of rest. My largest dragons had the stamina to perform a whopping three actions before taking hours to replenish their meters. It’s a shameless ploy to fish real money out of impatient players in order to “speed up” progress. Progress – may I remind – that is ultimately pointless in the Trophy Room.
Aside from progressing to the next level, there’s no real motivation to accomplish anything in Merge Dragons. At one point, I was using this game to lull myself to sleep; it’s that boring. I’m glad that Merge Dragons is free to play, but my time with it sure made me feel every second pass by.
#2: Monster Legends
Imagine a bog-standard farming simulator, but your collected materials go towards a genuine, arguably engaging turn-based competitive RPG. A farming RPG with hundreds of collectible monsters that you pit against the enemy’s team. This is the simplest form of Monster Legends.
In addition to standard RPG elements, Monster Legends includes methods to enhance your creatures and attune them for your perfect team composition. Runes can be built and equipped to your monsters to alter any of their stats. With the right equipment, a once fragile monster can become surprisingly durable, or a well-rounded monster’s offensive capabilities can skyrocket.
Monsters can also be strengthened through “Cells,” which are acquired from recycling their respective monster. Cells are a great feature for the inevitable duplicate monsters you’ll collect on your journey. They not only power-up your monster, but they also break level caps, in turn unlocking more potential for them.
(Side note: while collecting screenshots for this article, I learned that Monster Legends added “Relics” at some point, which offer even more options for your monsters. Unfortunately, I have long since quit the game and have no interest looking into the feature. But for completeness reasons, I’ll mention that it exists here.)
At its core, Monster Legends isn’t the most groundbreaking RPG in existence, but it can still be fun. Unfortunately, it’s also tainted with scumbag monetization practices.
Monster Legends is absolutely brutal to casual players and those who aren’t “Whales” or “Dolphins.” Again, this sounds like a no-brainer for a free-to-play game, but I draw the line when the only way to obtain the newest, most powerful monsters is to buy them for twenty goddamn dollars (or more) each.
“Ah yes, I’d like to purchase enough gems for Lilysha for the totally reasonable price of TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS?!”
Most of these monsters can be bought outside of time-sensitive sales, but for two to four times their listed sale prices. To add salt to the wound, a few “VIP” monsters are literally unobtainable unless you fork over real money. And of course, these monsters have tangible advantages in battle. Who needs to balance a competitive RPG when there are easy cash grabs?
And yes, thanks to my addictive personality, I did end up buying one of these overpriced bits of data. Say hello to Sethlans the Tryon, a three-headed chicken dragon. I love him, but honestly would have preferred to keep that twenty dollars.
I could go into detail about breeding, event maps, and upgrading runes, but I don’t think it’s worth it at this point. The mechanics all follow the same theme present in this article; they’re all absurdly luck-based, tedious, and ultimately boring to drudge through. There are ways to make grinding in RPGs fun, but Monster Legends is nowhere close to fun in that department.
A few years ago, I attempted to write a review for Monster Legends when I had first played it. The essay underwent three rewrites before I gave up in frustration. I kept trying to find an angle on the good parts, but would always crash into a wall with how many asterisks had to be placed next to those good points. It’s impossible to talk about Monster Legends without bringing up its laundry list of manipulative, asinine caveats.
The only good thing to come out of Monster Legends is its impressive collection of decent character designs. I may consider writing Character Critiques for this game. But outside of that, I don’t ever want to touch this game again.
#1: Yo-kai Watch Puni Puni (Formerly “Wibble Wobble” in America)
This one’s going to be painful…
I’m actually addicted to Puni Puni. I played the American version for roughly a year and a half, and rushed to create a Japanese account once the former was discontinued in April 2018. I can’t get enough of the characters that can be collected, and its gameplay is satisfying.
However, Puni Puni is a game I will never recommend to anyone. Out of all the games featured in this article, I feel this one eclipses the rest.
Yo-kai Watch Puni Puni is a simple Match-2+ game where your chosen Yo-kai appear as dumpling-shaped “Puni” (a Japanese onomatopoeia for “squishy”). They aren’t restricted to a rigid grid, so they freely fall and squish around like Jello in a circular board. It’s a much looser Bejeweled in this sense.
As you connect and pop Puni, your Yo-kai fight the opposing team in real time. Larger Puni help quickly charge your allies’ “Soultimate” meters to unleash a super attack, as well as contribute to the Fever Gauge. Upon activation, Fever Time grants the player 10 seconds to rack up as many points as possible, dealing raw damage divided among all enemies on-screen. These mechanics add a layer of real-time strategy to Puni Puni on top of its simple puzzle-like structure.
Unfortunately, for all the engaging elements in Yo-kai Watch Puni Puni, it fundamentally exists to make you chase nothing but a number.
Simply put, high scores mean everything in Puni Puni. Money and experience gained at the end of battle rely entirely on your score. This means you’ll need the strongest Yo-kai possible to efficiently grind for the most important loot. Furthermore, this means higher-ranking Yo-kai are objectively better than others.
I’ll give a quick example to illustrate this problem. Komane (pictured above, left) has a Soultimate that creates exploding orbs, dealing 33 base damage when popped. However, Komasan S’s Soultimate (right) does the exact same thing, but for 35 base damage. The latter Yo-kai also has more HP and Attack than Komane. There is literally no argument over which one is the superior option.
Simply put, there’s actually a “wrong” way to play Puni Puni. If you’re not using Rank S or higher Yo-kai, you’ll struggle to make any meaningful progress. This crushes a lot of the charm of collecting the featured characters. If a Yo-kai isn’t at least an A Rank, I think to myself, “Eh, I don’t care if I don’t befriend it,” which is weird to say for a game where I should want to “catch them all.”
And of course, this game also features a “Gacha” system with two separate and expensive currencies. The best Yo-kai are locked behind a paywall with unfavorable odds to possibly, but not definitively obtain. Players are quickly thrown into a nasty psychological loop of, “I need better Yo-kai, but I need money to use the gumball machine, but I need better Yo-kai to get money faster so I can use the gumball machine to…”
It’s a little embarrassing when I can defend Monster Legends for at least offering individual characters outright for those willing to pay their absurd price tags. I could spend hundreds of dollars in Puni Puni and still not get what I’m looking for.
I positively adore Yo-kai Watch, but I cannot in good faith ever recommend Puni Puni – the most unbalanced, punishing, and grind-heavy mobile game I’ve ever played – to anyone.
UPDATE 2021:
I’ve long since abandoned the game, but follow a Twitter account that documents new Yo-kai and events as they happen. Not only was a “Z Rank” – a tier above SSS – introduced just before I quit, but there’s also a “ZZ Rank.” Naturally, these bloated tiers of powerful characters are even harder to obtain than before. The lack of balance in this game is insane.
