So after my previous post about the lack of Location-based games, a friend of mine has mentioned a game which is attempting this. The game is Shadow Cities by Grey Area.
To know a bit more about the game, there's a review written by Beau Hindman titled "MMObility: Shadow Cities confuses the heck out of me." In the post, he covers a fair bit of his own experiences with the game and why he finds the game confusing.
As for this post, I'd like to give you an analysis the game play experience from my perspective as a player. I will then also try to give reasons for them from the perspective of game design in an attempt to explain why something is good or bad. Now to be sure, there were bugs in the interface and the game functions but I won't get into that as those are to be expected, so I will only touch upon the game design issues. (The list is far from exhaustive, but I try to include anything that came to mind. I'd welcome any additional inputs from your own experience with the game.)
First, I do need to mention that I am playing the game from Thailand where practically nobody knows about this game. In fact, within the game itself it is an "Unknown Realm" I don't know exactly what this means to the game-play but I'm sure it can't be good.
Positives:
Getting Players to Sign Up
Before you are shown the character creation screen, you're presented with a neat usage of the touch screen to interact with the player. You're required to place your thumb onto the screen to start your process of initiation, where text on the screen welcomes you. As we all know, there's a big drop off point between the number of players who launches an app and the ones that actually successfully completes the account creation process. People just hate filling out forms if they don't see a reason to do so. This introduction screen had enough interaction in it to hook you so you will accept the terms of use and fill in the signup form. It's simple and does its job. Well done.
Gesture-based Combat
In Shadow Cities, the players attack by casting spells and, to do that, the player draws a rune that matches the spell onto the screen. It was great being able to draw runes to cast spells. Their gesture recognition was well done. It helps give me the feeling that I am the one casting the spell, as opposed to if they asked me to press a "Cast" button. However, this does come with some problems (addressed below.)
Competitive Element
From the get go you're asked to choose a side during your character creation. It seems the depth of the competitive element is extensive: you can raid with your friends against another team, you can capture portals, you can plan attacks etc through chat channels. It's the deepest team competitive experience I've seen on the mobile device.
Social Element
The game quickly asks you to login to Facebook to see who else is playing, this is alway a great addition. They've also implemented the usual "Invite a Friend" for a reward (this is an optional progression task) but I don't normally invite people as I find it very annoying when others send me an invite, so this didn't work. They have also added an unusual extra, you are asked to nominate a "Guide" which will help you through the game. I assume that the "Guide" will get some sort of benefit for helping out newbies like me. This gets players talking and really improves the dynamic of the game. There are also communication channels where you can talk to other players to get help, which is nice.
Depth
From what I see so far there is a lot to do in the game. There's a bunch of spells to learn and master. As a character, you can upgrade your attributes which will do one of 4 things: increase your health, increase your mana, increase your spell power, and increase your defense. If I am not wrong, you can also go on raids, defend your territory, help others in your team etc. There's enough content here to last a while.
Negatives:
Learning Curve
The learning curve is very steep in this game. There were quite a lot of text, I read most of it, but I can't say I remember everything. Not everything on the interface is actually explained up front. You have to feel your way around quite a bit to figure out how the game works. Maybe I'm repeating what Hindman mentioned in his article but it's worth reiterating. If you have to create a post on the game website called "Chapter 1: The One Minute Mage" that actually takes 5-10 minutes to read so that all the intricacies of the game is explained, then maybe it is too complex.
I would have to mention though that the developers did try very hard to hold your hand when you start. There was a short tutorial for your first combat, your first healing spell, and how mana works, however once I gained my level I saw that I actually have 5-6 spells... but I have no idea how to make use of most anything past my initial 2. This was frustrating. I believe this is due in a large part by how the interface is designed so I'll leave that to its own section.
User Interface
The interface of the application needs big improvement at the moment... I believe there is a need for a consolidated menu screen... however that will definitely take away from the ARG element a little bit. However, since Shadow Cities is already billing themselves as a game, I don't see this as a big issue. Currently the developers are trying to use the map screen ALSO as the menu screen, this is where you can access the Quest screen, the Character Screen, the Power Screen, and the Communications Screen. This is also where all the combat happens. They're showing your health, your mana, and your "use potion" button. ALL of this is being crammed into the most important screen in the game! I believe this is just too much. There were instances when I'm trying to quickly cast my combat spell but inadvertently scroll the map. Or trying to scroll the map but instead open the Communications Screen (this is due to using a swipe gesture.)
I would advocate for a menu screen or some kind and free up some space + interaction from this screen.
Combat is not "Awesome"
At least for the first few levels, my combat was really repetitive. After the initial fascination with gesture controls, my interest beings to drop as the combat mainly consisted of selecting a target, pulling down the casting board, draw a Z, rinse and repeat. Maybe it's just me, but having to keep pulling down the casting board every time I want to draw my spell is just plain annoying. I'm not even motivated to kill random monsters that aren't part of my quest because I don't want to deal with the combat system... I'm not sure how they would get around that other than having a permanent area on the screen to draw... since they did settle on the decision for you to be able to pan the map around with your finger.
Also, immersion was a bit of an issue. Sure the on-screen effects were nice and the sound were well-done, but I'm just not engaged. I'm just not convinced that a combat is actually taking place... maybe it's also because I was sitting in my living room.
Competitive Element Implementation
It was way too soon to ask the players to choose a side from the beginning when there's no apparent reason to choose one. Reading the description of each side doesn't tell you what difference (game wise) it would make. In fact, after getting into the game, I don't think the sides matter, it just determines who will be your team mates... there are no difference in ability or progression what-so-ever. In this case, there's really no reason for sides really...
I would have preferred that each sides have their pros and cons and that they are introduced later, more naturally within the story. Then when a choice is presented to the player maybe at level 5, the choice matters.
Also, once I am in the game (maybe it's because I'm alone in the city) there's nobody on the other team! Am I supposed to do something?
Can't Progress at all When Stationary
I'm playing this from home mostly, but I can't even finish my missions because there's not enough random enemies to complete it at this time. I'm tasked to kill 3 water spirits, but after killing 2 there is no more. I had to reset the game a few times to get the water spirit to show up. This breaks the pace of the game. In fact, if I wasn't writing this review, I would have gave up and stopped playing.
Also I am now asked to dominate some sort of tower, however I have no idea what that means and where to do it. Looking around my map and in "Cloudview" (which btw, I have to discover by myself) I did not see anything resembling my next task... at this point, I've stopped playing.
Alone in Your City?
If you're the only one playing this game in your city, this game really falls flat. I don't know if I can comment much here, but as mentioned above, I can't complete the tasks I need to progress so I'm missing something. I don't think this game can be played solo and that is a big draw back. A game should be fun solo but better with others, something should be done about this area of the game.
(Apparently I can teleport to another location, I found this out playing around with the interface... but this was not explained or introduced either.)
Conclusion
To be fair, I think it's worth mentioning that Shadow Cities is probably one of the best attempt at location-based games that I know of right now despite the harsh criticism. There's definitely room for improvement though. It's still too early to tell how well the guys at Grey Area will continue to improve on this game. They have a great shot at really making this into a great game if they address the issues that I mentioned above.
Also, if anybody has other examples of this type of game, I would love to hear about them and make a proper comparison. This way we can see what works, what doesn't, and what are some of the ways different teams address the nuaces of Location-based Gaming.
If you'd would like to read more posts like this in the future, you can follow me on Twitter @jamornh.