The big mobile gaming news out of GDC yesterday was that Epic has a new game coming to iOS and Android. It's called Battle Breakers, it's been soft launched in the Philippines, and someone got up early this morning to have a play on it.
That someone was me, and I've collected all the information you need to know about the game in this handy piece of informative yet exciting content. You're welcome. Send coffee.
What is it?
Battle Breakers is a free to play casual-ish RPG. Imagine if Minesweeper was simpler, yet also a bit more complex, and you're about a quarter of the way there.
You've got a team of cartoon heroes stood along the bottom of the screen. The rest of the level is made up of a grid of crystals. You tap on these crystals to clear them.
Under some of the crystals you'll find treasure or other useful items. Under some of them you'll find nothing. Under the rest you're going to find monsters that you need to beat the living snot out of.
Monsters!?! So there's fighting
There's a lot of fighting. Each different member of your team is a particular hue. Clearing gems of that hue powers them up. Enemies are certain colours as well, and there's a rock-paper-scissors style wheel of strength that means shades are stronger or weaker against each other.
Tapping on one of your characters will attack the currently selected enemy. Swipe on them and they'll perform a special move if they've got enough mana stored up. Once you've attacked with one character they need to wait a set number of rounds before they can do anything else.
The levels are split into a few screens-worth of challenge. Complete them all, usually by mashing a big boss on the last screen, and you'll receive all the loot and plaudits you've earned during the trek.
Is it like Infinity Blade?
No, it's nothing like Infinity Blade. In fact it's about as far from Infinity Blade as you can get while remaining in something that looks like the same genre.
Where in IB you're swipes and taps translate into specific attacks, here you're focusing on tactics. It's very free to play as well, although in the couple of hours I managed to get in before starting to type there was nothing that annoyed me about the f2p elements.
The visual style is far more reminiscent of Asian cartoons than the gritty browns and greys of Infinity Blade as well. This is a game designed to have a much broader appeal than the grim hacky slash of Chair and Epic's most famous foray into the mobile world.
When is it out?
Right now we only know that the game is coming later in the year for iOS, Android, and something called a PC (never heard of that myself). But if you're in the Philippines, or have an iTunes account registered in the Philippines, you can play it right now (and if you need to know how to set one of those up, Pocket Gamer has your back).
You can pre-register your interest in the game by following this link right here. You'll get a free hero when the game launches if you do that.
Is that it?
Yeah, I think so. Obviously if you've got any more questions feel free to stick them in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them.
And keep your eyes focused on AppSpy, where we'll be giving you all the juicy info on Battle Breakers in the weeks and months to come.
