On the weekend that just passed, the Action-RPG title that’s currently in development for mobile devices called Angel Stone went into a short closed beta period. If you managed to sign up for it, then there was a good chance you ended up being able to play the game. The closed beta period only lasted three days (Friday-Sunday) so people participating in it had to stuff as much gameplay time into it that they could in those three days.
[UPDATE: Thursday, July 30th – 2:22 AM] The day we have been waiting for is finally here! Angel Stone is finally available for Android devices. We were able to get in on the closed-beta, and we really enjoyed playing the game. If you want to check the game out, it is now available to download in the Google Play Store. Angel Stone is free to play, and does include in-app purchases, should you choose to take advantage of them. The link to download the game is at the end of this article.
Like we always try to do with as many games as possible, we got into the closed beta for Angel Stone as well in order to get some early hands-on time with this game, and to show it to everyone who didn’t get into the closed beta. So here’s what we experienced in the closed beta.
Hai there!
The Story
Angel Stone takes place during the End of Days, taking inspiration from the bible as well as other themes relating to Demons, Angels, and the end of the world. Angels are the only race that have been fighting for the survival of the human race against the Demons coming up from Hell. It was basically Angels versus Demons for most of the war, but as the Angels took causalities, their numbers started thinning out. When an Angel dies though, it leaves an Angel Stone behind, which contains that Angel’s divine powers. Possessing one allowed that human to use those powers, jumping into the war to help protect the remaining Angels while fighting off more Demons.
Players start off as a human with newly acquired powers. You’ll choose which one of the three classes you want to play as: Beserker, Gunslinger, and Shadow Mage. You’ll do a few ‘training’ missions to earn your spot in the human resistance, proving to them that you’re not just an expendable meat shield who will end up dead quickly. From there you you start really getting into the story and quests once those training missions are done.
Classes
There are three classes currently in Angel Stone as we just mentioned. The Beserker is your warrior class, dealing bigger damage and having good HP and defense but a bit more slow moving. The Gunslinger is a fast-paced DPS style of class that uses guns instead of more traditional style of weapons like swords. The Shadow Mage mixes the use of magic with some melee attacks, almost like a Shaman in other games. While they do use physical attacks, a lot of their abilities use magic.
Quests, Missions, and Loot
After you figure out what you want to play as, and have done your training missions, you venture out more on your own, albeit following the storyline of course. Each ‘world’ has a select amount of stages in it, and those stages can be replayed as many times as you like. This is especially handy if you are trying to farm materials for crafting. When you pick a stage that you want to go through, you’ll be presented with a rather unique option, which is the ability to pick which loot you want to have hopefully drop off the boss of that stage.
Choose your path and loot
This screen has 9 circles in it and you trace the path you want to go from start to end. Along the way you will be able to trace the line through your choice of possible loot drops. It starts off simple at first, giving you one or two options, but later on it will give you a few really nice choices including gear, ability orbs you might need to collect to unlock a new skill, gold, XP boost, and more. Sometime you’ll be able to snag a couple of those options when tracing your path, but you won’t be able to get everything.
Once you figure out the path you want to go, you start the quest and appear in the area that you’re going to venture forth in.
Gameplay
Playing a mission/quest in Angel Stone is almost like dungeon crawling in a Diablo-style of game. You are in a top-down isometric view point and you move your character around, following the route you’ve selected, and deal with the monster and demons that show up along the way. Eventually you will reach the end where that stage’s boss is and in order to beat that stage, you’ll need to beat that boss. Then you are ranked on your performance (ranks go from F=bad up to S=Super). Then your loot you’ve picked up is shown, and it’s back to town! One thing to note, you do have a time limit for each stage, and the faster you complete a zone, the better it helps in calculating your overall rank for that zone.
While battling it out with demons, you have two method of using your abilities. You can push the ability’s button you want to use on the right side of your screen, or you can use a swipe gesture in the middle of your screen to cast your ability. Whichever is easier and faster for you to do. The gestures aren’t anything fancy like shapes, just a simply up, down, left, or right will cast the corresponding ability. This is customizable with which ability you want mapped to each gesture.
Moving your character around each stage is where people that were in the closed beta had some strong opinions about. Movement is done using a tap-to-move system, which means tapping on the spot where you want your character to go. Some people found this to be just fine, while others felt that it was very static and wanted the ability to freely move about the stage, just like if you were using a virtual joystick. The tap-to-move system works good for this game, but admittedly I would have enjoyed moving around each stage a lot more if I had the ability to move about more freely. Hopefully the developers will at least add this option to the game, so players can choose which way they want to play the game. It could even come in the form of controller support for the more free movement. Either way though, it doesn’t break the game.
There is a stamina system in this game, but as you can see at the top of most screenshots, it is easy to have plenty of stamina to keep playing for long periods of time (represented by the Boot and numbers beside it at the top of your screen).
Skills and Abilities
Character in this game are fairly customizable. Of course you have your standard way of customizing them with the use of different weapons and armor, but you can also customize them with different skills and abilities. The way you unlock new skills or abilities is by collecting enough orbs of a particular skill in order to unlock it. Once it is unlocked, you can then level it up as you progress through the game, making it stronger with each additional level. In combat you can only have four skills available to use, so you can swap skills out for other ones that will help you out more before each stage.
Players can also have up to four passive abilities as well. These are unlocked the same way as your skills are, but unlike your skills which you can actively cast during combat, the passive skills are always in effect. For example, you could have a passive skill that add +2% (at its initial level) to your attacks, and this is always active since its a passive ability. These can also be leveled up to make them stronger.
There is also one spot available between your active skills and passive ones, and while I never got to add anything to it, I’m guessing it is for an ‘ultimate’ type of attack.
The Other Stuff
While you’re in town you can do a few different things. You can unlock new skills you may have collected enough orbs for, level up currently available skills, check your mail, add points to your character’s stats if you leveled up, and so on. The town is basically your main hub for all non-combat activities. This is also where you can jump into Guild related activities, check and collect your rewards for completed quests and achievements, and talk with other players. You can talk during combat, but generally isn’t a good decision to make for obvious reasons.
In the town is also where you can do crafting type activities. You can dismantle gear you’ve picked up or don’t use anymore for crafting materials, reinforce your current gear as well as enchant it eventually for added effects, and crafting completely new gear.
Players also receive bonus rewards for logging into the game consistently, mostly for either of the in-game currencies or extra stamina. Both currencies are used for stuff in-game, but most of that was disabled and not available for people to check out during the beta, so we can’t comment on what any of that is right now.
Overall
This was a closed beta, which means the developers will take the feedback from the players, make changes and tweak, possibly do another beta (probably an open beta though), and then release the game after more tweaking. So some of the stuff mention in our hands-on with Angel Stone could change before the game’s official release. However, with what we played in the closed beta, Angel Stone is a great looking game visually and the overall gameplay is pretty enjoyable. The main sticking point people have with this game is the tap-to-move system. It does work well for Angel Stone but having a more free movement system would probably be better.
As long as the free-to-play aspects (a.k.a IAPs) of Angel Stone remain fair, and not pay-to-win, this game will do good and should end up with a pretty big player base. No word yet on exactly when this game with officially launch, but we will keep everyone updated on that, whether it’s another beta or a straight up official launch.
Official Website: Angel Stone
