Last week we went over to the ngmoco offices over in San Francisco to take a look at two of their new games coming to Android soon. The first is an interesting new RPG title called Skyfall which is just launching as a beta starting today. We got to sit down and play this game last week and it’s pretty unique.
Skyfall is an interesting title in how it was developed and how the game is played. When you log in to the game, you select which character you want to play as. You have a choice of three classes to choose from: Warrior, Rogue or Wizard. There is both a male and female version for each class as well. After you are all set up you jump right into the game with a bit of a tutorial quest line which takes about 5 minutes to complete. Once that’s done you jump right into the main storyline of the game.
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Movement is done in a rather unique way as you will be tapping on the map, which is broken up into tiles, and as you tap on each tile, more of the map is revealed to you. Along the way you’ll pick up quests and run into enemies you need to kill and even new towns and dungeons that you will have to explore. When you run into an enemy you will go to the combat screen which lets you use the various skills or weapons you have equipped to defeat said enemies.
Combat is a blend of action and turn-based combat styles. While you take turns between your attacks and the enemy’s attacks, when it is your turn you don’t just tap on a spell or weapon to attack but you also have a meter bar at the top, generally with a section in red which is your critical hit section. A slider moves along the bar and you need to stop it as close to the critical hit section as you can to do the most damage each round. Stopping right on the red section gives you a critical hit.
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Concept Art
By now you’ve noticed the layout for the game as well which is another unique feature. Your character is actually in a framed section on your screen instead of being some little dude on the map. As you equip new gear and weapons, they will appear int he character screen. Surprisingly, one would think that this would take up some valuable real estate on the screen but it actually works out rather well. To access your skills and gear you just need to tap on the inventory button and it will bring up everything in a tabbed layout. You can’t really see it in the screenshots but a lot of the graphics for the monsters, your character and the background are actually 3D graphics and not 2D.
Skyfall will also come with a similar multiplayer style as games like Gun Bros has where you can take a buddy along with you when you go into forests (think of these as mini dungeons) and dungeons to help you out. You can select a player to come with you while you’re in a town. Tapping on a character in town let’s you check them out which is rather neat as you can see the gear they have on.
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This will be a freemium title but the buying of in-game currency is completely optional and the things you can buy are minor items like rejuvenation potions and chest keys. It’s not poorly done like a lot of freemium games are where you can’t possibly get all the good gear without dropping real money like most of Glu’s newer titles. Chest kets can be found/earned throughout the game and chests are random drops from enemies which contain really good gear and items. You can also skip using a key and try to pick the lock although if you fail you will lose the chest.
There are a lot of things planned for the near future with Skyfall and the content will always be expanding which will give this almost unlimited replay value. Other features are also planned for the future such as crafting gear and possibly even enchanting type function like sockets in gear that you can put gems into in order to boost your gear’s power.
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Overall,, the game was pretty enjoyable to play and it does come with a pretty interesting storyline for those of you who enjoy a good storyline RPG title. Today Skyfall is launching it’s closed beta which you can sign up for. Of course you know how we are and we like to make sure at least some of our readers are guaranteed a spot in the betas we talk about, so if you use our special code when signing up for the beta and are one of the first 500 people to use it, you’ll be guaranteed a spot in the closed beta for Skyfall. The code word is DroidGamers which you enter as the special code when signing up.
Developer Website: ngmoco:)
Official Game Website: Skyfall
