Overview
Castle Creeps Battle is a mobile PVP Arena with a pretty innovative drag and drop combat system. They mix the classic collectible card style with the “Drag and Drop” raids of Clash of Clans. You play your “Cards” by dragging them from your hand and dropping them into a 3D arena, where their effects come to life and join the brawl.
Their monetizations methods are a bit strong, I’m hoping this gets better after early access, but the game is really worth it. I will give you a few tips so free users have a better time trying it out.
Price: Freemium
Size: 99M
Genre: PVP Arena
Developed by: Outplay Entertainment Ltd
Reviewed on Android.
Download link: Play Store.
Gameplay
Castle Creeps Battle is completely PVP after the tutorial, so you better pay attention to those first easy matches. Your goal is to take down your opponent’s castle and protect yours; to achieve this you’ll have the usual elements of a collectible cards game, like Hearthstone.
Your Champion
As your last line of defense and with a unique special skill, you can use it without “Mana” but with a cooldown.
Units
Your soldiers to advance towards your enemy defenses and fight until they die and their souls go back where they came from… Your deck. There are many classes and special skills that make strategy focus on combat. For example, a melee fighter can’t attack a flying unit and rushers that just ignore aggressive enemies and run blindly to the castle.
Spells
Like every collectible card game, besides soldiers, there are special magic abilities with short bursts of power to surprise your enemy.
Outplay have integrated usual MOBA mechanics, like defensive towers and the minion AI. The result is an amazing arena that takes the classic card game to a whole new level with a very friendly interface.
Now the marketing issues, Castle Creeps Battle focus their freemium monetization mechanics on waiting times, while you don’t need to wait to enter a match or train new troops, you do need to wait to open your reward chest. Now, this doesn’t seem so bad right? Then you realize that you can only be “opening” one chest at a time, and you can only have 4 chests on your inventory, and since the basic chests take 3 hours to open, it seriously caps growth for free users.
Well, but you can still play
Yes, and while premium users will have stronger decks, the strategic nature of the gameplay makes it possible for users to outplay stronger ones, so it doesn’t affect gameplay in such an intrusive way. But since you have to pay a fee in coins (game currency) to enter any match, this means that free users that run out of coin would have to wait hours to open the chests and get enough coins to play again.
My advice
1. If you’re a veteran freemium gamer, your instinct will tell you to save your starting premium credits for late game items… In Castle Creeps Battle, that instinct is wrong; buy coins as soon as you need them.
Coins are needed to upgrade cards and enter matches, and everything is expensive compared with what you make playing casually. A boost at the beginning will really help you have a smoother experience.
2. Keep a close eye on upgrade costs. Starting out it’s very easy to go over budget leveling your cards and end up with less than 50 coins (the smallest arena entry fee) and have to wait a frustrating amount of time to be able to play again.
3. Don’t be ashamed to go back to the Rookie Arena; if you’re running low on coins, go down a few arenas looking for easier matchups until you save enough.
4. Play with WIFI, the live PVP nature of the game means that you’re very subjective to losing by lag, special on the last 60 seconds when mana recovery doubles and you have to start dragging units faster than a millennial going through a twitter feed.
Graphics
The Home base graphics should have a higher resolution, especially the background, but inside the arena, animations and effects are very aesthetically appealing, those are certainly focused on the matches and it’s working pretty well.
Sound
The battlefield tunes in the background pump you up for battle, and it’s quite hilarious to hear the minions screaming as they fight, when a few get together it’s a real mess.
Summary
Castle Creeps Battle is a very innovative combination of two of your favorite mobile games genres, Cards, and Clash. Turns out these mechanics go really well together, and while getting to play might get challenging to free users, the fast-paced, real-time PVP action is very much worth it.
Castle Creeps Battle
Cool
- Innovative mechanics
- Real-time PVP
- Strategy focused
Not Cool
- Harsh marketing
- Entry fees for any match