What is common between Tap Titants and Nonstop Knight, which has received 2 million downloads in the last 4 days, we will analyze in our latest review.
A year ago, when I was finishing an article about Tap Titans, I was sure that I would never approach idle projects again, even for a cannon shot. Two months of daily play was enough for me to either hate or get tired of the genre.
I kept this naive confidence even after I saw the aggressive Nonstop Knight feature push from the App Store and Google Play. Well, you never know who is promoted in stores.
I’m smearing snot here for a reason. I was wrong. Just to revive interest, a small local revolution in the genre was needed. Nonstop Knight became it.
The game, created by the Finnish studio Kopla Games and published by the Germans from flaregames, whom you may know from the excellent Royal Revolt series, is such a healthy breath of fresh air in the dreary swamps, where today stagnation and uncreative preparation of the fluttering corpse of Tap Titans.
According to the picture, the novelty is a fully breathing role-playing action in the spirit of the horned Blizzard cubs. And this is exactly what the revolution consists of. Because in fact the game is a thoroughly (and more than once) chewed, and then artistically reproduced (in the spirit of, “I see it that way”) hit of the Americans from Game Hive.
Why am I mentioning him again?
Everything is simple. Although now I will go from afar.
One of the main features of Tap Titans was to reset progress, which was called “Prestige”. For zeroing, the player received a special currency – “relics”, with which he bought “artifacts”. The latter did not disappear after zeroing and seriously increased the characteristics of the hero.
Prestige allowed players who felt a slowdown in the passage of the game at difficult stages to receive a permanent bonus in exchange for all progress. This bonus further helped to pass the difficult moment on which the player stumbled earlier (read more here).
Nonstop Knight is built entirely on this mechanics. Although initially the game may seem like something completely different. I mean, something very far from idle. And just this is very cool.
In the game, the user goes down through the dungeons. Each dungeon is one level. Once every three levels, the player is met by a healthy boss in the final of the dungeon.
The passage of the dungeons visually is a one-on-one younger sister of Diablo named Torchlight. With the only difference that the player does not control the character, but, a big plus, and should not click on the screen like an abnormal. The only way to somehow influence combat skirmishes is to use combat skills, change their capabilities, as well as collect and improve combat uniforms.
It would seem, what does Tap Titants have to do with it?
For each kill, the player receives gold (even if the game session is over, the hero continues his endless journey and collecting coins). Gold, which is a soft currency here, is spent on the most important thing – to improve weapons, armor and cloak. The cooler the latter, the easier it is to defeat the bosses.
In the end, it all comes down to the painfully familiar, but here is a completely new gameplay presented: collected gold, pumped everything you can, beat the boss, collected gold…
If the boss is not finished off even after pumping, we reset the progress, get a special resource – tokens, spend them on constant improvements, pass the game to a difficult boss, pass the boss and … Well, you get it.
Only here in Tap Titans it was impossible to buy a special currency for money, but here it is possible. Moreover, the amounts that are offered for zeroing progress are several times less than those that can be purchased for real currency. And this, coupled with the fact that bosses meet not once in 10 levels, but once in 3 levels (and each, as a rule, is much stronger than the previous one), quickly gives rise to the feeling that you are being milked. Quite openly.
At the same time, the game is very pleasing for the first few hours of the game. It looks and plays very fresh. Moreover, it gives rise to all sorts of fantasies, a la: and how cool it would be if skills were more important for gameplay, and how wonderful it would be if you had to pay only for consumables, and how great it would be if… In general, as always, when you liked the game, but it seems that you fell short.
On the other hand, Nonstop Knight is the most successful release in the history of flaregames. In the first four days, the game was downloaded 2 million times. The question is, will they then be able to convert this audience into actively (and constantly) spending money for a place on the honor roll?
In any case, even in this scenario, the game manages to call a siren into its arms. At least in order to once again click on the reset progress button.