iPhone

Normally, I’m a bit of a games slut on my iPhone, popping in and out of several different games over the course of an evening. Last night, though, apart from checking in with Words With Friends every now and again I only played one game, The Isle of 8-Bit Treasures.

I wasn’t really sure what I was getting when I paid out the massive sum of £2.99 for the game. It looked like it might be a roguelike, or possibly some sort of Zelda-esque action RPG. Enough people were intrigued by it online, though, that someone had to buy it to see what it was, so I decided to step up and be a man about it.

So, what did I find? Well, things didn’t start awfully well, because when I first loaded it up I saw the screen below.

Yes, it was telling me I didn’t enough free memory and that I should reboot. So I did and when I started it up again I didn’t get the warning message and haven’t seen it since.

I tapped past the title screen and chose Tutorial from the main menu, which consists of a few screen shots with some explanatory text round the side. It doesn’t help an awful lot, but it got me started. Next, I went into the game itself and chose to play as the beginner Soldier character. I took my basic training sword and started one of the unlocked dungeons.

Happy, happy! It’s a roguelike! It’s turn-based, with randomly generated levels and everything. You battle monsters, collect items and money and try to get to the special item on the bottom level of the current dungeon. It took me a long time to even finish one dungeon, because the game’s pretty tough. You always start a dungeon with your character at level one, but you can bring in a weapon and inventory items you’ve managed to save from previous attempts or buy from the shop.

The battle system is quite interesting. You can either use items, which can stun enemies, do fire damage, etc. or attack with your weapon. On the right hand side of the screen is the Weapon Reel. Attacking with your weapon moves the reel one space and if a special effect appears in the little highlighted square, your weapon produces that effect. Your training sword, for example, only has one special effect, which does a strong hit when the fist icon appears in the square. This doesn’t come round very often.

You can power up your weapon by finding crystals that give special effects and adding them your weapon. The only crystal I’ve found so far is one that heals me when I hit an enemy. I didn’t add that to my training sword, though, because by the time I found the crystal I was using a different weapon – a Raijin Blade. How did I get that? I created it from my iTunes library. You can chose a song and a weapon will be created based on that song. I used Babe, I’m On Fire by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and got my Raijin Blade, which beats the training sword by having lots of special effects. Sometimes it hits hard, sometimes it stuns, sometimes it does Holy Damage, etc. And now, as I said, it heals me every now and again. Excellent.

Still, it hasn’t made the game easy. This is a very simple game underneath the lack of documentation and little quirks, but you really have to be very careful. I’m currently trying to best an unlit dungeon. I’ve bought some torches, but they don’t last very long and I’m running out of money. I may have to beat this dungeon in the dark.

It’s definitely more Pokémon Mystery Dungeon than NetHack, but it keeps me coming back, time after time. There seems to be a lot to it, too. I’ve played for a few hours now and I’ve completed 5% of the game with my soldier – and once I’ve finished the game with him, there are Hunter and Witch characters to play as. Oh, and you can create new dungeons from your songs, as well as weapons. I tried creating a level from Gunpowder & Lead by Miranda Lambert, but it was rather too difficult and I ran off with my tail between my legs.

I appreciate I’ve written a lot here and probably not explained it very well at all, but the short version is that it’s a simple, challenging roguelike, well-suited to short play sessions… or it would be, if not for a near-fatal flaw.

You can’t save mid-dungeon. Press the Home button, you lose your progress. Get a phone call, you lose your progress. (Or so I assume, that hasn’t happen yet.) Dungeons don’t take all that long to clear – so far – but not being able to go off and do something else and then come back is a deeply idiotic design decision. Whether you can put up with that is up to you, but, for all its many faults, I don’t regret buying the game. How could I when I played it so much yesterday and want to be playing it now?