Hello! Merry Weekend
I would like to introduce you to Realm of the Mad God. (RMD)
Overview
RMD is essentially a co-op fantasy MMO shooter browser based game made by Wild Shadow Studios. The game is basically about surviving in this fantasy realm. You pick one of 3 main starter classes (archer, wizard, priest) and in order to unlock the 10 other classes, the player must reach up till a certain level with each class. For example, in order to unlock the warrior, the player must reach level 5 with the rouge, in order to unlock the rouge the player must reach level 5 with the archer. The top level classes require you to reach level 20 with other classes.
The Hook
I saw this game while browsing through the Google App store, and saw some neat pixel art and looked at the overview and review tabs of the App store and decided to give it a try. This was just around the same time when I was finishing my second semester of my first year in the game development program and I knew how difficult it was to create pixel art and this game looked like it had a good aesthetic to it.
Game Mechanics
The way I played the game was I waited at a server entrance (little cave like things) to be nearly full and joined it. These servers allow you to enter the wilderness or Realm where all the enemies are. The point is to go to this wilderness and kill monsters to gain experience and level up. The game is easy to play for the first 5 level’s solo, however once you reach level 10, the monsters you need to kill are very difficult to fight alone.
The reason why I wait for the server to get full is because its a LOT more fun to play with hordes of other players. Since it is cooperative, there is shared experience but not shared loot. So everyone wants your help to kill huge monsters, but the real game is running to get the final kill on the monster and grab its loot before everyone else does.
The key is to get into these things called “trains” and “hordes” to level up really fast and gain rank. By levelling up to level 20 in each class you gain rank and that allows to to get better items in the shop and other rewards. But the hordes are huge groups of up to 30+ characters in one blob shooting their attacks outward and in every direction hoping to hit the enemies. These hordes have priests that help heal characters, warriors that stand in the front to deal damage, paladins to take damage and increase the packs damage resistance and then the mages and archers in the back firing their spells. A train is a moving horde across a pathway, and being in a train is lots of fun. The ability to run and try to lead the pack and get the first hit on many monsters is very entertaining.
As you can see, things can get very hectic in a horde and many people die.
The basic game mechanics are you click the mouse to shoot your spell, arrow and sword, while dodging the enemy attacks. The enemy attacks are normally projectiles in different sprite shapes and sizes. The main game element is survival. Death means something in this game. When you die, its over. All of you items are dropped for other players to pick up and depending on how well you did, you gain fame that can be spent in the item shop for rare items.
Death makes the game fairly difficult because there are times when a player is at level 19 fighting the huge bosses in the high level area and one massive attack from a big boss can take away almost all their health and they would be dead.
Summary
The point of the game is to survive and live as long as possible to gain fame and rank. You gain fame and rank by killing level bosses and big monsters. The basic attacks the player can utilise are his main unlimited attack by using a wand, scepter, bow or sword. Wands and bows are fast and can shoot multiple projectiles. Scepters are stronger but much slower and swords are very strong but have a very low range.
Each class has a secondary attack that does different things. The archer can shoot magic arrows while the priest can heal everyone within a certain radius.
Likes and Praises
The reason why I liked this game the most was because it was really easy to pick up and play for as long as you wanted. Anyone could play for 5 min and level up and be content or they can put in about 45min and they could get a character to level 20. Like many MMORPG’s on the internet, it takes months and many hours out of ones life to advance in the game. This game can be played very casually and it would still be very enjoyable.
The overall aesthetic of the game is really nice. everything follows the same pixelated art style and all the game assets come together to be presented very nicely. For a free game you really get a good polished piece of work.
Teamwork! A lot of MMO’s put you against every other player in the world, but this game really enforces cooperative gameplay. You cant reach level 20 while having fun without a good group of team mates to have your back and buff you.
NO GRINDING! Many MMO’s make the player grind for hours to reach level X and get $XXX so they can get this piece of armour. The armour drops are all at random, or dropped by certain monsters. The only way to get that armour is to be the fastest clicker and pick it up before anyone else. There is also player trading.
Dislikes and Criticism
Very overpowered bosses. While I do realise they wanted to make the bosses difficult and so that only packs of people can kill them, I find that there is no way to “be a hero” in this game. If you try to rush in and do some damage you end up becoming the epicentre of the bosses attacks and even at level 20 with decent equipment you will die very easily. I would make the bosses attacks do a little less damage so people can rush in without dying so quickly. Most of the time I felt like a coward in these battles sitting at the back lines trying to avoid the enemies attacks without dying.
More inventory and elements for free players. There is only one treasure chest with 6 item slots for your character to save loot in. Also you only get one character slot to start. Unless your want to dish out money to conform to the free-to-play micro transaction model to get more items, inventory space and character slots. The game emphasizes on the micro transaction model way to much and it breaks a lot of the immersion that the game play builds up on. Granted that the inventory slots and more character save slots are not needed.
More RPG aspects. The base of operations where you pick your server and store your items is called the Nexus. There is an arbitrary store there that you can purchase items with fame and real money. However it would be nice if there were more NPC’s that gave you quests and had item shops. More RPG elements would help the immersion a lot.
Closing Remarks
There really is not much else to say about this game, but it is worth checking out. Who knows you might spend 5min to 30min playing this game.
– Moose
/rants 