This game is cooler than it looks!

Hey everyone, in light of our discussion on the podcast this week, I thought I would share one of my favorite mobile app games - Evony: The Kings Return. I actually stumbled across this game while I was playing a free game on my phone, and an advertisement came up to play a different game. This game ad showed a character trying to get to a pile of treasure and you have to pull the pin to solve the puzzle. I was intrigued because I enjoy solving puzzles. 

The funny part is that I downloaded the game, played a few of the puzzles and then realized that the game was far more involved than just simple puzzles. Other people who play the game often joke in the game forums that they only joined the game for the puzzles, but they stayed because they got hooked on the part of the game that is not advertised. Now that I’ve been playing the game for almost three years, I hardly even bother with the puzzles.

The premise of the game is that each player represents a historical monarchy or dynasty. A castle and everything within its walls are at the player's command. Level up by upgrading the castle and the various buildings within your castle. Upgrading increases powerfulness. Players from all over the world join in on a server and share a large map where everyone’s castle is placed randomly on the map. Players can join an alliance and team up to increase their overall power. There are monsters, bosses, and other keeps that can be attacked on the map. A player's resources increase by harvesting from resource tiles, stealing them from other players, and by gaining them as loot from attacking bosses and monsters. Quests, daily activities, and special events can be completed during gameplay to gain other special resources. Players use the resources to increase the capacity of their castle by upgrading the castle and buildings within it, training troops, building traps, and researching in the academy.  By increasing the  power level, the player also increases their ability to successfully attack higher level monsters, bosses and other keeps on the map.

There are three features that I really like about this game that make it even better, and they have nothing to do with the puzzles.

Join an Alliance and interact with others:
Evony is not just for killing bosses and attacking other players. While in gameplay, players can network with other players and talk in the chat forums within the game. Although one could play the game alone and do just fine, adding the element of teamwork and friendship makes the game more enjoyable. In order for the alliance to be successful there must be structure, order, and leadership as well as team players. Players can send other game members mail messages, private chats, recorded audio, pictures, and links to outside websites. Alliances will typically have players from all over the world, so it is easy to learn about other cultures while having fun together. The game will translate just about any language, so anyone can play without worry of any language barriers. In my Alliance, we have sent each other pictures of what we’re having for dinner, we’ve shared our photographs of our dogs, and we’ve all shared in our troubled times. This game was definitely something that helped me get through COVID lockdown; I could connect with people without having to look at all the negativity on Facebook and other social media platforms. We were all stuck at home together, playing our game, to keep ourselves busy. The players in my alliance kept me company when there was a snowstorm and I lost power intermittently for several days. Several of the game members checked in on me to make sure that I was OK.

Team up and fight in a server war:
Another cool thing about this game is that it hosts server wars. Every other weekend from Friday through Sunday each server will go against an opposing server. Teaming up with your enemies to fight another enemy is not an easy task, but the winning server will advance in server rankings. Within the game platform, there are over 200 servers with thousands of people playing on each server, therefore there are many players and different personality types. Every server war is a separate challenge because each server may have their own war tactics. Some servers have not learned to play as a team and will lose more often than win. The server wars take massive coordination, as there could be anywhere from 500 - 1000 people playing at any given time. During the server war, a player can teleport their castle onto another server's map and attack the monsters, bosses and other players for server war points. There are other types of battles going on simultaneously, like a throne war, and challenges to gather the most resources within a 24 hour period etc. In the end, the winning server receives rewards, and the losing server receives punishments, like slower military marches.

Customize your General to your liking:
Another one of my favorite features of this game is the individualization within the game. Unlike games like Farmville where the player grows crops and clicks to harvest them only to grow more crops, continually doing the same act over and over again, there are some elements of this game that allow the player to customize their game play. For example, players can recruit and collect historical generals like Queen Boudica, Li Jing, or Winfield Scott. The generals lead the troops to battle and guard the keep. The player can create armor for the generals and modify their skills as well as train an elemental, such as a dragon, to fight alongside them. The complexity of the general enhancements really allows the player to strategize and use their resources wisely. In order to enhance a general, upgrade skills, or place better armor, the player will have to spend resources that have been acquired from fighting battles. 

I am glad that I decided to go ahead and check out Evony and give it a try. The puzzles looked like fun, and yes, I did get the old bait-and-switch, but I am okay with that. I have made friends, won challenges, and been a part of leadership opportunities that I would not have been able to partake in without the gameplay. 

Have you ever been tricked into downloading a game only to find out that it was not what the ad portrayed it as? Are there any similar strategy games that you like to play on your mobile device? Be sure to check out our extensive list of games that we enjoy on our Heard it on the Podcast post.