IAP Inspector: BattleHand

hello and welcome to thee in up inspector where we look at free-to-play games monetization from the player's perspective and so this week we're looking at battle hand which is new release from another another place which is a uk-based studio sort of comprised of some people credited with them some of the fable games and published by congregate and so it's a fantasy themed card battler sort of thing you've seen many times before on the App Store nothing new there but so in terms of this series once we've covered home that's been covered a lot on this channel by i'm john is a Star Wars galaxy of Heroes which we already enjoy it so in terms of recent times that's probably the most comparable sort of came to it um so start off just by

showing you a bit of gameplay go to 1 i've already completed go auto battle so you'll notice here the the biggest difference is from galaxy of heroes was that allowed you to play auto straight away so you could power your way through battles just by letting them play themselves basically but here there's here there's a much more civ Western approach in there you have to sort of work for it you have to have to beat beat a dungeon first before you're allowed to play automatically so it becomes a way of getting quick resources but it's also kind of like a reward whereas in galaxies of heroes that was essentially the way if you chose and I don't see why anyone would choose not to essentially the way you could just play the game from the stuck and so that's

that's a big sort of departure and so we'll just power through this we're done here collect some squirrels so you get the general idea of what the what the game what the gameplay is like all very nice are and very soft charming the animations you didn't see there because I swiped but I would take you like that death animation where they sort of them pirouette neatly pirouette into a coffin and just collapse and it's got a sort of nice sort of sense of humor to it their art style and animations and think so yes so there's a lot more man you not more a lot more of an emmanuel approach here which means a it's more focus on gameplay which could be said in a negative way to detract from the net game which obviously with galaxy heroes allowing you to autoplay from the start it kind of really pared back its focus and allowed you to focus entirely on the sort of card collection and upgrading and crafting all that sort of thing

which obviously this has for all of those features but it's sort of detracted from by the amount of time you'll be required to spend in battles when you're performing them yourself that one went through very quickly because autoplay you can speed up and you can speed up in general battles as well but only speech up there carrot the enemy animation and it only moves as fast as your brain works essentially which in my case is not very fast as you can tell but yeah so we'll get just have a look at some of the currencies up from from the left and you've got keys which is the games energy system which is quite not very restricted but more restrictive than you'd like I found then you've got coin gold which is the soft currency and gems which is the hard currency and so if you look at gems here some other interesting things they're

doing here so move off a suddenly there's the gem what they call a gem drop off which is what we've seen a few times and recent times is the almost subscription style service which gives you gems daily for each time you return it's a way of making sure people come back basically your attention mechanic but in this case I just think it's too it's too expensive to serve that purpose home because I think if anyone was looking at spending that amount of money which is I think would translate to the 13 90 90 in the u.s. I think that's it's a lot of money to pay for a first purchase and maybe that's there maybe that's the approach here but um I think if you are willing to spend that amount of money then you would presumably be a dedicated player who would be coming back anyway so the idea of it as a retention system of making sure people come back I'm not sure it serves as good

a purposes say kelapa burn story or gal or even galaxy harrah's which leads you on with the low price and you'd almost be stupid not to get at that price like price itself so like this you know you just think it's a sensible sensible decision to make and then you come back daily where you might not have a voice I'm not sure this is priced at that level so it may be a little too expensive um but as for the others there's also a cool only buy one get one free system where you get doubled the number of gems that is advertised here for the first time you buy any one level so you can see I've already bought the 250 GM dear john back so that means the buy one get one free offer is no longer there so that's quite a neat system because it means if i was going to spend again it will sort of push me towards the the higher-priced items because they are the ones with where the offer still applies so I think that's that's quite a

clever system and by going back one of the most I'm not sure if it would show I'll show you what it's like to buy things you have card packs which is the bread and butter of essentially and material packs and materials are applied to cards to make them more powerful essentially as part of this off fusing upgrading process um so let's just get a silver material pack because I can't afford much at this time and this is what it looks like when you get a new you can swipe through names quite pleasant and yet the bonus items that's why I particularly like so this may seem like a small thing but i think is actually quite significant in context is that these bonus items aren't just given away with no feedback when when

you're giving them the first it's established the shopkeeper who is like a character in his own right which is the first I've seen that is supposedly on your side supports your course and so it's giving you these bonus items to to like show support for you which i think is really clever it's a tiny incidental detail a lot of people might not even notice it so maybe it's not a significant as I think but someone who saw is interested in sort of the cage in between game mechanics and narrative and things like that it's some never seen it done before when it comes to monetization the idea of almost humanizing the process of making the shopkeeper an actual character and of having what is essentially a reciprocity system where you this is a reciprocal relationship established between the game and the player where they gave you things and it's my you know in the long

term it's psychologically makes you more likely to spend we've seen that lots of all types but for them to make this process of embed it within the game world almost by having this character who is willing to give you things because he's supporting character I know also like neat Lords actually like just stupid throwaway comments that you make sometimes and you know this positioning of the shopkeeper within it i think is i'm super smart and yeah you might not notice it or think it's something substantial but i think there i mean i think that's something in it the i end the idea of you know I think it's a lot easier to establish a reciprocal relationship with a player I meet with a cat with a player and a character rather than a player and sort of faceless corporation I think it sir yes it's a smart move and sewing I'm

interested in seeing more of purely from like a game designers perspective that's where that sort of intersects with the monetization which i think is really interesting but otherwise fairly standard I've shown you the currencies so they slight overpricing slight issues with the energy system but yeah some some really neat ideas and there so yeah i definitely recommend checking out if you read the full article i didn't give it the full approved rating which is the highest we have on the in up inspector homework again waddup is but um I did give it a past and did pass it and the sort of gave it as generous right up as I could because everything is a really interesting really good game and yeah so some really neat ideas in there all right thank you very much for watching and yeah if you want to read the full article it's in the description um yeah see you next time