Mr.Farmville

Morphee Games is bringing us back to battle-oriented concepts with its newest Facebook release, Galamon. Previously, we’ve seen games like Battle Punks from Gravity Bear approach the concept.

Of all the automated fighting games out there, Galamon is perhaps most similar to an even older title called Ninja Warz. However, unlike predecessor, it comes to the table with a bit more in the ways of strategy and greater reward — along with room to improve on social features and game-play.

The objective behind Galamon is simple enough: Beat the opponent. When starting out, users are granted a handful of these creatures, called Galamons, that are classified as ninjas, pirates, cute, “ekeko,” aliens, or zombies. This doesn’t particularly mean anything, but different types have different looks and attack animations. What does matter, however, are the statistics and different abilities they might come with.

You see, the game puts the player in a galaxy full of non-player planets that contain specific team make ups. In order to progress, users must tailor their own team of four Galamons to best counteract it. This is where strategic planning comes into play. Each creature has its own set of stats consisting of attack power (damage), health, and attack speed. These are merely to determine basic strength. It is their abilities that really make or break a strategy.

While stronger stats are good, each Galamon has an elemental ability. For example, one character might increase the health of all other Galamon of the same element, while another will increase all team members’ attack speed. Moreover, there is an elemental wheel that displays which elements – water, fire, wind, earth, poison – are stronger against others. Unfortunately, it is unclear as to whether or not this means they do extra damage to a weaker element. If they do, it seems negligible. Nonetheless, there are only a limited number of battles that players can engage in a day, so plan well.

As far as the battles themselves go, these are all automated with the two squads of four randomly attacking one another based on attack speed. There is no control here, so one can only hope their planning was enough. The frustrating part is that a lot of it comes down to luck. This doesn’t simply refer to missed attacks or critical strikes, but more that the enemy could happen to focus fire one target, while the user’s Galamon spreads their damage over all four. It’s extraordinarily annoying, because once a team member goes down, the chances of winning drop dramatically.

Regardless, once a battle is finished, players earn a chunk of experience and coins (more for winning). These are then, surprisingly, used within a virtual space element. Players actually get to decorate their spaceship as they see fit with bizarre alien, pirate, and ninja material. Additionally, the money can be used to buy equipment for the ship that can be used to upgrade their existing Galamon as well. Of course, this tends to take several hours. Also, both aesthetic and functional items are gated by level.

Money is also used to purchase packs of Galamon eggs with the packs containing rarer, and by extension, more powerful, creatures costing more. However, one also has to be a certain level to buy the higher level eggs. Once purchased, these can then be incubated and grown into fully functional fighters. As a side note, eggs can also be won, randomly, in battles.

On the social end of the spectrum, Galamon seems a bit lacking compared to some of its predecessors. The game still contains elements such as achievements, gifting, and leaderboards, but these all appear to be strictly limited to just friends that play with you. Additionally, it is also possible to challenge them directly to battles against their Galamon teams. Of course, while all of this is nice, one of the great aspects of games like Battle Punks or Ninja Warz, was that users could fight other players that were there same relative level. Granted, it is still basically the same as fighting the NPC creature planets, but it just doesn’t feel as gratifying.

In the end, Galamon is a pretty decent game that has a quirky, yet amusing style to it. Any game that lets you attack enemies with a wet fish certainly deserves some bonus points. All the same, Galamon feels off to a good start, and it would be surprising if it doesn’t do at least decently well.

Source: Inside Social Games