Mobile games are evolving into continuously running applications that need a constantly ticking clock and your batteries to stay alive just so you can progress in an ongoing virtual world. A new game that is rapidly climbing the iTunes free app chart is HonorBound—an exciting new RPG in which you control a hero and a group of followers on a quest to save the world from hordes of crooks, orcs, ogres, dragons, zombies, and countless other baddies.
The game is very extensive for a free app, not just because there are over 150 levels, but because of the elaborate abilities and skills you need to progress throughout the story. The problem is that, with the running clock, this takes an elongated amount of time.
There are two main reasons for this: The first is that the way you gain more skills and abilities is through a scholar who researches whatever power you pay for. These skills take 15 minutes to an hour for them to be processed so you can learn them. The second and more frustrating reason is that you have an energy bar that depletes after every move you make on your quests and the only way to replenish it is to buy energy packs (which are not cheap) or, you guessed it, wait for it to refill. Because of the running clock, you don’t need to be playing the game for your energy bar to fill up, but it takes 5 minutes per unit (one unit is one move on the playing board).
You can see how deflating this is because you can be right in the middle of a level and then your energy is depleted and you don’t have a spare energy pack in your inventory. After working your butt off to defeat all of the creatures that lurk in this magical virtual world, you’ll have to wait the excruciating real life time to continue on your quest.
This could be very off-putting to gamers across the globe. These days, people don’t have the attention spans for a break in the action that HonorBound makes us endure. Games like Candy Crush Saga are similar in that you have to wait a certain amount of time for your lives to regenerate, but it isn’t so that you can get stuck in the middle of a level. It is also an RPG, not a puzzle game as Candy Crush is, so the way it affects playability is other worldly.
This is one of the major ways that this game will make money—you have to buy energy packs (if you have none) to refill you energy meter to keep on playing. But this could end up being more detrimental to the game’s overall profits because of how severely it affects the flow of play.
There are a couple more minor tweaks that HonorBound could make to maximize its playability, but they are not as noteworthy as the energy meter. Overall, this game has all the elements to be a mobile great, but it could see a drop in popularity unless they alter the hindrance they put on the character’s mobility.
