Sketchy Satan Spells
In an ever-expanding sea of mobile MMOs, making your game stand out is as crucial as it is nearly unattainable. For intrepid new release Devil Book, its selling point is its fetching hand-drawn art style. The devs over at the South Lorea-based NGEL GAMES are no strangers to hooking players in with a unique gimmick. Their previous RPG, Hero Cantare, made an impression by having its story crossover with several popular Webtoon comics. Hero Cantare has so far accrued a respectable 1 million downloads (and a nearly perfect score from our review). But will the fine folks at NGEL be able to make lightning strike twice?
Devil Book places its hand-drawn aesthetic front and center as the main draw. Characters, backgrounds and enemies alike look like sketches pulled straight from the margins of a bored high schooler’s composition book. Aesthetics aside, Devil Book appears to feature all the standard Action MMO fodder: collectable heroes, leveling, events, battles, PVP and etc. etc. Additionally, some features diverge ever so slightly from the MMO mold, mostly in terms of its Heroes. The most prominent feature being the clothing crafting and dyeing systems.
Hardware Holdups
Unfortunately, fan response on NGEL projects leaves something to be desired. Due to their ambitious art style, running this particular action adventure might be more than your device can handle. Reportedly, if your device doesn’t have at least 2GB of free RAM, you can expect to be stuck on the launch screen indefinitely. Having so much as a single app running in the background can cause noticeable slowdown. I don’t have to tell you how game-breaking slowdown can be for an MMO title.
However, if you’ve got a beefy handheld device and appreciate unique artistic takes, this might be for you. Devil Book: Hand-Drawn Action MMO is available for free download today on Google Play and iOS. Keep a lookout for the Hardcore Droid review!