Minion Masters - Forced to Duel (english review)

Real time card game

What is Minion Masters? The definition is quite of a mouthful: “Fast paced real time strategy game which flirts with it’s game design to Hearthstone and League of Legends.” Two years ago the game was published to Early Access, with moderate time table and active development it saw the transformation to free to play in december 2018. Deceased youtube-legend Jim Sterling (TotalBiscuit) also gave thumbs up for the games alpha version.

Game information

Name: Minion Masters - Forced to Duel Publisher/Developer: BetaDwarf
Platforms: Steam, Discord, XBox (TBA) Type: MOBA, Free to Play
Age ratings: ?
Reviewer: Rami
Pictures and links:
Trailer

From the perspective of the gamer?

Much like in Clash Royale each player minions are set to destroy opponents base. The player can drop his minions on his play area depending what cards he has on hand and how much mana does he have? Not all minions are free moving, but setting up buildings like spawn points and gun emplacement helps up the defense. The game works like paper-rock-scissors - the player needs shooting units against flying ones, and the tougher minions are slower to move and hit. Additional mechanics like curses and such make the battle all more interesting. The eight card deck does often seem rather small against all possible threats and combinations. 

There are multiple game modes, two player and two player team fights. Draft works with forming a random deck of cards and fighting against harder and harder opponents. Mayhem is an upcoming game mode that features changing rules every week. Solo challenges keep the player interested. Expeditions are made up with map wandering and dueling opponents that vary. Upcoming events will spice up the community even more. So quite a lot of everything, and lucky the base game is interesting enough. The mechanics used by the game are tried and true by earlier games, like making new cards out of crystal shards and hero customization.

The gameplay is fun, UI is intuitive enough, and the game is dedicated to giving out rewards from the start. After a few tutorial battles player is sent to practice his skills against other players. Acquiring levels is fast  (at least with premium upgrade) and the player is gifted with new cards and rubies just playing the game. 

The Esports aspect of the game is apparent, and the game supports Twitch game streaming

Katso käyttäjän Smoshi suora videolähetys osoitteessa www.twitch.tv



The player can purchase his or her hero from a selection of eight (soon nine) heroes, and two of them are available for testing every week. The heroes can join the fight at times, and usually, they help up by shooting minions from the base. The denying of the opponents' experience by taking over the bridges and placing heroes to the places where they can effectively influence the course of the game are simple and effective tactics known already from other MOBA games. The graphics are flirting Blizzard, Nintendo, and other gaming cliches. The humor aspect plays homage to the other games as well.

I liked the two-player team game best. There is a possibility of making predetermined messages like in Hearthstone and even show some anger, but I didn’t see any abuse of the system. Fast game pace is diminishing the need of communicating.

New content is under development, with the upcoming Rise of the Howling Moon DLC bringing new hero, cards and emotes. One could think the development goes on much like with Hearthstone.

One interesting anecdote is the game support of the Discord desktop-version. Discord is known of its Voice-Over-Internet and community services, but it has evolved to the digital distribution much like Steam. Some games like Minion Masters or Warframe (earlier PEGI 18) can be played freely through it, but many of the games are purchasable (Call of Cthulhu and Amnesia can be bought). The service offers a monthly subscriber fee (9,99e) which covers the playing of many games. It would appear the Discord tries to get upper hand on Steam and aim to be ‘the’ social gaming network. Many Steam and Epic games can be already launched through discord, telling your friends what you are playing now.

Perspective of the ratings?

Violence in MOBA-games hasn’t really been overtly graphical. The idea of them being available for most of the audience has kept the games on Teen, or PEGI 12-level. Surprisingly enough, Minion Masters does spread red pixels around when strong enemy attacks. However, the violence is in the fantasy context, and while they are serious wounds, the red pixels shouldn’t cause more than PEGI 12 age rating.

Of course, simple core gameplay means that 7-year old can play the game, but as the game is free-to-play I would be more inclined to evaluate it on the grounds of microtransactions. The general issue with the microtransactions is that free-to-play model doesn’t mean games are ‘free.’ Instead, the player is the business opportunity of the game, and none of the age rating systems really can differentiate on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ monetary practices of free-to-play games.

Parents and game education?

First, what is MOBA? If you know, great, otherwise here is the short definition. MOBA means ‘Multiplayer online battle arena’ which is sub-genre of team games played over the internet. The gameplay is often real-time strategy against other players with the goal being simple ‘destroy other side base’. Many game mechanics make this simple goal a bit more tricky to achieve. The sub-genre loans variety of elements and mechanics from a number of genres. Experience points are from role-playing games genre and real-time strategy is the genre of its own. The first MOBA is generally though being born from Starcraft-RTS game map “Aeon of Strife”. Each player controlled only one hero character, helping weak computer-controlled units to victory from the other side. The game was immortalized by the Defence of Ancients (DotA) which ironed out the idea. A number of games like League of Legends (LOL) and Heroes of the Storm (HotS) follow the concept faithfully. The genre became the cornerstone of E-Sports, but unlike Counter-Strike watching the match requires some basic knowledge of the genre.

Minion Master combines some MOBA game ideas to the game mechanics of the card games like Hearthstone or Magic The Gathering. The key idea is to improve the cards from their initial power. When the player acquires a new version of the same card, his card unit gets a small power boost. This did cause some controversy about ‘fairness’ of the gameplay, but developers added balancing mechanics during Early Access. Most of the cards are acquired through the gameplay, so the overall balance feels rather fair. Premium Upgrade gives player 50% more gold and 20% from the battles, additionally 2500 rubies, 500 shards 5 spin tokens and 6 more cards to the deck. The math isn’t so hard, this makes the gameplay much much easier and some 20 euros for the smoother advancement doesn’t sound that bad.

Parents should understand that the game is fast paced and fun. So there are not many reasons not to play. Of course too much is too much, but if the player can cope with the offering of the microtransactions there’s not much to point out from the game, other than it being good fun. Fast gameplay means that the one match doesn’t steal much of the families time together.

What should be understood is that mechanics that resemble gambling are regulated in many EU countries. The reason is that playing gambling as a kid does cause compulsive gambling in adulthood. This is also scientific fact and we can say for the fact that 1,3% Finns have an issue with gambling. We don’t know for a fact how much and what kind of effect ‘gambling-like microtransactions’ will have in the future? There’s not well enough research about the free-to-play model and gambling like the lottery. Minion Masters has a fair deal of apparent gambling like mechanics like the lottery of chests and spins of a wheel of fortune.

We don’t know if this is will be a problem, but we know that teaching the monetary value of microtransaction is something that parents can do and they should. Explaining the value of the money concrete would be the best step, rather than telling no. Using the weekly allowances on microtransactions could be a learning situation.

While playing one can think

• Easter eggs, homages and subtle hints.
• What kind of game mechanics exist in the game?