Features

Did Rapid Magic: Arcane Crystals cast a spell on the App Army?

Did Rapid Magic: Arcane Crystals cast a spell on the App Army?

The App Army Assembles to take on this fast-paced title

Left Arrow
0/9
Right Arrow

Slinging spells at a fast pace is the name of the game in Rapid Magic: Arcane Crystals - that's not even a joke, it's literally in the title. I'm not trying to pull a fast one on you here.

But enough silliness - it's time to find out what our App Army thought about the game, and whether its focus on speedy spells paid off, or if it was just a bit of a misfire.

Hit the link below to find out more about what our community thought, and if you want to get your hands on the best upcoming games, be sure to join the App Army group on Facebook!

yt
Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on
Click Here To View The List »

1
Matt Renfer

Full disclosure, this may not have been the game for me as the primary play mechanism isn’t my favorite.

Story: The tried and true, “young hero is our only hope against rising darkness” blah blah blah. Honestly, it’s not that it’s bad, it’s just boring because it’s over done. To be fair, the story isn’t the focus here anyway. The only problem with this is if you enjoy a bit more story, and in a game that the developers classified as an RPG I kind of expected it.

Gameplay: Rapid Magic is a side-scrolling adventure where your character advances toward the enemies at a fixed pace. The primary method of defeating these enemies is to “rapidly” draw the corresponding symbols, that are above the enemies heads, an your screen to defeat them.

Often stronger enemies require multiple symbols to be drawn and bosses will require you to adapt to their patterns. Characters do have a few special attacks available, but mastering the symbol based combat is absolutely necessary.

This is my primary problem with Rapid Magic, I simply do not care for the gameplay. I find these ‘swipe’ games to be the mobile equivalent of a standard button masher, but usually lacking the reckless joy of their console counterparts. In addition, I often found the game would stop recognizing certain symbols I drew at random. For instance, after drawing an inverted V five times it would simply stop accepting my further attempts to draw it, resulting in death and a restart. This would quickly become frustrating.

I cannot say for certain that this was a game malfunction, or my mistake, but you can see the symbols you’re drawing and they still appeared correct to me. Bottom line, I simply didn’t care for the combat, and that is all the game really is. No actual strategy is necessary, it’s just “draw pictures real good real fast”.

Graphics and Sound: The developer chose a retro 8 bit theme for the game. I the case of a game like Highway, a throwback to 80’s arcade motorcycle games, this is charming. In this case, I think it was a somewhat clever way of lowering production costs. Don’t get me wrong, the game looks fine, it just doesn’t stand out.

The music and sound effects are actually much more pleasing. The game has different themes for various stages, and the production quality of these is probably the best in the game. My only complaint here is during the games version of a cutscene.

The speech for the characters appears in text boxes, but as the characters “speak”, the games makes a kind of boop noise for each word. While this is throwback appropriate, the sound they use is terrible and off putting. It’s a small gripe, I know, but the sound is so obnoxious I felt compelled to mention it.

Overall: I don’t think I’ve been burying the lead here, this game was certainly not my favorite. It’s hard to get over not liking a game’s combat system when that is 95% if the content. If you’re into these swipe games, and enjoy a retro style, then this should be right up your alley. Otherwise, I’d steer clear. No one looks cool yelling,”I drew a V you stupid game!!”, in public.

2
Roman Valerio

iPad Air

I am not a fan of fast-paced games and drawing is something that I've never had an inclination to, so you might already draw a conclusion that this game failed to bring me any enjoyment and fun whatsoever.

It boasts somewhat nice pixelated look and even a certain fantasy-inspired story, however after having been spoiled to quite a number of true mobile masterpieces over the recent years, this title seems like a very outdated one.

Perhaps I do not belong to its target audience as endless running combined with slaying enemies via drawing certain symbols on your screen would probably be more appealing to kids aged from 5 to 10. Also during my few runs the symbol, which looks like the one used for breast cancer awareness, was not always recognized properly, which in its turn led to my untimely demise.

In case you are looking for some magic place to escape to, even if it could mean playing a mobile game for a change, you better stride away from this game as rapidly as you can.

3
Olivier Boesch

iPhone X

A mobile game must be easy to play, adapted to touch control, offer short levels. Rapid Magic: Arcane Crystals, it's a little all of that... but the magic doesn't really work.

I have not had much trouble recognizing drawings as my colleagues, but it's more on the general spirit that this game doesn't like me.

The scenario is very basic, without much interest, the interface not ergonomic in the menus, not accurate on an iPhone X. But above all, the game is punitive: as soon as you fail in the drawing and an animal / ghost / monster arrives to you, you lose and must start all over again from the beginning of the level!

We start again ... twice ... and we are tired. Let's move on to something else. Too bad, the idea was good for children.

4
Andrés Youlton

iPhone 6

A game that looked promising, but in the end, doesn’t fulfil the expectations.

First, it reminds me a lot of Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire by Nitrome, but with a story. I like the graphics and the general presentation of the game, but it let me down in the gameplay part. The levels seems to be infinite, and with just one mistake, you have to start all over again.

Secondly, the story seems to be pretty shallow and over-used. Lastly, the controls aren’t that precise (wich you really need in these kind of games), problem that made me repeat a level more than once. In conclusion, it’s a game that is decently presented graphic and sound wise, but fails in the most important part: gameplay.

But hey, maybe it’s just not my type of game.

5
Mark Abukoff

iPhone 7

I am not a huge fan of the retro craze that seems to be going on now. But if the game is interesting enough, I don’t mind.

But there is very little that’s interesting in this game. The plot is bare bones and forgettable. It is essentially an endless running side-scroller whose only unique feature is the need to draw symbols on the screen in order to attack enemies.

And that doesn’t work very well. I saw where I’d missed one but it got counted anyway, and times when I did it right and it wasn’t counted. And that means you die and repeat the level. So this is not impressive.

I’ve played games where you had to quickly solve simple math problems in order to defeat enemy ships in an arcade setting. If this game did something like that... something with a bit more of a challenge but at a less furious pace, it might be better. But it comes off as a mildly clever idea rushed out with little care.

6
Oksana Ryan

iPad Pro

The idea behind this game is actually quite good. Draw symbols that are on enemies as they fly towards or over you and try to get to the end of the level. However, in execution it’s not that easy. It’s really luck of the draw as to whether the game decides your symbol is good enough or not

Several times I’ve been almost to the end of the level and a quite simple symbol has been ignored and I’ve had to start the level all over again. When this happens several times in a row it begins to get very tedious.

There are powers you can buy with coins you collect to help you complete the levels, such as flying over two enemies, but the problem is that you don’t know that your symbol is going to get rejected and by the time you do you’re dead.

Everything about this game from graphics to sound is good, even the controls are simple to use, it’s just the annoying way it rejects symbols for no good reason. It does seem a game for a younger player, so perhaps they have more patience than me because by level three I was done with it.

7
Quincy Jones

iPhone 8 Plus

Not a bad concept having to draw symbols to destroy your enemies, kinda makes it seem like you're really conjuring spells but in practice it’s actually a bit annoying.

There’s barely any storyline here you basically get tossed into to a situation and start slaying demons.

The actual drawing of these symbols seems to be hit or miss with lot more “miss” as the game never seems to recognize your hand gestures. Worst of all you’ve forced to repeat the entire level every time you die.

It would seem the art of getting these symbols to work is truly arcane.

8
Dries Pretorius

iPad Air

When I was a young'n, before I could save up pocket money to purchase action titles, and carefully forge the age restrictions to match my own, my game library consisted of Jumpstart Kindergarten Reading and various similar titles.

One of which featured letter symbols riding a conveyor belt at increasing pace, hitting the foremost letters corresponding key on the keyboard would cause a chameleon to flick it up with a long tongue and gulp it down. Feeding this glutinous reptile was a thrilling exercise to my child-self - to this day my typing style resembles a frenzied wild-eyed jabathon for it.

Rapid Magic takes me back to those innocent days, but gives me little in the way of thrills beyond nostalgia, and a melancholy knowing, that simple pleasures no longer stimulate me like they used to.

As with Wizard for Hire, the action remains relatively straightforward. There is a risk/reward at play where you are encouraged to let enemies get close before drawing your casting symbols, but the implementation never quite hit home for me.

Boss fights are relatively complex with attack patterns that cycle through the course of the fight. The aspect of Rapid Magic which disheartens me most, is the feeling that it could have been so much more, if its creators dared to push beyond its bland inspirations.

A complex gesture based magic system based on rune drawing, where every battle is filled with implicit cues in the style of Magicka's creativity, rather than draw this shape, draw that shape.

This doesn't mean that Rapid Magic is a bad game, it is a step up over Wizard of Hire, which I remember for its f2p hijinks.

9
Martin Cabral

Game starts of with a simple Potter-esque storyline: big monster, everybody runs away... but not you. You’re better than that. Using your finger, you draw spells with your finger as they show above the creatures you want to beat, straight lines are fairly easy, loops are hit or miss, boss fight is the same. Level 2 is the the same but a little faster.

This would have been fine as a mini-game in another more elaborate game. This game just does not have enough to sustain my attention for more than 5 minutes. I give this game one sorting hat out of five.

Left Arrow
0/9
Right Arrow
Ric Cowley
Ric Cowley
Ric was somehow the Editor of Pocket Gamer, having started out as an intern in 2015. He hopes to take over the world the same way.