After seeing so many ads on Tumblr while trying to look up bad puns, I finally gave in and did some research on Battle Camp. The game is a cross between Pokemon’s monster battles, Candy Crush’s matching premises, and Farmville’s 2D graphics.
Featuring optional registration, in-app purchases, and a timed energy system (which renews at one every ten minutes), I wasn’t too impressed at PennyPop’s game. To be honest, I thought it was just another Pokemon ripoff after all, the thumbnail looks like a brown and white pokeball with a monster’s face on it.
Essentially, it’s a social game, but if you’re like me and don’t like to interact with people while playing social games, don’t register. Otherwise, joining a troop, similar to a guild, becomes available. You can battle other players, perform raids, and use the group chat.
After playing for a while, I found it to be sort of charming. I enjoyed collecting monsters, making a strong team, and fighting — or more like solving puzzles — to defeat my opponents. What was pretty interesting as well was the fact that I could feed my unwanted monsters to the five on my team to level them up, but it does cost money to use that method of freeing up your inventory (which doesn’t hold much to begin with).
The monsters come in all shapes, sizes, and rarities. Some look like cute dogs while others look like a green block with leaves on it. There are over 400, each with their own abilities.
The battles are turn-based, which makes it a little tedious. It would be nice to either try to reach a set goal or have more than one chance to make a move. When it comes to the teams, one monster is picked to be the leader, but it’s not clear exactly what significance this holds. The player can fight against any number of monsters, and sometimes there is more than one wave. rewards include other monsters and stones, which are used as currency.
To fight, the player has to match a set of three symbols. There’s fire, water, earth, rock, air, and health. While the elements are used to attack opponents, health restores HP. Certain elements allow certain monsters to attack. The order is simple enough: fire beats earth, earth beats water, and water beats fire, while air and rock beat each other.
There is a bit of a story, but it isn’t necessary to the game. You’re a trainer trying to get badges but you have to complete tasks that pertain to the story first. For the most part, it’s battling about five monsters to get an item from them.
What I really liked was the fact that despite there being in-app purchases, they aren’t really necessary to collect rare items. There were free daily spins to test your luck at scoring a rare monster, or defeating certain monsters would give you a chance to gain them as a reward.
With all that said, Battle Camp is a decent game, but a bit tedious. The fact that players only get five energy but have to go through so many battles to get through a mission is a turn-off. It would be nice if there was a way to earn more max energy as it would make for a more enjoyable experience.
