The mobile games industry is quite specific and rarely surprises with really curious and large releases. Basically, shareware games are released on phones, stuffed with donation to such an extent that even Electronic Arts would burn out of shame. Yes, even really large projects like Gentian Impact sin outright attempts to milk more money out of the player. However, despite such sins, from time to time, really good mobile games come out, which is not a sin to mention.
According to your humble servant, one such game is Ark nights – a curious hybrid of Tower Defense, strategy and visual novel. Released by the Chinese company Hypergraph in 2019 for the Chinese market and received a global version only in 2020, thanks to Oyster – the publisher known, in particular, for the game Azur Lane.
But what Ark nights is and whether it is worth playing the next brainchild of the Asian gaming industry – you will learn from this material.
Trailers as a separate art form
Like many other users, I came to know about Ark nights by accident after seeing the animated trailer for the global version on YouTube. Great animation, nice soundtrack and good editing have become literally the hallmark of Ark nights commercials. In the first trailers, songs of the very famous rock band STARSET were generally played.
However, after the release of the global version, the advertising campaign did not curtail – every now and then on the official Oyster channel, animated videos are released, timed to upcoming events.
“Chimera” from various genres
As mentioned earlier, Ark nights are a hybrid of several genres.
Missions in the game are implemented on the principle of Tower Defense – you have certain points on the map that must be protected from the encroachments of crowds of enemies. However, instead of the notorious towers, the game offers to use a variety of operators, each of which has unique abilities and characteristics, and also belongs to one of several specializations existing in the game. For example, Vanguard-class operatives do not do much damage, but with their attacks they bring a substantial amount of DP (Deployment Points), thereby allowing you to quickly deploy the line of defense and place more “expensive” characters. Medics, as the name implies, are responsible for healing, “Support” for strengthening allies and weakening enemies, etc.
If you complete a three-star mission without using your friends, an automatic battle mode will open, allowing you to grind the same resources with a minimum of effort
The threshold of entry is quite low, but a super-simple game cannot be called because the player will be “spared” only in the first chapters. In the last, at the moment, available chapter, at one point, they will generally “incite” a tandem of a very tenacious medic and a sniper hiding out of your reach, knocking out your characters as targets in the shooting range.
The plot in Ark nights is presented in the form of a kinetic visual novel i.e. you are invited to read the abundance of dialogues between the characters against the background of static backgrounds. The choice is given very rarely, but really serious decisions are “postponed” to chapters that are available so far only in the Chinese version.
Base development is a very interesting activity. However, quickly rebuilding all the floors will not give you a shortage of resources and a number of conditions that must be met to advance construction.
In addition, Ark nights has a base development system, made in the spirit of the Fallout Shelter – you need to rebuild rooms of various types in order to produce resources, pump operators, etc. Moreover, each existing character has a certain specialization, due to which he will be especially effective in the premises of a certain category.
After receiving the second promotion, the operator not only changes in appearance, but also acquires new abilities
The characters in Ark nights are unique not only due to their abilities and specialization, but also due to their looks and background. Yes, seemingly faceless dummies have their own history and it does not boil down to trivialities in the spirit of “enemies burned down their home”. In addition, some operatives are completely “living” references, like the same Projected, which with its appearance, callsign and style of clothing is referred to the Polish studio CD Project Red and their series The Witcher.
The Ark nights are set in a world called Terra, inhabited by various races of batsmen. In fact, Terra is in many ways similar to our Earth, however, people do not exist on it in principle, and the main resource is the mysterious crystalline mineral Origenian, which is of high value for various industries, but at the same time, with prolonged contact, leads to infection with a fatal disease. called Uropathy.
Due to the fact that Uropathy is incurable and very deadly, and also increases the patient’s ability in terms of local magic to an astonishing level, the infected quickly became the scum of society, and one state, called by the developers Urus and suspiciously similar to the Russian Empire, began to exile poor fellows in local concentration camps or even to destroy.
Naturally, the Infected did not want to put up with this alignment of things, as a result of which the radical organization Reunion was formed, which is the main threat to Terra in the first arc of the Ark nights.
