Short Description
Battle Camp is a mobile-based game that is very much like Pokemon. The player starts off with 5 basic monsters in his team and progresses to each new town by defeating a hall boss (much like Gym Leaders). Every new town gives access to better monsters, which improve your team’s Power Rating (PR).
The rarity tier of monsters goes from Common, Uncommon, Rare, Super, Ultra, Epic and Legendary Monsters. Players can only obtain up to Super monsters by completing the main questline. For Ultra monsters and above, players can either compete in Events, or spend money to spin “Ultimate Grabs”, which has a random chance of giving Ultra and Epic monsters.
Each monster has its own zodiac sign, which means there are 12 versions of each particular monster. Another way for players to improve their PR other than obtaining monsters of better rarity is to match zodiacs e.g. using all “Scorpio” monsters in the team. This will activate powerful passive bonuses, which may include additional Attack stats, or HP stats.
An important aspect of the game is that players cannot sit down and complete a ‘playthrough’ in a single session. It is a passive game, where Energy is used to battle monsters, PvP other players, participate in Events and fight bosses. Every 10 minutes, 1 energy regenerates, and the total energy cap at any one time is 5. This means that players can only play for a short while, depending on how fast they use up their energy. After depleting their energy, they must either wait 50 minutes or use In-App-Purchases (IAP) to buy extra energy.
My experience
- Lens of Time
A lot of times, I just play the game passively. After using up my energy, I just close the game and go and do other stuff. Even though the game notifies me when my energy is refilled, sometimes I forget and let them go to “waste”, since there is a cap imposed. This is directly related to the Lens of Time. In this case, for me I think it is just a different style of gameplay, and I am neither frustrated that the game is too short, nor bored because it is too long.
- Lens of Endogenous Value
When I ran out of energy, I went to the ‘Management’ Tab and looked at my monsters and inventory. This is relatable to the Lens of Endogenous Value, which asks the question of ‘what is valuable to the players in the game?’ For me, it is obvious that my team of monsters and those in my inventory have endogenous value because it is essentially what the game is all about to me – improving my team and getting better monsters.
- Lens of Motivation
I also find myself exploring the ‘Social’ Tab and looking at my friends’ monsters, comparing his team to mine. I also PvP occasionally when I feel like it. I think the Lens of Motivation comes into play here as I feel motivated to play and upgrade my team so that I can beat other players.
- Lens of Spectation
An interesting thing that happened when I was doing this assignment was that another friend (not the one who I was planning to do this assignment with) became interested in watching me play. This may be explained by the Lens of Spectation, and I think the game is interesting to watch because animations are everywhere and people are generally attracted to moving things.
- Lens of Elemental Tetrad
Aesthetics – This game is heavily invested in aesthetics, as it is filled with nice animations and good looking monsters. On one hand, the common and lower-leveled monsters tend to look small and cutesy, while evolved monsters grow in size and give off intimidating looks, so this actually allows the game to cover a broad theme of art.
Technology – For technology, I do not know what game engine is powering the game, but I feel that it can be improved. When playing on my Android device, I always experience lag. On the other hand, my friend has no lag problems on iOS.
Mechanics – The mechanics of the game mainly revolves around matching gems, and is not new. Unlike Candy Crush, the player can move a gem anywhere on the map, displacing gems along the path taken and making multiple combos this way (see gameplay video).
Story – There is hardly any storyline progression in this game.
My friend’s experience
- Lens of Time
Unlike me, my friend was glued to his phone screen. It was clear that the 50 minutes recharge time for energy is too slow for him, and he was frustrated that he could not play longer.
- Lens of Endogenous Value
Similar to me, while my friend was waiting for energy, he would look through his current team of monsters and inventory.
- Lens of Chance
During his playtime, he actually used his free “Ultimate Grabs”. Although initially a paid feature, sometimes the game gives out free grabs as rewards to players in event. The chance of getting a good monster from spins is totally random. One of the questions asked by the Lens of Chance is: Does the randomness give the players positive feelings of excitement and challenge, or negative feelings of hopelessness and lack of control? Actually, it depends. If the player receives a very rare monster (e.g. Epic-tier monster) from the spin, then they would obviously be very excited. However, the chances of this happening is very low, and most players experience negative feelings when spinning such “Ultimate Grabs”. A lot of them have even advised other players to spend their money on other items instead, such as buying energy. In fact, some have even came up with their own term for “Ultimate Grab” – they ridiculed it as the “Rare Grab”, which means you only get Rare-tier monsters from it. Unfortunate for my friend, he did in fact get a rare-tier monster from his grab.
- Lens of Reward, Lens of Triangularity
My friend participates in events actively. Relating this to the Lens of Reward, events can be counted as the main source of rewards for players, as they usually reward monsters with much better stats compared to those that can be obtained through quests. Players are always excited to receive these better monsters as rewards. At the same time, events can also be related to the Lens of Triangularity. Event rewards are separated into Tiers and only the top 5000 players receive good event rewards. Some players may choose to spend lesser energy, and are satisfied with a lower tier. However, they may also choose to spend more energy to advance to the next higher tier. This is obviously very risky as players are competing against players and if everyone were to spend more energy, then nobody would advance at all.
General
- Lens of Community
There are 12 versions of each monster in the game. When getting new monsters (spinning grabs or event rewards), players do not necessarily get the new monster in their zodiac. Hence, trading among players is a very important aspect of the game as it allows players to match their zodiacs and receive bonuses.
Analysis
A learning point from the analysis of Lenses of Elemental Tetrad would be that a game does not need to have all elements; in fact if even one of the elements is done well (e.g. Aesthetics), players would be drawn into the game all the same.
Different people can have different reactions and experiences to the same game. This is evident in the Lens of Time analysis between me and my friend. Therefore, it is not only important to use the different Lenses blindly as a guide to game design, but to also consider that different people may react differently to the same Lens. A learning point from this may be that players are generally very fussy, and one man’s meat may be another man’s poison.
Despite the differences, some parts of our experience do share common reactions, such as the part on Endogenous Value. Although this may sound contradictory to the previous point about players reacting differently, I think this further reinforces the learning point that players are hard to please.
From both our experiences, I have been able to use multiple different Lenses to analyze the game. As a learning point, it is important to note that while using the different Lenses to design a game, it is better to stick to the rule of “more is better”. Some features may appeal to certain audiences e.g. passive playing and make others frustrated, but as long as the game has other features that addresses the needs of such players, then it would still be okay even if you have to make the player wait a while for some energy.
Website: http://pennypop.com/
Gameplay videos:
(Battle System) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cR5Ibg0ozo
(Ultimate Grabs) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIkiu0yk4aQ