If you’re like us, then you are sick of the unnecessary amount of friend code-spamming, money-gulping MMOs constantly plaguing the App Store. Recent pushes to innovate the genre and change this bad reputation (such as CozyQuest) have given us renewed hope. While it's not a text-based game like its counterparts, Urban Rivals innovates iPhone MMOs even further with cross-platform integration and card battling. Even in its beta state, the game is showing potential.
Urban Rivals originated on the web. At its core, the premise of the game is that you use cards to battle other players. The game has tons of unique cards to collect and it caters to many play styles. For example, some characters bash through your opponent with brute force, while others are more risky but can reap higher rewards.
One of the interesting parts of this system is the ability to buy booster packs, much like those for card games such as Pokemon. For those not familiar, a card pack gives you a set number of random cards (in this case three, or eight for a special pack). In Urban Rivals, card pack themes are based around a selection of clans-- a group of characters which, when together in a deck, gain special abilities. Like in a real world card game, certain cards are extremely rare. Players have the ability to trade online, which is a great feature when scouting out the card you need.
After a detailed tutorial, you are given a selection of servers to choose from, each with a different difficulty level and set of rules. As you gain levels, new servers are unlocked, which in turn opens up a bit more of the story. Servers are cross-platform, meaning that computer and iPhone players can go head-to-head against each other. This is a feature that, while proven to work effectively with games such as Anytime Pool, is still quite new to the device.
Urban Rivals is still in beta, so many features are still to be added to the iPhone version of the game before release. Boostr CEO and Urban Rivals developer Sebastien Flory told us that features still to come include an in-game shop (currently booster packs can only be bought through the website), an iPhone website, and more.
We were also informed that they will utilize the in-app purchases feature that was a part of OS 3.0. One thing Flory stated that we found interesting was “The game [is] entirely built using a soon to be public API. We expect developers to create more apps (Web, iPhone, you name it) using our platform and fit every conceivable need.” Developers, take note! Urban Rivals has no set release date at the moment, but Flory hopes to get the game out this summer.
6 Comments
Looks pretty sweet!
Crap Weasels! I love CCGs but hate the idea of having to PAY real money to collect the cards.
As I see it, buying boosters in-game simulates doing so in real life. To be honest, its actually not too expensive, compared to what you find in real life. On the bright side, you can just win battle, earn credits, and buy cards in-game that way. This would be much slower, but it works.
Hi ;)
I'm "flory". We are very happy that our game seems to interrest some of you. We are true iphone gamers as well and our goal is to deliver a unique and very deep experience. Believe me, if you like the game, you'll have enough contents for months, this is not your typical igame ;)
Btw, you can start playing right now on the website and train your characters to be prepared for the iphone version release. ;)
Anyway, thanks again, i'm now even more motivated to finish the game!
Hi Fraggle,
I'm "bizarroid" on Urban Rivals. This is a great game, unfortunately, you guys seem to have some serious problems with handling online payments. I hate to bring up my problems in public forums like this one, but you guys don't seem to respond to requests through the channels you provide.
In the last week I've flushed $20 down the SMS sinkhole, your people don't seem to want to help me, Allopass isn't interested in talking to me, and that's just in the last week. In fact I've had several problems with lost/invalid codes before. While the game works well when your payment solutions function correctly, when money gets lost (and it gets lost with depressing regularity) the player might as well forget about getting it back.
I'm very irritated about how your people have been handling this and I want either my money back, or the in-game credits I paid for.
There is nothing slanderous about this, everything I'm reporting here is 100% correct.
Your move.
Hey,
Since I'm one of the guy who were contacted by bizarroid regarding his sms issues, I'd like to add some details to his comments. First of all, I want to say that the issue is solved now ;). What happened is that he purchased SMS codes that we don't't accept on our site so we had to deal with our sms provider so he could trade them into ones that would work. It took a bit of time and many emails send back and forth, but we found a solution.
I'm not saying that we never have any SMS related issue, it happens, of course, but our customer support team alway does its best to handle those problems in the best possible way.
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