This summer, you and your best friends are heading out on a quest. You’ll climb through dark tunnels to reach mystical mountain temples. You’ll match wits with goblins, ghosts and sentient coffeemakers. You might even save the world from tearing itself apart. All you need to get this quest started? A magical phone. Be sure to read the fine print. This is Guildlings, a new story-driven episodic adventure brought to you by Asher Vollmer (maker of Threes), IGF award-winner Jamie Antonisse, and the team of dedicated indies at Sirvo Studios. Drawing inspiration from classic RPGs, point and click puzzlers and visual novel games, it tells a lighthearted coming-of-age fantasy tale within a modern mobile frame. Features: - Traverse hand-crafted low-poly environments, including floating ruins, a tavern built from a shipwrecked boat, and the mountaintop teen hangout known as “Makeout Temple”. - Use a text-message inspired chat system to make conversations and choices. Characters will react to your decisions in satisfying (and sometimes hilarious) ways. - Leverage your Guild members’ abilities in playful turn-based combat. Each Guildling has a unique set of powers tied to their personality. - Affect the world around you through your Guildmaster magic. A single touch can unlock doors, open treasure chests, or even blow up your dad’s favorite lamp. - Guildlings’ magic powers are tied to their moods. This system ties conversation, exploration and combat together. Keeping your team happy will make your journey easier, but sometimes a little drama will take the story to interesting places… If you’ve read this far already, what are you waiting for? Boot up your Tome, meet your new best friends, and become their Guildmaster. Worldaria awaits.
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Let’s start with the basics. Guildlings is mostly a simplified jrpg that is sometimes handled differently through its original ideas. You run through areas, get yourself in turn based ‘fights’, ‘level up’, use skills & items, complete (side) quests and have 5 party members where you take 3 with you.
I mentioned ‘fights’ because the game doesn’t view these confrontations as fights. It’s mostly hanging in there until the enemy becomes tired or runs away. You don’t level up in the traditional sense. You only level up through completing quests or answering questions that affect the mood of your characters. A character’s mood plays a big role in the game. Also with being able to use skills during fights or solving puzzles. There are skills and items that help you get the moods you want but it’s still annoying sometimes when you just want to get on with the game and you’re being held back by someone’s mood.
Which brings me to the game’s tone. It has a clear left stance aimed at kids in the political spectrum. You might have already noticed this with some of the previous examples mentioned but there is more. You have some characters with clear sexual preferences/identities, look colorful for the lack of a better term and the writing is your typical ‘I’m mean but it makes me cool and I’m actually a very sweet & good person despite sounding mean’ characters and the dialogues use internet slang a lot.
You either love it or hate it. Some people might think it’s too pushy, some think it’s harmless. What I can say is the writing is decent and I ended up caring about the characters a lot. The game has a decent amount of text, so you definitely need to enjoy reading dialogues as that’s one of, if not the main focus of the game.
The game also has a good style and soundtrack. The side quests have all been interestingly written and don’t feel like filler. I like that the game has tried different things that make it a bit unique even if some did not all work out. I went out of my way to do as much as possible which is a good thing.
Which brings me to some more flaws to talk about. The game is left on a huge cliffhanger. I read the game got patched to conclude the story of the 5 characters but even with that it still feels like a cope out. Originally pre-patch is supposed to be episode 1 but even that label got dropped and it’s uncertain what’s going to happen with the story. I also thought the last dungeon relied a bit too much on making you backtrack/do stupid mundane things to complete it.
I don’t regret playing the game and I’m actually glad that I got to experience it. It’s one of the better Apple Arcade games I have played recently. But the huge cliffhanger is a big no and read my text carefully to find out if you’re okay with the game’s message/themes.
The single glaring flaw with this game (other than its Apple Arcade exclusivity, which, needs must) is that it’s undeniably incomplete. The website which described it as “episodic” is now down. I can only cross my fingers and hope that neither COVID nor poor numbers doomed Guildlings to be forever a single act bereft of elaboration.