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Infinity Conquer First Impressions: By the (History) Books

18K View2022-05-06

There’s a long history of mobile strategy games that allow players to conquer the world from the comfort of their phones. Think of Clash of Clans, Rise of Cultures, DomiNations, Forge of Empires, Elvenar—though these titles cover a wide range of art styles and differ in some of the nitty-gritty details, they also have a lot in common.

They’re all about taking control of territory from both computer-controlled opponents and other real players, about slowly building up your forces, city, and grand empire, with settlement upgrades and research often locked behind lengthy time gates. And they’re all games with a built-in sense of pressure, where being late to the party (or falling behind because you took a break or missed a few days) can mean that you’re never able to catch up without spending lots of real-world money.

This week I was able to join the beta test for Infinity Conquer, the latest title from developer Bozzy Games. For better and worse, this upcoming game sticks very close to the well-established mobile strategy game formula, though it’s not without some charming quirks.

The first thing I noticed about Infinity Conquer—and the element of the game that is most likely to draw in players—is that it’s a very visually ambitious game. As soon as I logged in for the first time, I was thrown into a dramatic computer-generated cutscene showing a massive battle. At pivotal moments during the battle, the scene paused and I was able to issue a command. Should we charge the enemy or try for peace talks? Should we focus on taking down the catapults launching debris at our fortress, or should we buckle down into a defensive position?

I’m not sure the choices actually had a major effect on how the scene progressed, but it was a clever way to make me feel a little more engaged than just watching a cutscene. At one point, the camera even flew down into first-person and suddenly, amazingly, put me in control of a ballista shooting massive arrows at the opposing army. It was a fun surprise, if not remotely representative of the bulk of Infinity Conquer’s gameplay.

That core gameplay became apparent very soon after the thunderous introduction. I was able to pick a starting region on the world map, and then I was shown to a city that found itself under siege. After rescuing them, a man wearing a lion skin around his head and shoulders asked me to lead the city, which had been abandoned by its previous ruler. This is where Infinity Conquer’s first real twist appeared: The warrior before me announced his name as Heracles.

Yes, that Heracles. The one from Greek mythology.

After working through some more tutorials and learning how to navigate the city and surrounding plains and issue orders to builders and troops, Heracles revealed to me that this city harbored a secret: a portal that can pull in great leaders from across space and time. That’s a pretty big secret!

So here’s the twist: In addition to being a territory-subjugating strategy game, Infinity Conquer is also a gacha game. As you expand your control to the lands around you and complete quests, you’ll receive keys. You can spend those keys (or, presumably, real money) for spins at the gacha, which will produce some of the greatest minds of war in history, literature, and legend to help lead your army. These leaders span a lot of different cultures, including such heavy hitters as Egyptian queen Cleopatra, Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga, and even the (probably fictional) British folklore hero King Arthur.

Gacha rolling can be either a major draw or a huge turn-off, depending on your point of view. For my part, I’ve got a soft spot for this specific type of game, even though it can and does lead to really brutal monetization where players are pushed to spend more and more money. It’s still too early to tell if that will end up being a major concern with Infinity Conquer, but I can report that this game maintains the pros of gacha: the heady rush of rolling the dice and being greeted by an ultra rare Joan of Arc who you just know is about to become your new go-to hero.

Outside of this element, Infinity Conquer functions exactly as I’ve come to expect from mobile strategy games. I spent time slowly taking hexes of new territory around my city, fighting off the current residents and leveling up my hero units, which increased their base stats and allowed them to command more troops at one time. The battles are played out automatically by AI, but the game’s slightly cluttered user interface at least does a good job of clearly communicating whether you’re likely to win or lose in any specific fight before you commit to it.

When I wasn’t expanding my empire outside the city walls, I was working to grow the city itself. Again, this is all standard stuff: I upgraded my barracks to train up greater numbers and new types of soldiers; I built up granaries and quarries to procure more resources; and I upgraded my capital city itself to unlock higher levels of upgrades for all my other buildings, which of course required more resources, which of course required pushing into new territory to strip it of its natural riches. It’s a tried-and-true gameplay cycle, and it feels as natural here as ever.

If there’s anything that bothered me about Infinity Conquer—and it extends to this type of game in general—it’s the ever-increasing time gates for upgrades and research. If you’ve played one of these games, you know how it goes: At first your new buildings go up so fast that you can skip the build time altogether. Then they start taking five or ten minutes. Then hours. I didn’t get this far into the process, but I’m sure that Infinity Conquer joins many similar games in eventually having upgrades that take days of build time to unlock.

To the credit of Bozzy Games, they are adamant that players will not be able to purchase resources or time speed-ups using real money. Those two options tend to be pretty key parts of the free-to-play economy of mobile strategy games, so it’s a little hard to believe, but I’ll take them at their word until I’m given reason not to.

But the real test of Infinity Conquer’s long-term success isn’t going to be how pay-to-win it feels. Plenty of games of this type (looking at you, Clash of Clans) have proven that they can be blatantly pay-to-win and still gain a huge audience.

No, the real question is just how much value players will find in the small tweaks that Infinity Conquer makes to an otherwise very familiar structure. The flashy graphics, the personality-filled characters, and yes, the addition of gacha rolling—these are all going to be make or break. And for what it’s worth, while I wasn’t absolutely blown away by my time with Infinity Conquer’s test version, I was intrigued enough that I’m willing to give the full release a chance whenever it arrives. For a genre that often feels a little stale to me, that’s no small accomplishment.

Infinity Conquer’s first beta is playable now exclusively on Android devices in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia. You can download it via TapTap here. A launch date for the full version has not yet been announced.

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