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A unique concept that falls short on its execution | Full Review - Spiritle
2K View2023-06-30
Spiritle is a 4-player turn-based strategy battle digital board game available both on PC and mobile with crossplay functionality. You take on the role of a Spirit among the 4 elements: Nature, Earth, Water and Fire, and engage in other fallen souls to reclaim their place in the world tree.
🟩Pros
+Charming art style
+Intriguing game concept
+Cooperative mode
🟥Cons
-Extremely slow pacing that takes away the enjoyment
-Lack of communication or social features for teamwork opportunities
-Luck being a significant factor in winning, alongside pure skill.
-Shallow gameplay mechanics
-Imbalanced character abilities and traits
Spiritle features a story premise that revolves around spirits and the 4 elements: Nature, Earth, Water and Fire, and shines in its art style, featuring a charming and cartoonish paint-like aesthetic. The characters and overall visual design are appealing, however, beyond the introduction story, the lore is practically non-existent, as it is actually a competitive Match-2 game with a focus on PvP battles. The game is free to play, with only cosmetics as in-app purchases.
Gameplay wise, it is a match-two game where you need to unravel the tiles nature (its biome, e.g. volcano, swamplands, grasslands, etc) and match the same tiles to be able to attack. The premise of moving around the tiles and finding a matching biome is a bit weird at first, especially after the cute story intro they set up for the game, but it gets better as you play.
All the tiles are initially hidden, and players must gradually uncover them with two moves each turn. Selecting and moving to a tile reveals its nature to all players, but it becomes hidden again once their turn ends, making memorization important. There is a temporary short log to view the history of these selections, aiding players to some extent, although entries disappear as more are added.
Successful attacks give players two more moves, which allows them to chain two attacks together as long as they can match more tiles. If the tiles run out and the matches are still ongoing, they just reset with a new and bigger layout. The match continues until there is one player or team left standing.
Apart from the match-two gameplay, the game also features bonus abilities for each character and an in-game shop that at the cost of a move, allows players to purchase additional abilities by collecting gold randomly scattered on the tiles. Each character has their own ability set, as well as one choice of item to equip and bring into matches. Although I did find that the characters aren’t really well balanced, and it's just a matter of racing to pick the best one once the match starts.
The 4-player match features two main game modes: classic mode which is a 1v1v1v1 matchup and a cooperative 2v2 game mode. As far as the concept goes, the rule set of the game is actually a very intriguing concept and one that has compelled me to play more. However, how it is executed in the game’s format leaves much to be desired. The most glaring issue is that the game is unbearably slow-paced, everything takes too long and is riddled with long unnecessary pauses. In addition, there is too much time given to the players to make a move, and even if they do move as soon as they can, the pauses are still extremely jarring and takes the enjoyment out of the game. Also, the 4 player match doesn’t help as well, as you’d have to wait for three other players to make a move. Only the co-op mode’s solo feature, which allows you to control two characters at once, makes this game more bearable to a small extent.
Furthermore, unless this is the intentional design of the developer, there is no way to communicate or chat with other players. As a result, proper teamwork and combos are completely out of the equation, adding more guesswork to the already wildcard matches. The matches themselves aren’t really deep, and getting attack moves only boils down to who is better at prediction and memorizing the tiles to be able to match them. The board itself isn’t that big to make a meaningful difference, and matches almost always go into many resets and rounds (because all the tiles are exhausted) before someone is eliminated.
The 1v1v1v1 matchup is flawed in a way that attacking doesn't really contribute to a concrete step towards winning unless there are only two players left. Due to its free-for-all nature, everyone can attack anyone, and it purely relies on luck on who the players will gang up on. Ultimately, winning comes down to being one of the two remaining lucky players with decent HP and then now using your memory, and again a bit of luck, to defeat your opponent. As a result, 2v2 looks like a much superior game mode.
Conclusion:
Spiritle presents a unique and promising concept with its match-two mechanics. The cartoonish art style and initial story premise capture attention, however, the game falls short in execution, primarily due to its slow pacing, shallow gameplay, and lack of social features. These aspects hinder the overall enjoyment and overall potential of Spiritle to be a mainstay as a household PvP offering.
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Hi, thank you so much for your feedback. We will make adjustments and optimizations in our future updates.
2023-06-30