Let me start with the conclusion: I have been playing this game for three days, and I have never seen a recharge window. I was not asked to watch ads in exchange for stamina, and there was no VIP level double first recharge. I almost thought my phone was poisoned.
What is the current moral character of the mobile game market? When you open the app store, eight of the top ten apps are for drawing cards, and the remaining two are for drawing cards and socializing. You click in, and the novice tutorial will teach you how to defeat monsters in three minutes. In the fourth minute, you will play the monthly card. In the fifth minute, you will be asked to join a guild. In the sixth minute, you will start to get stuck without recharging money. Co-authoring gameplay is all in the payment page, right? The game "Crossing the Martial Arts" is a good one. Its full name is "a Jin Yong-like, highly free, self-developed online interactive independent mobile game for cultivating martial arts." It sounds like a bunch of keywords cobbled together, but I'm not fooling you.
The charging model says "0", which is not the kind of "0 yuan download and unlimited in-app purchases" 0. It allows you to play in a down-to-earth manner. The painting style is not top-notch, but the chess and battles are really interesting. Grid real-time chess is not a turn-based turn-based game where you cut me and you cut me - really, when I see the word "turn-based" now, I think of some big manufacturers who just took out the engine and sold it for money after reskinning it ten years ago. In the combat system of this game, characters move on the grid, skills have ranges and directions, and enemies will outflank and focus fire. You have to consider positioning, skill cooldown, and terrain occlusion. The game feels like playing chess, but the pace is fast and there is no drag like traditional war chess.
I won't spoil the plot, but it's much better than the greasy feeling of “I am the chosen one and all the beauties on the server love me”. You have to practice martial arts by yourself, you have to open your meridians by yourself, you can defect from a sect, and you have to choose between good and evil. The most outrageous thing is that this game actually allows you to fail. Can't beat the BOSS? Then go practice, find other ways, and use non-combat means to solve problems. It's not like some routines that “need to spend money to survive”, which rub the player's IQ on the ground.
Some people may say, what are the pictures of free independent mobile games? The developer, Shenzhen Duomeng Network Technology Co., Ltd., has never heard of it. But I believe more in the sincerity of this small factory. Making mobile games by big companies is like printing money. Modeling is copied and pasted, and there is an event every seven days. You can't wait to change your bank card balance directly into game currency. Duomeng is a developer with a cute name, but the games it makes are not cute at all. At least I know where every minute of game time is spent.
Of course, the game also has shortcomings. Some parts of the UI are not smooth enough, and the optimization occasionally drops frames, but you can't stand it without forcing you to pay for it. I played it for an hour, and I felt like I was back to the same energy I had when I played stand-alone martial arts on the computer. These days, a mobile game that can make you feel like "I'm playing a game" rather than "the game is playing me" is considered a rare species.
In short, if you are fed up with drawing cards in crooked pools, being kidnapped by guilds, and going online every day to do your daily routine just like going to work, I suggest you give "Cross the Martial Arts" a try. I'm not asking you to give up and change games, but I'm letting you know that this can still be done with mobile games. To hell with the money-making tricks of rubbish krypton gold games, real players just want to have a good time playing the game. 😤