Have you ever seen those ads all over the internet of a mobile game that, once you download it, it turns out to be a completely different game than what was shown? There’s a good bit of them out there, but the gameplay shown is usually one of only a handful.
One of them is what this game, Mob Control by studio “Voodoo”, actually covers, and exceedingly well If i may say so. I have sunk more hours than I’d like to admit on this game, and I haven’t had to watch ANY ads or spend any money to do it. Better yet, there isn’t even a health system that has you wait real time to gain back attempts to play it; its infinite rounds or as long as you want.
The front page of the app follows the same layout that all new games have nowadays. A few different tabs, with the usual suspects such as card collection/store/etc, with the main page having the options to jump into a match. The front tab has your selected “cards” shown, as well as a center piece that you build with continual winning of matches, and a few events where you collect different tokens.
Something of note; as of the time of writing, there is a crossover event going on with a pretty high quality storyline and sprites from the source material. This happens to be a Transformers theme, which is pretty impressive considering that getting a high-profile IP like this can be rather difficult for most apps/games.
Furthermore, judging by the ranking tab of the app, there have been millions of players who have downloaded this game. It’s hard to say how many are historical accounts that never made it past the first league and how many are active users, but seeing as how I never had to wait for a match, I would imagine it is still quite high. Thinking on it though, the matches might be asymmetrical where an AI is simply using a player’s card selections to play against you and not necessarily online; it is hard to say.
The card collection page is fairly standard if you’ve ever played something like Clash Royale. The only difference here is that you pick one of each category; a troop type, a champion type, a cannon type, and an ultimate type. The last one comes around fairly deep into the game, and I have not been able to unlock one yet, but the cannon affects the pattern of troops that you “shoot” out or summon. The troop type affects the class of troop you shoot out of the cannon you chose, and the champion is a special type of troop that only comes out of the cannon after a length of continual shooting; think “Boss” troop.
Now let’s get to the exciting part of the review; the actual gameplay. If you’ve seen the aforementioned ads of this type of game before then you should already have a good idea.
You position the cannon at the bottom of the screen with your finger, sliding it and holding down the screen to continually shoot the troops out in a straight line. As you continue to hold down the cannon and troops keep coming out, a bar near the cannon slowly fills up. As soon as it is full, a text bubble stating “Release” is shown and as soon as you lift your finger a Champion (of your choosing) troop will skyrocket forward.
Each map is completely different with a ton of different battle-styles as well (such as a 3-way battle, boss battles, castle battles and more). The maps have obstacles and features that each change the dynamic of the match. The main such feature is the blue gate with a multiplier written on them; as any troops or even champions pass through the gate, they are multiplied by that number. And yes, there are some insane combos where the entire screen is coated in troops (such as a 10x gate followed by a 5x gate, leading to 50 troops per single troop your cannon has shot out).
There are also death gates that clear all troops passing through it, moving arms that change the trajectory of the troops, speed tiles that have the troops flying past the screen, and many more. Honestly, the gameplay loop is so addicting and ever-changing, that I ended up a few more hours than i expected in still having fun.
All of that doesn’t even include the layers and layers of objectives and events to do while playing. Battle pass (with a free reward at every tier), the transformers event, an Easter event, daily and weekly challenges, “star” events, and a climbing ranking system that shows you how far up in player %’s you are. It’s a ton of evolving content that doesn’t feel boring.
To close off this review, let’s talk about the monetization of the game. Yes, there are a lot of layers to this as with any modern mobile game.
There is a monthly battle pass that resets every month and has a lot of rewards along the way. There are multitudes of “packs” as you level up. There is a membership, and the standard resource purchases to get. To be honest, I have not seen a single ad while playing (or atleast that I didn’t choose to watch) and so their revenue from the store must be high enough to support it being a free app.
This game is one that I will be keeping on my phone. My attention is fickle and I may not play it often as time goes on, but it still is something I could see myself enjoying on occasion. No ads, unlimited matches, and a high level of evolving content will keep me coming back.
Cost: Free
Developer: Voodoo
Download at: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mob-control/id1562817072
The Tech Seekers 