I don’t usually play mobile games, although I do try from time to time. A number of factors, such as the greed that characterizes 99% of titles, the clunky control system, and the inevitable degradation of the large-screen experience, make me shy away from iOS and Android titles, if not like the plague, then less like the flu. You get infected from time to time, and now it’s that time again.
I’ve once again immersed myself in the world of mobile games, more specifically the latest creation from Finnish Supercell (previously behind Clash of Clans and Brawl Stars, among others) Squad Busters, and I immediately remembered why analogies like the flu seem so close to home when I think of mobile games. From the very beginning, the feverish dreamy atmosphere of false goodness is palpable. Gifts, money, confetti, visitors, fanfares and cheers rain down on me as if I were turning ten and they were celebrating in style. But I’m 32, tired and grumpy and a jaded gamer. I think I know what’s going on here. And who doesn’t want to party for a while, no matter how real the party is?
With my newly acquired gifts in hand, I buy my first class, a handful of barbarians, and start my first games with them. In short, I have to move around a small map from a bird’s eye view and find the largest number of gems before the four-minute timer runs out. Then I win. However, between my team and victory, there are nine other teams fighting for exactly the same thing. The trick is to build and balance your team quickly as you play. Every second and every decision counts. I slaughter the deployed enemies by standing next to them – this way my characters attack automatically – and with the money they drop, I find my way to the chests where new team members are selected.
When opening chests, it’s important to pay attention to the weak points of the equipment. Is my team taking too little damage? Close the gap with another barbarian. Do I need more money quickly? Choose a goblin. Defend? The fighting cousin. Speed? The chicken. And so on. Little by little, more and more complex classes are added to the wide range of characters and soon there are many ways to customize your squad to your tastes, needs and preferences. Once I’ve built up enough skill and confidence, I move to the center of the arena, fight for the big chest and compete against other teams. Between fights, I unlock new classes and improve existing ones, or invest in bombs and spells that I can throw with a snap of my fingers in difficult combat situations.
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The learning curve is reasonably steep and draws me in in a gentle (almost market analytical) way where continuous rewards and learning by doing trump slow text boxes and informative messages. Although I didn’t know what I was doing at first, the simple layout and countless chests and checklists encourage me to keep going. The bottom line is that the gameplay itself isn’t too much to keep me hooked. Squad Busters is a relatively repetitive auto-battler game with a design and icons that are too crude to read properly in the heat of battle, but at the same time it’s engaging due to its simplicity and high speed.
Most of the time, of course, when I win, I get a dopamine rush and the chests start piling up. And won. All the time. At least in my first five or six battles. But as a tired, irritable 32-year-old player, I completely understand what’s coming when I finish last in the seventh game after six wins in a row. What happened before wasn’t real. Chances are, I’ve hit rock bottom and the losses and now sudden lack of gifts, confetti, coffins, cheers and visits are leaving a market analysis hole in my soul.
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That emptiness is the realization that your parents not only made your friends come to the party, but also the gifts your friends gave you. Even if none of it were real, there are still fragments of that feeling of happiness inside you, and if I want to regain that feeling of success and honor and enjoy more of the good things, like bigger and better squads, more classes, spells, and winning games, then I just have to spend the money. Which, of course, I don’t.
No, as wins become fewer and fewer, the Battle Pass meter slows down, and more and more time passes between actual rewards, it becomes even more apparent how Squad Busters was designed from the ground up with microtransactions in mind. Whether wrapped up in an anonymous but friendly and colorful environment with character design and catchy music. It’s greedy as hell and I feel like I just want to return all the packages, gifts, and freebies to get a truly genuine experience instead. Because behind all the false benevolence lies simple, intelligent, and charming gameplay that has already kept me entertained for a few nights in a row, and that I could have continued for a while longer in short duels. But not in this sense. This is absolute insanity.
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