Battle Virtual Monsters In Moonrise .

Known for their hit zombie-survival game State of Decay, Undead Labs is now trying their hand at the mobile MMORPG market. Their newest title, Moonrise is a 3D RPG that involves capturing monsters, called Solari, and using them to fight your rivals. Moonrise uses a number of mechanics that many players are already familiar with, such as turned-based combat and an evolution system.

A historical event known as Moonrise has spread and corrupted the Solari, which are normally peaceful creatures, and has turned them into the Lunari. The player has been chosen to become a Master Warden and to search the world, cleansing the Lunari to return them to their original state. As players progress they’ll have access to more exotic and dangerous locations where rare and powerful Lunari are said to be roaming.

The environments already look stunning.

NOT JUST ANOTHER MOBILE GAME

Let’s face it, there are a ton of mobile games on the market it and a large portion of them call themselves RPGs. However, what they usually end up being are cash grabs that require players to collect and upgrade large numbers of epic or legendary creatures in order to have a fighting chance. Thankfully, Moonrise really looks like it’ll be separating itself from the pack. What initially separates Moonrise are the amazing visuals. I got a chance to checkout Moonrise earlier this year, and I can honestly say that this game looks better than any other mobile RPG on the market right now. The 3D visuals aren’t muddled and don’t resemble an early PlayStation game where you can literally count the polygons. The monsters are incredibly vibrant and each has their own look; Even the player can customize their looks and outfits.

When I generally think of combat systems in mobile RPGs, the first thing that comes to mind is either a card-battle system or a turn-based fight that’s automatically resolved without any input from the player. Moonrise, on the other hand, uses an active time battle system where speed and coordination matter. Players have control over two Solari and their warden at all times during combat.

There’s also quite a bit of complexity in Moonrise’s combat structure. Players can have a total of 6 Solari on their team at any given time and two out on the battlefield. The active monsters can be swapped in or out of battle by sliding the screen on another monster. Each monster has a wide range of skills that increase based on its level or evolution; so this isn’t a game where you can simply press “fight” and let the match finish itself. Interestingly enough, wardens can also be directly attacked as well. So it would technically be viable to build a team based around stalling until the enemy warden is knocked out, as opposed to just focusing on fighting the Solari. Additionally, all of the aspects you would expect from a creature-based RPG are present such as evolution, breeding, elemental affinity, and varying degrees of rarity.

Gotta catch ‘em all

While I only go the chance to play through a couple of missions and a single dungeon, the story already seems interesting enough and there is a lot of detail in the environment. In a lot of games the quest hubs are usually nothing more than a few building-shaped icons to click on. In Moonrise the towns and dungeons have been designed in detailed 3D.

PVP AND PRICING

The importance of PvP in Moonrise was stressed to me during my play through. Undead Labs doesn’t just want to make a good single-player experience, they want to make sure PvP isn’t just tacked on or an afterthought. While PvP wasn’t part of the demo I played, they explained a few of the game modes that will be taking place. Obviously there’s going to be standard PvP using the monster’s you’ve already captured yourself. There’s also going to be some sort of ranking system, likely with tiered rewards.

Now the second type of PvP is where it gets interesting. There’s also going to be a draft mode where players get access to a random assortment of max level monsters and have to create a team from that pool. While there is some randomness involved, this essentially puts all players in that game mode on an equal playing field, which is clearly a better choice for newer players or those that haven’t gotten lucky capturing the most powerful creatures. Having a secondary, almost mini-game type of PvP is a big plus as we’ve seen from the success of Hearthstone’s Arena mode.

Customizable skill sets are a huge plus.

Like many other mobile games, Moonrise is going to be free to play and will have a cash shop. Pricing for mobile MMOs has always been a fine line between making money and letting players flat out buy power.

According to Undead Labs, “Spending money won’t grant you an advantage in PvP against a player who spent time to acquire the same assets.”

Basically, there’s nothing that can be purchased with money that you can’t find in game, it just might take more time to do so. There’s also some cosmetic gear for characters and experience boosts, but so far it doesn’t sound like there will be anything on line with cash-only booster packs. Also, even free players will have access to the entire storyline, so there’s no additional “premium” content that needs to be bought.

A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME

There really wasn’t a whole lot to the demonstration I played. What I was able to get my hands on was basically a tutorial and a beginner dungeon, which involved just a handful of battles. That being said, Moonrise already looks and plays great. Instead of showing off a lot of a game that still needs to be polished, they showed off a little bit of a beautiful looking game.

So far there are 90 different Solari, which creates a wide range of possible teams, and more are already in development. The worldwide release is scheduled for 2015, but some countries could see a release as early as fall 2014. This should give everyone enough time to upgrade their devices as it’ll only be supported on iPhone 4, Android equivalents, Kindle Fire, and iPad 2.