The players raised to Apple Arcade, the exclusive video game service for the company's devices, has received in recent days one of the most anticipated novelties of the platform. This is 'Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows', the latest interactive derivation of a franchise that, despite the end of the HBO series that made it a worldwide phenomenon, still has much to offer its fans, among new series, upcoming books, and multiple video games.
That Silly Studio and Devolver Digital are responsible for this game focused on the Night's Watch, in charge of defending the Wall of the northern border of the kingdoms of Westeros. The player controls various Lord Commanders throughout the order's history, which is quite a long time, as the Night's Watch was founded eight thousand years ago, after the Long Night.
Among the actions that the player will have to carry out is sending scouts to different points of the Wall and even beyond, fortifying Castle Black and starring in different stories related to the Guard. You can send on three simultaneous expeditions, and you will receive crows telling you what they have found and with messages from your envoys asking what to do next. That is practically all, to which is added some extra decision, almost always in text format to complement the missions already assigned or to make them evolve.
Despite being a game based primarily on text commands, That Silly Studio has given basic importance to the map, which can be seen from three perspectives. One of them allows you to follow the route in the "real" time of the expeditions, since you will witness from a bird's eye view how time passes and the seasons follow one another, in events with a relaxing visual effect. The game consists of assigning missions, which are generated much faster than how they are solved, and watching. See how the map is changing, the expeditions are solving their orders and listening to the narrations of the Night's Watch.
That is to say, 'Game of Thrones: Tale of Crows' is a barely interactive video game, certainly not complicated (although that does not mean that it is simple) and where the duration of the game is derived, precisely, from what the player is expected to Enjoy contemplating the evolution of the climate, the Wall, the hardships from the sky of the expeditions. It is the magic of the so-called idle games, of which this game from the George RR Martin saga is one of its incarnations most adapted to the general public.
The idle games: play not to playEssentially, idle games (also known as clicker games, although both have ended up diverging in different directions) are games in which you have to carry out either very few actions or very repetitive actions, such as clicking on the screen one and again. In its most classic version, that continuous click provides the player with income that allows him to improve characters or buy materials, which inevitably leads to multiplying the income.
For this reason, the mechanics of management or strategy games tend to fit in with clicker games. Paradoxically or significantly, two of the games in the first round of clicker games were not games as such: 'Cookie Clicker' was a joke for netizens, and 'Cow Clicker', an interactive experiment by video game theorist Ian Bogost. Soon these games became challenges of patience and mindless skill when they became semi-role-playing games in which you only had to click, and whose titles left no doubt of their affiliation: 'Time Clickers', 'Tap Heroes', 'Tap Tap Infinity', 'Insanity Clicker' or 'Sakura Clicker'.
This was the origin of idle games, since clicker games like the very popular 'Clicker Heroes', at a point, do not need clicks to advance. They are played alone. The games idle, mixed in these categories with games clicker, adopt a more relaxed view of interactivity though, of course, have found ways to dodge its free nature with different forms of finance without abandoning its nature contemplative.
For example, they offer the ability to see ads to increase the speed on the way to our goals. Or, directly, to pay to obtain a permanent bonus. Some of these bonuses are obtained by accepting the offer to restart the universe without losing what has been achieved, which accelerates everything and makes us reach the point of previous abandonment with more advantages ... and shoots the life of the game to infinity.