Y'know who gets a bad rap? Giant monsters. I mean, most of them are just napping peacefully until our meddling wakes them up and steals their stuff. Now all they really want to do is tear up a few cities and eat all the tasty, delicious people inside. Finally, there's a game that understands how much fun that can be. Rise and Destroy is a free-to-play mobile title from Kingsisle that puts you in the shoes... err, giant talons(?) of a bunch of different, unique monsters, and tasks you with trashing stuff. Is it worth downloading to your phone or tablet? Let's find out in my Rise and Destroy review.
There aren't very many large-scale destruction simulators, really. It's a shame, because almost every one I've played has been a ton of fun. Rise and Destroy probably occupies a similar space to games like Blast Corps and Katamari Damacy, where the objective is to cause as much chaos as possible, within certain rules and limits.
WOTS on YouTube We streamed a bit of Rise and Destroy, so if you'd rather check out the game in action, here you go!
"https://youtu.be/nd6PrrB3FjE"
Each level in Rise and Destroy tasks you with some destruction-oriented goal. Sometimes, you're just trying to escape the humans, but more often you've got power cells to steal or buildings to crush into a fine powder. There's a whole roster of unlockable monsters, each with a favorite element and a set of skills designed to aid you in your rising and/or destroying.
Rise and Destroy is more than just mindless destruction, though. Buildings can be attacked from all angles, and the debris they create can topple other buildings. Sometimes, approaching a cluster of buildings is a carefully constructed puzzle. Can you figure out where to push in order to topple the whole group in one go?
Unfortunately for our heroes, the squishy humans don't seem willing to go without a fight. They've set up all manner of anti-monster turrets, and they're not afraid to take the field and fight themselves. To aid you against these human threats, you can deploy "creeplings." Each creepling is strong against a particular type of human unit - green creeplings explode into a gas cloud that obliterates a whole group of unarmored humans, for instance.
Like I mentioned in the introduction, Rise and Destroy is a free-to-play game. There is an energy mechanic that lets you play a chunk of levels before you have to wait for it to recharge. The starting energy count is 40, although that can be quickly expanded to 80. Playing a level for the first time costs 10, and replaying and old level costs 5. I found I typically could get a good half hour or more out of Rise and Destroy in a stretch, which was good enough for me.
The in-game currency is coins, and coins can be spent to replenish your creepling stocks as well as on upgrades for your monsters and their home base. Coins can be earned from levels you've cleared every 4 hours. The better you've done on a level, the more coins it generates. Thus, the replay factor on older levels can be quite high.
There's a premium currency, gems, that can be earned slowly from daily rewards and watching ads. You can trade this for gold, or stockpile it to acquire legendary monsters.
The difficulty level in Rise and Destroy can be somewhat high on smaller devices - when we talked to Kingsisle at SxSW, they suggested using BlueStacks on Windows rather than playing on a phone. I don't find it insurmountable on my Nexus 5X, though. I've had pretty good luck setting high scores on many of the early levels.
I do find that sometimes I get stuck on a level and can't move on for a period of time, upgrading my monsters and abilities. This requires a lot of gold, which in turn requires either grinding levels or waiting around for gold timers to expire. This can slow my roll a bit. That's mainly the nature of free-to-play gaming, though, and it's not nearly as bad here as it is in some games that shall not be named... (coughcandycrushcough)