Game Review - The Bazaar

Today I'll be reviewing the Bazaar, a game about tactics and trying to plan ahead despite the level of randomness needing to be accounted for, but anything can work. This game has so much potential and as far as I'm aware, feels like the only game of it's kind that I've seen and played. It has a mixture of elements from other games such as buying from shops, creating a "deck" and having a mixture of player vs player and player vs computer fights. However the way they're all mixed together makes something quite individual.

Time for battle, believe in the heart of the cards?

What's the point?

So the basis of the game is a simple one, win 10 PVP (player vs player) fights before you lose all your life from losing against other players. To get there however is filled with a lot of random encounters and working out the best items required for the tactic you've gone for to make it work. Through levelling up in the game you can have up to 10 small items, but these can also be mixed with medium and large items which take up 2 and 3 places respectively. To get these items you can visit shops, gain them from encounters and earn them through beating the computer controlled monsters. The game works by days, which you will have a certain amount of encounters throughout the day before finishing with a PVP battle, usually you will have 4 choices of shop/encounter and 1 choice of monster to battle. The aim of all this is to create your playable deck and make it as strong as possible, by buying or gaining cards and skills that sync with each other and by buying duplicates of the cards you have to level them up and make them stronger. Although you can gain a card at a higher level to begin with as the game goes on, all cards have the levels of bronze, silver, gold and diamond to them which increasingly improve a stat on them. For example damage might be 10 on bronze, 20 on silver, 30 on gold and 40 on platinum. However the end goal doesn't change, you need your selection of cards to beat 10 players before you lose enough of your life to end the game.

The first choice of every run, gold and income, an enchanted item or a high level skill

Characters are nothing without the cards

So far the game gives you a choice of 4 characters to play as, all having their own strengths and selection of cards to play with. However the free version of the game only gives you 1 to begin with, with the other 3 unlockable through in game currency or the option to pay for them with your own real money. Fortunately the characters are all pretty balanced against each other, so it doesn't feel like you're stuck behind a paywall to win the games. This is mainly down to the vast mixture of cards available to you in the game and all the different ways you can combine them. You have weapons that do damage, which can be mixed with items that provide shield or heal your life or provide regeneration. There are weapons such as the sharkclaws that every time they are used, they increase the damage of all your weapons so there is a way to scale items as well. Then you have enchantments where you can add a further ability to your cards to add even more mixture to it, as well as the skills you can unlock or gain that will boost cards even more. There are a few types of abilities that can be gained, such as poison, burn, haste, slow, freeze, lifesteal and even multicast. All of which can work well with a number of others due to some items having reduced cooldowns when you burn for example. Most items have a cooldown which is how often they get used in a fight, for example a 5 second cooldown means without any interference, every 5 seconds that card will use it's ability whatever it may be. This can be sped up with haste items but can also be slowed down by your opponents slow and freeze items. In terms of the characters themselves, they have their own individual identities through their voicelines before fights, even though they are somewhat limited and could potentially have a bit more variety added for each one. Luckily the shop owners have their voicelines too where they mix it up as the games go on, and react differently to if you buy or if you leave without buying anything.

Which shop/destination to choose?

Win or Lose... Repeat

This game is so fun to play over and over again due to the amount of variety of combinations you can play with to see if they work or not. The initial part of playing this game is repeating the process to see which works together, however you quickly find something new to try instead and end up changing up every time you play. You've also got the choice of free play and ranked games to play, free play doesn't offer much rewards but it does help you level up a bit through completing the daily and weekly challenges. Meanwhile ranked games you get one free ranked token a day, you can gain more through levelling up and being rewarded them as well as being able to use the in game currency to pay for a way in. These ranked games offer you chests as rewards for each milestone you hit throughout your run, 4 wins, 7 wins and finally the 10 wins. In the chests you can gain more currency as well as interactive skins for any card in the game which add a bit more character to the game overall, and unlocking these will have you replaying the game to try get more of them. It doesn't take long to find yourself stuck into your 5th game in a row because you just want to win one more game or try one more tactic out and keep going.

Rewards, give me all the rewards!

The final life

A good quality of this game is no matter which screen you're looking at, it's colourful and vibrant and just looks fun as a result of it. Every screen is interesting, each battle is interesting, and it makes you want to play more of it to find out what it all does. Yes the game has some bugs here and there but nothing game breaking, for example sometimes you will get an overlap of a card or a shop staying in place once you've moved on, however this is simply fixed by quickly exiting to the main menu and resuming your game, then it's out the way and carry on playing as normal. This game has been very fun to try and learn, and I'm sure there are still things I'll be learning as I continue playing it and as the developers add more to it. I honestly look forward to seeing what comes next with this game and how it continues to develop both within the game itself and as I work out more and more with it. If you have half hour to spare and want a quick game to try out which will challenge your thinking, I'd recommend this game massively, just be warned, you could end up on it for more than just one game. It is very much a game that falls into the category of "just one more game".

8/10

Written by Lee Watson