If you’re still riding high from watching Rogue One, or if you don’t know how much longer you can last before The Last Jedi comes out, let me tell you about Star Wars: Force Arena.
Star Wars: Force Arena is a competitive multiplayer smartphone game that I haven’t been able to put down since I first downloaded it. Much like the movies, Force Arena pits the Republic against the Galactic Empire, but unlike the movies, it accomplishes this with 1-on-1 (ranked) or 2-on-2 (unranked) battles. Whether you want to play as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, or one of the newer characters like Cassian Andor, Star Wars: Force Arena has you covered.
How does it work?
Force Arena is definitely not a card game, but it does involve deckbuilding. Before you play, you have to choose your leader (which, of course, defines whether you will play as the Republic or as the Galactic Empire). Most cards are only confined to the light side or the dark side, but each leader has one unique card that only they can use (for example, only Luke Skywalker can have the Ben Kenobi card in their deck). Once your leader is chosen, you put together a small deck of eight cards, which will be the only cards available to you in battle.
Once a battle starts, you begin with seven energy points and get one point of energy each second, up to a maximum of 10. You use these energy points to play cards from your deck, which are available to you three at a time (shown in the bottom right of the above picture, along with the next-card-up shown slightly smaller). You can either tap these cards to spawn them where your leader is, or you can drag them to where you want them to spawn. Now, you might be wondering what that circular lightsaber button next to your card bank is. That’s Luke Skywalker’s special, which does extra damage to the current target.
Some specials, like Luke’s, just do extra damage. Some (like Cassian Andor’s) spawn extra soldiers, while others (like Han Solo’s) allow you to place a landmine. Along with having different health levels, movement speeds, and damage rates, each leader has a different special, making each leader truly feel like a different game experience. My current favorite is Cassian Andor because of his sniping.
But what do you actually do?
While killing the enemy leader forces them to wait an increasingly-longer amount of time to respawn, the real name of the game is destroying enemy turrets and shield generators. Each player/team has two turrets on each side of their half of the map, and a third turret in the end of their half of the map, just in front of a shield generator. If you destroy the enemy’s shield generator, the game is over and you win. Otherwise, whoever has destroyed more turrets at the end of three minutes is the winner. There is also a one-minute overtime period if the score is tied after three minutes, and if there is still no winner the game is declared a tie.
What happens if you win?
If you win, you get a new card pack, which is the main way to upgrade your deck. Card packs either give you new cards to use in battle, or duplicates of cards you already have, which can be used to upgrade your cards. Having more copies of a card will not make it come up more often in battle, it can only upgrade the card’s stats. Card packs also give you coins and crystals. Coins are used to buy more cards, upgrade cards, and trade in cards. You can trade in 10 cards of one rarity for one card of the next rarity, with the price in coins depending on the rarity you are trading for.
Card packs do not open automatically, though — you either need to wait a few hours (depending on the pack’s quality) or pay a few of the aforementioned crystals. You usually only get one crystal per pack (if that), but you also get a fairly steady stream from end-of-season rewards and mission completions. Crystals can also be used to buy more packs. Of course, you can also buy crystals with real money. If you’re smart, though, it’s pretty easy to save up your crystals for a binge night when you just can’t wait to open that next pack.
Aside from crystals, the game does not really have any other microtransactions. There are no lives, so you can play as often as you want, you just won’t be able to keep collecting card packs after a certain point (the game limits you to four card packs at a time, or five if you spend money on a “premium booster”, which gives you a fifth slot and halves the opening time for each card pack). Being able to play as often as you want is one of the main things that makes Force Arena a winner in my book. It’s free to download, so give it a try and let me know if you like it. One last word: while Star Wars: Force Arena is optimized for smartphones, those with bigger screens might appreciate the graphics even more.
Download Star Wars: Force Arena for free on your iPhone or Android
