I’ve been doing the pen and paper role-playing thing for over a decade now, and there’s one problem I’ve seen over and over with new players: they’re often uncomfortable committing to the absurdity. It’s hard to take yourself seriously and pretend to be a half-elf assassin with a bounty on your head or the best damn wizard your wizarding school has ever produced. Behold Studios’ Knights of Pen & Paper ($4.99) doesn’t have this problem. It jumps into the absurdity with both feet, bringing players along whether they like it or not.
That’s not to say it’s a game I’d sit down to play every week, pulling out my dice bag and my character sheet and settling in for the long haul. It has a shallow story, an uninspired cast of characters and far, far too many collection quests for any pen-and-paper experience I’d enjoy. Good thing it’s on my phone, where I don’t mind a little grinding in my RPGs. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the constant stream of nerdy references: Knights of Pen & Paper is a game that knows its audience and it doesn’t shy away from indulging us.
The game occupies an odd space in the gamers’ pantheon. It inhabits the world of tabletop role-playing, with all the d20s and Doritos that entails. Structurally, though, it’s an RPG, with the party, leveling and questing all in your control. Then there’s the stuff that feels uncomfortably mobile-specific, like its unending focus on money—earning, spending and, yes, buying it.
You play an entire gaming group—a game master and up to five players—in a story that’s set across both the “real" world and the game-within-a-game of their campaign. You control the players’ choices, like where they quest and what abilities they use in combat, and you also control the GM’s decisions, like how many of which monsters you’ll throw against the players. Knights of Pen and Paper handles the story and the player reactions to it, leaving you largely out of the picture for that side of things.
There’s quite a lot to do in this pen-and-paper world. You travel from village to village taking quests to help the locals, running into unusual characters and references from across the geek spectrum (Journey and Ghostbusters both feature, for example). You wander into dangerous areas and kill whatever you feel like killing. You farm grindstones and mushrooms to level the merchants who sell your party their gear and consumables.
Then there’s the much more meta side of things. The money your characters earn in-game can be used to buy decor and goodies for the room they’re playing in, and the quests they complete occasionally unlock new players and classes to join them in their campaign. You can also take a step further back past that virtual reality to the real world and use real cash to buy money to spend in the game room or the campaign world. It gets a bit overwhelmingly layered at times, but for the most part the game plays it tongue-in-cheek.
Though it has the look of something like a Kairosoft sim, there’s some depth to the mechanics that make up the Knights of Pen & Paper campaigns. Combat is an honest-to-goodness RPG challenge. You level up your players, get them the best equipment you can, pick their abilities, and decide how best to use them in each situation. You do control the difficulty of many of those situations, but that doesn’t make them any less fun to throw at your players.
Things get a little too absurd when the game hews most closely to its tabletop roots. Dice rolls seem like a necessary part of the game, but every time that D20 comes out you have to start worrying. In theory it controls whether you get attacked while resting or traveling, but thanks to an odd luck system that adds to your rolls, that rarely happens. Instead it tends to cheat you out of things in really annoying ways.
Take crafting, for example. Once you save up the blacksmith’s usurious prices for gear, it’s down to a dice roll whether you’ll actually get anything for your payment. Unless you get a natural 20, you’ll then need to wait quite a few real hours for your gear to be built—and even then, it’s not a speedy process. Similarly, there’s a chance to fail when collecting resources to level the smith or enchanter. This isn’t too obnoxious until you realize the spawn points take hours to reset. With enough money, none of these things really matter. Without a ton of grinding, though, you’ll never really have that much money—not unless you buy it. Awkward.
The game’s other serious oddity is its script. There are some outstanding gaming references to be found, and many character encounters that will be pleasantly familiar for practiced role players. Unfortunately, these are so swamped with errors that they can’t always be sensibly parsed. Hopefully we’ll see this cleaned up in a future update—though the errors fade away to a charming quirk pretty quickly, the game would still be better with a clean script. It would also be better without the item and skill bugs scattered throughout, so let’s hope for some fixes soon.
Still, it’s hard to hold a grudge when Knights of Pen & Paper does such a great job of pandering to my favorite pastime. Even when its story temporarily devolves into a series of extremely dull fetch quests, it’s kind of a blast. For a game about such a particular hobby, it does a good job of being a crowd pleaser with well-designed RPG elements and odd little sim touches. Let it get some experience under its belt, level up with a patch or two, and it will be a serious contender for my favorite RPG on the platform. For now, it’s a game I like to sit down with, even if the sessions get a little messy. When it comes to role-playing, if things don’t get messy they’re rarely as much fun.
I've gotten tired of Angry Birds awhile ago, but its kinda hard to resist a Star Wars version. No, resist...ok, resisted...would have definitely been a lot harder to resist if it was a universal app :/
Not getting it, but a Star Wars tie in is brilliant.
Ha! Star wars "TIE" in.
(2 weeks later) holy sh!t rovio just announced angry birds:halo!!!
id buy that :)
Omg: angry birds assasins creed!!
I would get that.
Angry Birds: Modern Pigfare?
Grand Theft Piggies?
Marvel vs Capcom vs Rovio?
I would get marvel vs capcom vs rovio
Angry birds modern pigfare lol
The angry birds get guns in an exciting spinoff of the call of duty series
Just played the game and passes it all in one siting. That should say it all. Fun addictive and best off all challenging. Best buy on a while!
Been waiting around for this for weeks now and it doesn't disappoint.
Well, well, well. What do we have here?
Do the iPhone and iPad versions sync their progress?
Hahahahahaha ofcourse not :)
Remember when Angry Birds was universal or when the HD versions have exclusive content instead of exclusive price?
Me neither
Bit annoying that these guys are still selling separate iPhone and iPad versions. Even EA has gone universal by now. Get with the program, guys.
I'm a fan.
HD version is retinafied right?
I skipped AB Space so I don't know if this is the "new" AB or if I just don't like the gameplay mechanics. It's fun seeing the Star Wars packaging but the gameplay feels a little loose and the new abilities feel odd. I like it but not as much as I did with the first two games. The Over abundance of SW sound effects gets old quick
Soon we will see Angry birds lord of the ring or who knows they might make a Harry potter edition... Gods know what other crazy idea to milk money
well there is probably more reasoning for this game crystal. You do realize they are making a star wars 7, 8, and 9.
I mean I hate angry birds, probably the only person in the world who still hasn't baught angry birds lol.
But this game...instabuy~
Hmm. What would be the absolute least appropriate movie tie-ins?
Angry Birds:
Old Boy
Clockwork Orange
American Psycho
Avian Centipede
Must admit, I can already picture the Angry Birds: Clockwork Orange teaser poster...
I might have to make it...
I'd totally get Angry Birds Human Centipede.
Nasty, yes, but the idea is too hilarious to pass on.
Angry birds Pulp Fiction, Angry Birds Deliverance.
Angry Birds: Braindead aka Dead Alive!
Angry Birds: Silence of the Pigs
Hannibird Lecter: It puts the lotion on its feathers or else it gets flung into piggies again!
Angry Birds Saw lol
Debating if I should buy the game or not. Is it worth it? I've played Angry Birds before, wondering about this one though.
★★★★★
This game is awesome. It's much more than just Angry Birds with Star Wars art. The characters, abilities, sound effects and cutscenes are all fantastic.
[Vader]: "Luke... I am your father."
[Skywalker]: "Dude, you're a pig."
[Vader]: "...it's complicated."
You're funny
Since when did ios games start getting an ESRB rating?
The ESRB tried to get their hands on the App Store and apple said no way we have our own raiting system.
As promised, with not even the 'HD' version being universal, Rovio can swivel for my money.
SOOO GOOD KUST DOWNLOAD
Does anyone know what the "unlock codes" are