Tiny Tim Games’ upcoming RPG Random Battles is an RPG without the fluff — you’ll level up, fight monsters, and enjoy a journey, but you won’t find any villages or be forced to listen to a godawful story or crawl through endless and uninspired dungeons. Random is a mobile title designed for gamers on the move, and part of it is inspired by one of the iPhone and iPad’s purest mechanics: slide to unlock.
At WWDC in San Francisco this morning, Tiny Tim showed us an alpha version of its title, and detailed some of its core mechanics. In a nutshell, Random Battles is an old-school RPG with loads of random 2D turn-based battles. You mission as the adventurer is simply to progress through a literal “quest line" and collect gear, items, and experience along the way. As you gain levels, you’ll get access to new quest lines.
Its’ namesake battles are all timer-based. When one pops up in notification center, the slide bar says “slide to fight." After activating it, you’ll be taken to a 2D plane with a monster that needs a few whacks. If you win, the quest line updates and you walk a bit further along. Rinse; repeat.
“We took the concept from old games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, and we saw where we could apply that to a mobile space — iPhone, stuff like that. We wanted to make it different where you could get into the battles and be an avatar on the field," Tiny Tim told us.
The version of Random Battles we saw this afternoon looked rough. The art that you’re seeing below apparently hasn’t been implemented quite yet, either. Along these lines, we have concerns about just how barebones Random will feel. Its premise and mechanics are as streamlined as possible, so the production side needs to be really be next level.
We’re excited to see more of Random in the future. It’s slated to come out later this summer, and we’ll keep up.
