The Grey Jack Frost

Hello peoples. Today I'm writing about another iOS game. Here it goes.

The game is called Rival Knights. Rival Knights is a jousting game made by Gameloft. You are a peasant in a village who has to become the greatest knight in the land to avoid having your village and your lands bought by the notorious Lord Cunnings. The jousting itself is simple but intuitive and fun. First off it counts down to zero and if you tap the screen right on time with it then you get "Perfect Start" icon which raises the speed of your horse. Tapping to early or to late will do nothing. After that you get a curved bar with an arrow running along it. If you tap the screen when the arrow is in the green area then your horse speeds up perfectly, stop it in the yellow your horse speeds up a little, stop in the white and nothing happens. If you get it perfect for 6 or 7 times then you get the high speed icon. After 7 of these speed rises you move on to the next part of the joust. Now you are close enough to aim your lance. The game provides a target somewhere on the other knights body, the target gets smaller and more precise as you get closer. If your lance is almost exactly on target the target will be yellow, if it's on a greenish, blue then your are perfect on it so keep your lance steady. If you hit the knight when the target is green them you get the "Perfect Hit" icon. Getting Perfect start, High speed, and Perfect hit will result in a critical hit that raises all your stats. Their are 3 stats that determine the winner. Before the joust begins it shows yours and your opponents. The three stats are defense, speed, and attack. If the icon showing the stat is red then your opponent has better equipment than you, if it's green you have better equipment than them, white is a tie. If you do better in 2 or more stats at the end of the joust you win, otherwise you lose, or if all stats are white or one green, one red and one white then it's a tie. Speeding up your horse during the joust will raise your speed stats and being closer to the target raises your attack stat. This makes it possible to beat an opponent even if all his stats are better than yours before the match begins. Defense is the only stat you cannot change during the match unless you get a critical hit which raises them all.

There are five different things you can buy in Rival Knights to help you. You can buy better helms and armor to improve your defense. Buying a better horse will increase your speed stat. Buying a better lance with improve your attack stat. Some lances are harder to aim then others and also some horses are harder to speed up then others. There is also a weight factor in Rival Knights if your Helm, Armor, and lance weigh to much for your horse you can't joust and have to either get a horse that can carry it or change your equipment. You can also buy things to change your emblem with which is the flag or banners that represent your knight. You can also buy things that go on your emblem that discount equipment but these cost diamonds which are harder to get then gold.

There are a few different level types. The first is a simple encounter where you joust 1-3 people with each person costing one of your 6 maximum royal seals. There's also king of the hill where you have to start over at the first person if your beat at the second or third, challenges, where you have to beat your opponent and also get perfect start, high speed, or perfect hit, an arena type where you gamble the money you get beating the first person and keep on jousting harder opponents, if you lose then you lose all the money you would have received. Lastly there's sponsored matches where you joust with equipment that's not yours with your reward being to unlock one of those equipment, and the boss matches where you have to get best 2 out of 3 against a boss. After progressing after an entire League of which there are 5 you get access to another round of equipment so that league 1's equipment is pretty standard leather items where as league 5's has expensive steel items. There is also multiplayer where you fight others and if you are a certain ranking after a tournament is done you get rewards. Jousting in these matches requires multiplayer seals.

Rival Knights is a great, simple and addictive game. It's free on the App Store and although it's does have the secondary currency of diamonds that you can buy with real money, it's still very easy to acquire them with multiplayer or beating bosses which is the first time I've seen a secondary currency balanced that well. In most games where you have to wait a specific time before you can play it again it becomes very frustrating but in this your seals full up rather quickly and is perfect for on the go play.