Asiasoft’s first English-language mobile game offering is a complete dud

At Games in Asia, we believe in supporting the gaming ecosystem. We have a soft spot especially for indie developers, and if an indie game isn’t up to scratch, we usually choose not to feature it rather than beat it down.

Yesterday, though, I found out that Asiasoft signed a game called Minox SEA, formerly just called Minox. It was being promoted via posters pinned up in a Comics Connection store in Singapore, and boasted the use of @cash for its microtransactions. It is also published on Google Play under Asiasoft’s Playpark brand.

Help, my eyes.

Minox SEA is Asiasoft’s first English-language mobile offering and the first Southeast Asia-developed game on its mobile portfolio; the game was developed by a Singapore-based developer. But after waiting in anticipation of what Asiasoft would offer by way of mobile games, Minox SEA is hardly what I was expecting from the reputable industry giant.

(See: Win up to S$1,750 in cash at Asiasoft’s inaugural Strife Rookie Tournament)

Minox SEA is a mash-up of Pokemon and Maplestory, and allows players to wander through a platform-based world and do battle with pets. These pets can also be captured, and players can fight in larger tournaments to try to be the very best. It sounds like a decent enough game, but it’s not.

There is no way to be kind: Minox SEA is an embarrassingly bad game with on-screen buttons, a horrendous UI, and visuals worse than what I see when I visit schools offering gaming diplomas. I first tried it at a local gaming expo last year and I was simultaneously horrified and terrified, and couldn’t run away from the person demonstrating it to me quickly enough. I have no idea why Asiasoft decided it should be their first pick for mobile games, or why it even got signed.

Help my eyes are on fire.

When asked why Asiasoft chose to sign that monstrosity over all the other brilliant mobile games in the region, Gerry Ung, regional director of Asiasoft’s mobile division, said via a PR representative that Minox SEA’s gameplay model is very similar to the MMORPGs Asiasoft is well known for, and went on to feed me a huge spoonful of marketing on what Minox SEA was all about. He rounded up the email by saying that the development studio, Ubergamers, is “one of Asiasoft’s many valuable mobile development partners.”

(See: Singapore: drinking Gong Cha can earn you Maplestory items, yum!)

While Ung did say that interested mobile developers can contact Asiasoft’s mobile team here, the fact that Asiasoft considers a studio like Ubergamers to be a “valuable” partner, and that it thinks a PC MMORPG game can be transplanted into mobile, doesn’t bode well for the industry.

I have checked out the other Minox games developed by Ubergamers. They look bad. The studio doesn’t even bother to make sure the graphics are of the right resolution. Art is pixelated, concepts look like I could have done them. Everything. Looks. Bad. And while there are mobile MMORPGs, these are developed with the mobile gaming meta in mind; they don’t simply rip off Maplestory. As a Singaporean, it’s embarrassing that Minox SEA is a Singapore-made game. As an industry professional, it’s disappointing.