Why Tower of Saviors is a mobile game worth playing

Developed by Hong Kong-based Mad Head and with seven million players, Tower of Saviors is currently one of the hottest mobile games in Asia. The game is often called a clone of Puzzle and Dragons, but Puzzle and Dragons is only available in Japan and North America, which locks out a lot of gamers who are dying to give the game a shot. Clone or not, though, Tower of Saviors has been a joy to play.

Gameplay: A fusion between Pokemon and puzzles

Tower of Saviors is a mobile mash-up of Pokemon and Candy Crush. The fight takes place at the top half of the mobile screen and the puzzle is on the bottom half.

You start adventuring the dungeons with several monster seal cards (pictured). Each monster seal card has unique abilities to aid you in battles (like massive attacks or battle bonuses) and you can collect more of them when you defeat monsters.

These seal cards also have other uses. You can select them in your team fights, level up other monster cards, or evolve your monsters. The cards are classified using five different runestones. If you match 3 or more runestones of the same color vertically or horizontally, you will be able to trigger a monster of that color to attack. The more combos you can do, the more damage your monster will deal.

Each battle also allows you to bring a friend along. If you win the battles, you get friend points. 200 friend points can be exchanged for a random seal card. If there’s an event going on, you might be able to get some very rare and powerful seal cards.

Do note that each battle costs battle stamina. If you run out of stamina, you can’t play. Either you pay one diamond ($1.00) to recover stamina or wait for hours for it to recover. Diamonds can also be earned in battle. But by paying for diamonds, you can easily gain access to rare seal cards and basically pay to win the game.

But if you are like me, a casual Tower of Saviors gamer, you shouldn’t need to spend a single dime to enjoy the game.

Why is Tower of Saviors addictive?

1. The RPG factor: The game makes it fairly easy to advance and it is a joy to see your monster seal cards getting stronger each day.

2. Easily social: Tower of Saviors is social but doesn’t go overboard with it. Yes, you added a friend and brought him/her to battle. But that “friend” isn’t really there. Tower of Saviors has smartly made it easy to get “friends” to be involved with the game without them actually being there for you. It’s a bit thin, but it still did make me feel connected with others.