Test from Game of Thrones Beyond The Wall: the Ravens go on a mission on mobile

Are you a GoT fan? Immerse yourself in the world of Westeros with the test of Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall. But before you download it, let's see what this videogame adaptation of the famous heroic fantasy license is worth. Join me on an adventure where you'll be recruiting fighters for the Night's Watch and launching expeditions beyond the Wall.

Lead the Night's Watch in Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall

As you will see in this test, Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall is a tactical RPG developed by Behaviour Interactive Inc set in the universe of the HBO series. The Canadian studio has made its name in the industry by adapting franchises such as Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, Transformers and Power Rangers. More recently, it was with Dead by Daylight that Behaviour scored its first big success.

Although the studio works mainly on console games, Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall is not Behaviour's first mobile game. Indeed, the first was Assassin's Creed: Rebellion, released in 2017.

A successful remake for GoT on mobile

First released in April 2020, Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall has just been remade. This remake takes up the main lines of the original game, notably for the narration, the collection of characters and the combat statistics.

However, the graphic redesign was total. The character design has been refined to make the models less smooth while keeping a cartoon style. The Night's Watch hub, initially designed as a ground level view with horizontal scrolling, adopts a more classic style with an aerial view allowing the entire menu to be displayed without moving.

For comparison, here is the trailer for the first Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall.

The way in which battles are fought has also been redesigned. In the first version, the battlefield was in the form of squares. The different fighters moved around the board to attack their opponents according to their range. Here, this aspect has been simplified as we will see later.

The story of Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall

You are the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. It is your responsibility to manage your garrison. Send your patrols on expeditions beyond the wall to bring back resources and have your builders improve the camp.

You will find several characters known from the GoT license, such as Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen or Tormund. But, I could see in this test of Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall that the title is also full of winks to the lore.

Despite some very respectable cinematics, the scenario is relatively forgettable and brings nothing to the gameplay. The adventures that the heroes go through are rather classic and anecdotal. This is not where the interest of the game lies.

On the other hand, the main story missions are divided into different original chapters, interspersed with cinematics. As your level increases, you will then have access to two other mission tabs: Prequel and Uncharted Land.

Build your team of heroes

Before going into battle, you will have to put together your team. Each fighter has his own technical skills. On the one hand, active skills to use in combat, and on the other hand, passive skills that act on the statistics of the characters.

To improve the basic skills of one of your heroes, increase their rank, level, equipment and star rating to make them the best fighter in Westeros.

But before you can do that, you have to start at the bottom and earn a lot of resources. And to do that, send your men into battle.

Your team can consist of up to 6 characters divided into two lines of three: the front line acts as a shield for the back line. By aligning certain heroes together in a composition, they can unlock synergies depending on the family they belong to or their role. These depend on the family to which they belong or their role. Generally speaking, they are passives that give stat bonuses.

Simplified combat gameplay

Let's continue this test of Game of Thrones Beyond The Wall with my opinion on the gameplay of the battles. Battles take place at turn-based PVE or PVP. When it's one of your heroes' turn to play, select one of the three possible attacks:

• Basic attack: no Energy cost
• Special attack: costs 3 units of Energy
• Ultimate skill: costs 10 units of Energy

Each character has an Energy bar that can be increased to a maximum of 10 points. It is quite possible (and even preferable) to switch the fights to automatic mode and speed up the time to go faster.

In PVP, it is even impossible to play the fights in manual. I think this is a real shame, as these are the battles that count for the ranking. If there is one type of battle that we would like to run with precision, it is especially those against other players.

The business model

The title's model is that of a fairly classic free-to-play game that integrates microtransactions to buy virtual currency. In order to progress in your adventure, you will have to acquire three main types of resources:

• Silver Coins: This is the currency used to upgrade your heroes, their skills and equipment as well as various items in the shop.
• Gold Coins: Use them to buy Energy or Hero Fragments needed to upgrade their star rank. This is the currency that can be bought with real money.
• Energy units: These are the rations of the Night's Watch. They are consumed when you launch expeditions and fill up naturally over time to a maximum threshold.

In my opinion, Game of Thrones Beyond The Wall

A still unstable version

During my test of Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall, I encountered several problems. The game completely stopped several times, about once every hour of play. This problem happened to me in the menus while upgrading one of my heroes, but also during the fights. I also encountered problems with the touch buttons, where you have to press twice to validate the command.

To conclude with the negative things, I found the loading times very long, like in Star Trek Fleet Command, probably because of the cinematics and other character animations. It's quite disturbing in a game like this one where the fights have to follow each other quickly because there are so many of them.

Conclusion of the test of Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall

In the end, Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall takes a well-proven gameplay (Raid: Shadow Legends Summoners War and many others) by applying the universe of a popular licence. The art direction works well with the medieval fantasy world of GoT.

On the other hand, the looped theme music in the menus can get tiresome over time, while the music in the battles is totally generic. As the game has just been released (or rather re-released), let's hope that the problems mentioned earlier will be corrected in the next updates.

Far from rivaling the big names in the genre, Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall will satisfy casual gamers who are fans of George R.R. Martin's licence. Did you enjoy this test ? Find many others in our section test.

Positive points

• Faithfully developed lore
• Well-designed graphics
• Quite a classic game

Negative points

• Boring soundtrack
• An ungenerous business model