Mobile Games News Review | Week of March 28 - April 3, 2022

Check out the weekly recap of mobile gaming news on Android and iOS for the week of March 28 to April 3, 2022! We'll let you read it all below. ⬇️

On the agenda this week: the death of E3, a new Russian Playstore, an animated film Sky Children of Light and a lot of news about new mobile games.

Updates for a good start to April

1️⃣ Let's start this recap with some MAJs that bring some freshness in this early April. After the sabotage of its servers in the US and Europe by a DDoS attack, Among Us offers a new update. With this patch, the famous game of treachery sees the arrival of a list of friends, cosmetic elements from Halo, Ratchet and Clank and much more! Enough to recover from last week's server downtime with a skin Spartan.

2️⃣ On the MiHoYo side, the Honkai Impact 3rd title unveils its 5.6 update titled Elysian Reverie. This update brings a new character, Pardofelis, manager of the Elysian shop. She is a chakram fighter and is played in close combat with a companion and an ice IMG type. The game interface is also optimised as well as the weekly challenges from the launch of the update on April 7th which will open the doors of the Elysian Kingdom to be explored.

Genshin Impact has been given a heroine Yae Miko nerf in its 2.6 update as well as the release of the Chasm and the arrival of Kamisato Ayato in the main wish banner. Players can also look forward to the return of Teyvat Times, the newsletter full of statistics on the adventures of all Travellers around the world. In the first issue, for example, we learned that 14,875,242 players had died by falling from extreme heights when they ran out of stamina. If you like fun facts, the 29 March issue reveals that more than 12,000 players drowned while trying to reach Inazuma. That's the risk of the job!

E3 cancellation and new Russian Playstore

3️⃣ Not everything is rosy in the world of video games, since when some powers emerge, others return to the shadows. This week, we learn of yet another cancellation of the E3 show, which was an industry benchmark, albeit one that has been in decline for a few years. With an official announcement, E3 has declared itself dead for 2022. However, it must be acknowledged that IRL and online events such as Nintendo Direct, State of Play and studio dev updates have multiplied since the beginning of the pandemic and have ended up taking over from long-established events such as E3.

Immediately, Geoff Keighley rushed to announce the return of Summer Game Fest in June, delighted to be able to steal the spotlight at E3, as he originally did when he launched his event when the previous E3 was cancelled.

The news was greeted with humour by the twittos, although some found its tone a little too cheerful in light of the E3 cancellation.

4️⃣ To continue on the industry side, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues to affect the market. Developers and large companies have gradually withdrawn from the market and have preferred to support the humanitarian associations present there. Unfortunately, this has deprived Russians of access to the Playstore and other application shops. This has made life difficult for Android users, but also for developers who cannot find an ideal way to sell their applications locally.

As a result, the Russian digital development organisation Digital Platforms will soon offer an alternative store called NashStore (which means "our shop" in Russian). All developers will be able to apply for inclusion of their app in the NashStore via the platform's official website.

News on Japanese games

5️⃣ The presence of the mobile game Sky: Children of Light at AnimeJapan 2022 comes as a surprise. The convention is mainly about animation projects and therefore about the film industry. However, gamers were surprised to see a teaser of an animation format for Sky Children of Light at AnimeJapan 2022, all smooth and soothing splendour. Thatgamecompany also introduced the Japanese voiceover of Eren Jaeger as an ambassador for their mobile game in Japan. In any case, we can't wait to watch the full Sky: Children of Light movie!

6️⃣ Let's continue with another news on the Japanese market. The famous Japanese publisher Shueisha announced this week the creation of its Shueisha Games branch. For those who don't know this publisher, it has built a solid reputation by publishing the weekly magazine Shonen Jump or One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen, which have already had their mobile game. Being strongly anchored in the world of paper manga, and therefore present before the anime trends, the company intends to offer a life to its popular manga in video games and board games.

Even if we don't know all the company's projects yet, it has already planned to release 4 titles: ONI, The Tower of Children, Ukiyo and Captain Velvet: The Jump+ Dimensions. We don't know much more about these games nor on which platforms they will be available, but the mobile market has become almost unavoidable for several years.

You can find the visuals of the upcoming games on the official website of the publisher.

When the real and the virtual mix

7️⃣ Last week, Krafton signed a multi-year deal with Solana Labs todevelop blockchain and NFT systems in future video game productions. Today, we learn more about the South Korean company's upcoming content for mobile PUBG. Following the success of the Santorini map with players, it seems that the studio behind the title has chosen to integrate new exotic real-life locations into its virtual world. Many players have submitted suggestions, but the names that stand out the most are Los Angeles Downtown, Istanbul Airport, Rio de Janeiro and the Temple of Heaven in China.

8️⃣ Since November, fans of Rovio's iconic mobile licences have been trying to convince the studio to revive its anthology titles in remaster. Indeed, some games, including the very first Angry Birds from 2012, no longer have possible compatibility with the latest generation of smartphones. In recent years, the hashtag #BringBack2012 has been part of a push for a new version of these classics to make them compatible with recent OSes. And this campaign by gamers has finally paid off, with the release of Rovio Classics: Angry Birds, now available on Android and iOS for 99 cents a version of the original 2012 game remade on Unity, 10 years later.

Speaking of decades, Forge of Empires is celebrating its tenth anniversary since going online with a board game event.

9️⃣ In parallel, Utomik plans to launch an Android cloud gaming service around mid-2022. We'll have to wait to test it out before we can give you our opinion, but in the meantime you'll find a solution in development at Bluestacks as the company already offers a free cloud gaming service with Bluestacks X that emulates Android on all your devices. All you have to do is watch a commercial and you're ready to play. According to our tests a few months ago, the experience was smooth on mobile but struggled to prove itself on larger screens, so something to watch out for during this beta!

New mobile games and releases announced

🔟 At this point in the recap, it's getting hard to avoid NFT news. In a nutshell, Ubisoft decided to invest about $12 million in Cross the Ages, an TCG NFT as one of the most popular games in the play-to-earn category got its loot stolen. Axies Infinity: Hackers is an NFT title on its blockchain platform with nearly 2 million players. To date, trading on its platform has reached $3.6 billion. This week, the platform was robbed of nearly US$625 million in cryptocurrencies, making it the second largest crypto theft to date.

1️⃣1️⃣ To conclude this week's news, let's take a look at the mobile game releases. First of all, three new Brave Nine games are scheduled for release this year. Their developer Neowiz announced Brown Dust Story (based on the original name of the license), a visual RPG, but also Brown Dust & Puzzle a mix of RPG and match-3 with guilds and ranking leagues, and finally Brown Dust 2, the sequel to Brave Nine, a strategic JRPG in 2.5D. However, we don't know more about the release date of these titles.

1️⃣2️⃣ Anime-RPG dungeon crawler Soul Tide makes its mobile debut this week alongside Ninja's Dungeon. New game announcements also include Counter:Side, a previously Southeast Asia-exclusive action-RPG title due for release soon as well as the global release this summer of Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds as a mobile MMORPG.

Dragon Raja developers Archosaur Games have launched the first beta test for their title Life Makeover, a mix between RPG and fashion that lets you lead the life of a trendy supermodel, from outfits to fingernails, and role-play in the events of the character's life. This marks a significant change of style for the studio, but we can understand the developers' interest in such a project, given the success of titles such as Love Nikki. However, let's face it, even if this clip is pleasant to watch, we'd have preferred to hear about a worldwide release for Noah's Heart...

In the midst of these announcements, we are forced to note the chaotic launch of Brave Soul: Frozen Dungeon, despite the popularity of Brave Soul, as the latter title lags and bug to the ends of the earth shows the first players.

But as the metaverse continues to climb the charts, there's nothing like a Link Start SAO to get back to basics. You can now pre-register for the new Sword Art Online Variant Showdown mobile game on the game's website. Bandai Namco presents this title in a trailer on the occasion of ten years of the SAO universe. Finally, the Japanese firm announced that it is working on a metaverse video game in the world of GUNDAM. This recap is definitely placed under the sign of big anniversaries to celebrate and the revival of manga universes in video games.

Thank you for reading this week's news to the end, and see you next week!