Mobile Games News Review | Week of 21-27 March 2022

Check out the weekly recap of mobile gaming news on Android and iOS for the week of March 21 to 27, 2022! We'll let you read it all below. ⬇️

1️⃣ Let's start this recap with an announcement esport as many of you are usually in a competitive mood. This week, Coca-Cola becomes a founding member of Wild Rift Esports. With this multi-year partnership, the goal for Coca-Cola and Wild Rift is to bring players together both IRL and online, with more events and maximum goodies, similar to League of Legends which had a similar collaboration between the two brands from 2014 to 2016. Also on the Riot Games side, this weekend the TFT Rising Legends finals are being held on the game's Twitch channel with €20,000 up for grabs. The esport team organising the event is delighted with the entertainment provided to the community by this international tournament ahead of the release of the TFT Set 7, which should take place between May and June 2022. This set 7 will be the occasion to introduce a dragon mechanic in Riot's auto-chess according to the latest leaks.

2️⃣ In the second news of this recap, the studio behind the Epic Seven title continues test in closed beta of its cartoon MMORPG TeeTINY Online. Smilegate Megaport wants to offer an ultra-connected online community with a single server to allow everyone to collaborate or compete against each other in their adventures. In TeeTINY Online, character classes are linked to the weapon carried and can therefore be exchanged frequently. In terms of narrative, the main quest focuses on the conquest of the Tower of Despair, a huge structure built by the gods to represent the human greed that destroyed the world. Conquering it will be your goal, step by step, in the manner of Sword Art Online levels, to redeem the faults of humanity.

3️⃣ Budding mobile game creators, here's a news item you should enjoy. NetEase, one of the biggest Android and iOS mobile game publishers, is releasing a service called Dokific. With Dokific, you can create your own visual novels. Without allowing you to touch other genres than visual novels, Dokific offers you the possibility to work on interactive narration, an interesting starting point for any game designer. The application benefits from official HD visuals available to creators, pre-configured animations and even VFX for ambitious game makers. You can use the easy mode to get started and the advanced mode for more advanced creations. However, you can also take advantage of Dokific's services as a reader, by browsing the visual novels already online. The whole thing is presented as a free application, although players/readers can access some additional storytelling branches for a fee.

4️⃣ Meanwhile, LifeAfter is already celebrating its three-year anniversary. To mark the anniversary of NetEase Games' title, players of this apocalyptic open-world were treated to a special stream with guests last Friday and will enjoy additional rewards login until April 6. In addition, there are free in-game goodies to continue the festivities, such as a unique Outfit and setting for the event.

5️⃣ We continue with a quick update on CoD mobile season 3, which will begin on April 1. The Android and iOS title is now collaborating with Snoop Dogg, who also joins Vanguard and Call of Duty on other platforms as an operator this season. He will have three alternative outfits and his own voicelines. Beyond Season 3 CoD mobile, we will see the arrival of the Miami Strike map on smartphones.

Still on the FPS side, PUBG Mobile is holding an IRL event in San Francisco to celebrate its 4th anniversary since going live.

News around the world

6️⃣ The European Union is going after GAFAMs by imposing new regulations, especially on mobile. Among the new obligations of these American giants, we find the possibility to chat in cross-appli (so a Messenger user will have to be able to chat with a Whatsapp user for example), the end of the right for GAFAMs to privilege their own service to the detriment of others' and therefore obligation to propose alternative stores on their respective operating systems. We also say goodbye to the pre-installation of applications on Android or iOS. In addition, the EU will now monitor company takeovers by GAFAMs, as in the case of Microsoft's Activision-Blizzard King.

7️⃣ Among Us servers in the US and Europe suffered a DDoS attack on Friday. As a result, the servers remained offline for a while... A little sabotage of the Among Us ship by a group of imposters, as announced by the game team on Twitter.

Big decisions for the future

8️⃣ Netflix is snapping up Boss Fight Entertainment, in its quest for the perfect mobile games catalogue. The buyout comes as the Californian firm looks to introduce more quality free titles included in its subscription service, as it considers charging subscribers for account sharing, which it says has been enjoyed for several years to excess. Netflix is also offering three new games in its growing mobile library. First, there is A True Story, a narrative puzzle game about the difficulty of obtaining water in sub-Saharan Africa. Then Shatter Remastered, a retro brick-breaker, is a remaster of the eponymous PS3 game from 2009, with boss battles and a realistic physics system. Finally, Netflix offers us its mobile FPS entitled Into The Dead 2: Unleashed. The title identifies itself as a zombie shoot'em up in which your goal is essentially to survive.

9️⃣ While Netflix is putting its marbles in the mobile market, some are already well established there, like Krafton. The South Korean company behind PUBG mobile this week signed a long-term deal with Solana Labs to produce blockchain-based games.

New mobile games and pre-registration

🔟 New releases include Bowling Clash: New Legends on Google Play, mixing sponsorship and arcade gameplay on a PvP bowling lane with fierce leaderboards. There's also Vikingard, a slightly cheap Viking simulation release from NetEase where you manage your clan and its livestock before sending your warriors into battle.

1️⃣1️⃣ For its part, Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent enters beta in Canada and the United States, while the release of Tower of God: Mobile, based on the webtoon, is clarified for April 20, 2022 in Korea, with no further information on a possible worldwide release. On the other hand, the release date of the anime-RPG Soul Tide is March 29, 2022, which you will be able to play very soon.

1️⃣2️⃣ Pre-registration open for Kakao Games' new title Odin Valhalla Rising as well as Three Kingdoms: Legends of War on Android and Kawaii Islands, a decidedly cute play-to-earn game, on iOS.

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