Night of the Full Moon Mobile Game Review

It’s a turn based card game you can play for free on Google Playstore. Night of the Full Moon has a fantastic blend of dark, gothic, and cartoon theme into its aesthetics. It's these aesthetics that got me interested in trying out the game.

While it does expound the Red Riding Hood fairytale we have come to known, you can find novelty in the game's story content as it incorporates grim themes in a visually appealing light-hearted manner.

Night of the Full Moon managed to get me interested but after finishing through my first walkthrough, I just had to say nope. It still needs some work on the core mechanics I'm looking for in a card game but you don't have to take my word for it and best to check out the game yourself.

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Shinhi Vex YT Channel

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The Game's Plot:

Set in a classic Red Riding Hood fairytale universes, little Red sets out to find her lost grandmother into the dark woods but encounters strange folks and monsters along the way. Little Red braces herself for the journey and tries to piece together the mysteries surrounding the village, forest, and the beasts revealed along the way.

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The Game's Mechanics:

Players draw a set of card (usually 2) then have a set of action points to activate those cards (usually 2). Some cards don’t have any indicators that they cost action points so you can activate them as much as you want without ending your turn prematurely.

It is possible to just mill your entire deck and finish the enemy in two or three turns if you lucked out because there’s no limit to how much you can draw as long as the card doesn’t have an action point cost. Cards used get reshuffled except for cards that have an "exiled" status where you can only use them once per match.

The whole action point system is one way to end a turn and cards with these action points bring some impact on the outcome of the game like dealing a lot of damage, utility, and recovery. But the flaw is having a lot of utility cards into the deck that cost 0 action points.

This means as long as you have a mechanism to duplicate more cards on your hand that lets you draw two more cards, then you can use those cards again and again during the turn.

The used cards (unless indicated exiled) are reshuffled into the deck. This makes the whole system broken and just poor balancing on the easy levels. Again I haven’t played on higher difficulty setting so skills like budgeting your action points may be required then.

There’s the standard equipment card where you place a card effect on the field and it just automatically activates itself based on conditions mentioned. There’s the counter trap card types where they only activate when an opponent plays a specific condition. There’s also a skill you can activate depending on your class chosen. If you're familiar with classic RPG games, a class (ex. Knight, Ranger, and etc) can offer a different skill set used in the game.

The sequence of cards played by the enemy can run so fast you barely have time reading their effects. You just go along with it when the system tells you got damaged, stunned, poisoned or whatever. The only time you are able to catch up with the events is when back reading the history log to what the enemy played on their turn which is above the window/screen.

You will be told that there is an X amount of pages in the chapter. The pages mean events you can choose to interact on your screen. Once you press close/x the pages burn and you would not be able to interact with them again. Each page can mean a random item drop, shop, or monster encounter. Once you’re done with the page event, it just burns itself and presents you with a new page (it always limits the events to 3).

I find myself just holding on to the shop page until I save enough gold and run through the monsters page first to grind until the chapter runs out of pages so you can move on to the next event in the story.

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The Good Parts:

I am fond of the art style used on the game. It bears resemblance to the art style I used to experiment with in the past and the goth themes too. The card splash art, monsters, and even UI just looks well illustrated. The dubbing really feels lively and in character. Not much to say about the story and the game’s card fighting mechanics though.

Witch	Knight

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The Ads:

I’m neutral about how the ads are placed in the game. On one hand, I understand I’m just playing the game for free and watching these 30 second ads play in exchange for some in game items is fair, on the other hand, most of the re-rolls and items offered aren’t that big of a deal on easy mode. Maybe I would appreciate the perks if the difficulty levels were raised where re-rolls start to matter more.

But then having the option to reroll means using in game currency, and to get in game currency is to use cash or watch ads. The problem with this system is that free players can lower the difficulty levels of the game just by watching ads if the rerolls aren't in their favor. While it does benefit the devs to have more ad clickers to their game, it sacrifice one of the elements that would make their game challenging. The rewards ads give just rob some parts of the player experience of being handicapped with random number generators.

Would you recommend this game?

No and maybe. I abandoned it after completing the first playthrough. The story isn’t that engaging, the art is cool but the gross game balancing mechanics just makes the game not worth playing in my opinion. Maybe at higher levels the game’s pacing would change but I’m not really interested anymore. Though I don’t discourage anyone to give it a try, your taste may be different and may end up enjoying the game.

I know I'm missing a lot of content story wise but the core mechanics of the game just bores me. There's just something about fast actions and sudden halts during the gameplay that I can't stand. The enemy delivers quick consecutive attacks using a card that resembles a claw and the effect is the same as your attack card with a sword splash art. I think it's just for flavor now that the splash arts are different but the effects are the same.

This type of design prioritizes the eye candy more than the use. I would just be fine with a sword splash art being the default art for basic arts. I do understand that it gives some personality to the enemies if they have their own "signature" cards but those have little use to strategy. I managed to just stop at easy level and I can't see myself even be interested in raising the difficulty level for more content.

I'm sure I'd get some spike of interest if I'm faced with a stage I can't beat but that won't really get me hooked long enough. I played because the art looks cool but the game mechanics aren't my type of card game.

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