The Future In Our Hands?

It's 2023 and I'm still playing Noah's Heart. Every day. I know! I'm as surprised as you are.

I sat down half an hour ago to write a post to try and explain why. I was writing it as much for myself as for anyone who might be reading. 

I got eight paragraphs in before I realised I don't really have a clue why I'm doing it. About the best I can come up with is I like the whimsy of it and it's really relaxing to play. Not a lot, is it?

Then, as I was sitting back, trying to come up with something a bit more substantial, I had a mini-epiphany. An epiphanette, if you will. You won't? Can't say I blame you.

Noah's Heart is a multi-platform game but it's fairly obvious that the core design comes from mobile. The placement of the UI elements gives that much away. 

I play the game on PC, where it works well for me, thanks to the free cursor that allows me to click buttons instead of pressing keys. Those buttons, though, would be even better on a handheld screen like a phone, tablet or iPad. 

And that's when it occured to me. Noah's Heart is a mobile game I would actually play on a mobile device. Not just occasionally but regularly. Maybe even every day. If only I owned a device that could run it.

I'm sure this is where we said we were meeting...

I am, theoretically, in favor of mobile gaming, particularly for the kind of games I enjoy on a desktop PC. I announced myself as a relatively early adopter of the form, albeit, once again, more in theory than in practice, back when I first wrote about playing mobile mmorpgs, more than a decade ago in April 2012.

Back then, I was playing a game called Elemental Knights on my iPod Touch. I still have the iPod and it still works. I use it several times most weeks, mainly for listening to music and checking if my lunch-hour is over.

If it's surprising the iPod is still going, it's a hell of a lot more surprising Elemental Knights is too, too. In fact, now that Apple have retired the Touch, I'd have to say the game I once described as "a standard Korean style grinder with anime graphics and a fairly obstreperous cash shop" has had the last laugh over the tech giant.

More surprising yet, at some point when I wasn't looking, Elemental Knights spawned both a PS4 and a Switch version. How come we never read about that on MassivelyOP?

Presumably for the same reason we never hear about anything much from the mobile side of the fence. It seems no-one really cares about mobile mmorpgs or wants to write about them. Or read about them. Although I wouldn't mind. Reading about them, that is. You couldn't pay me to write about them. 

Well, I guess you could. It would all depend on how much. Everyone, as they say, has their price. It'd be a grim job, though, wouldn't it? Or maybe it wouldn't. I mean, I'm writing plenty about Noah's Heart and no-one's paying me a cent.

I'm telling you, that flamingo cage isn't up to code.

Anyway, the point is that there are plenty of them. You only have to look. And I've played quite a few.

Off the top of my head, without going through my post history, I can think of Dragon Nest M, Black Desert Mobile, Celtic Heroes, Heroes of Skyrealm, Villagers and Heroes, AdventureQuest 3D, Mobile Legends, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp...

Of all of them, the only ones I really stuck with for any length of time were Celtic Heroes, Heroes of Skyrealm and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. None of them was better than a run-of-the-mill PC mmorpg but reason I stuck with them is they weren't available on PC. Well, you could emulate them, I guess, and I did, but that's another kettle of worms.

Even that doesn't tell the whole story, though. It makes it sound as if I don't play mobile games because I prefer to sit at a desk and use a mouse and keyboard so I'd only go mobile if there was no other choice. While there's some truth in that, there's also the fact that I've never owned a really good mobile device capable of playing games effectively.

The best I ever had were two Windows tablets, both of which broke much too soon. And even that is cheating because although I did play mmorpgs on them, mostly I played games made for PC, using some kind of touchscreen AddOn or even with a mouse plugged into the tablet.

Unsurprisingly, that didn't feel as good as playing the games on an actual PC, making the whole thing seem fairly pointless, so when the second device gave up, so did I - on Windows. I went through a series of Android devices, eventually settling on a Kindle Fire just because I was fed up of the damn things breaking down all the time.

Spot the odd one out. (Hint - it's not me.)

 

There's not much wrong with the build quality and reliability of Amazon's device and the price point, at well under £100, is very acceptable. The problem is, it's pretty feeble when it comes to running games. Even with Google Play installed to break free of Amazon's own walled garden, there's precious little I'd want to play that will run on the thing.

All of which leads me back, in circuitous fashion, to my minor epiphany; that if I had a mobile device that could run it, I'd just as soon play Noah's Heart on a tablet. I already play the game, awkwadly, one-handed with the dog on my lap. It would be better for both of us if we were settled comfortably in the armchair next to the fire.

Except that a tablet or phone capable of running Noah's Heart or Genshin Impact or any of the other gorgeous, modern mobile mmo or mmo-adjacent titles would cost me hundreds of pounds. It's a bizarre irony that the games are free but I'd have to spend a fortune to get something to play them on.

Maybe I will invest in some kind of handheld gaming device that's fit for the next five years or so. The Switch looked good for a while but I hear rumors of obsolescence already. The Steam Deck is another obvious possibility or perhaps one of its inevitable copyists. Or I could buy a decent tablet. An iPad, even. After all, that iPod, extravagant a purchase as it felt at the time, turned out to be very good value.

I'll think about it. In the meantime, I guess I'll just keep playing Noah's Heart on PC. At least there it runs effortlessly on hardware I already own, even if I do have to sit upright instead of slouching in comfort. 

Probably better for my back, anyway.