Main Street Mobile Arcade: Disney needs to freshen up their Gacha game

So a quick note on this and other features aside from “Into the Vault” which I will definitely be doing at least once a month, these are going to be a little more sporadic, they aren’t going away but trying to force myself to write about them at least once a month when I didn’t have time or motivation or there wasn’t much news in the category really wasn’t working, so basically stuff like Main Street Mobile and Disney Infinity Chronicles, which I will get back to at some point, will just be written when I have something to write.

This will also allow me to try out other features I’ve been thinking about and then those can be occasional features as well instead of something I feel I need to write at least once a month when I just don’t have the time or energy they deserve.

Ok so moving on to today’s topic, when I first tried out Disney’s Sorceror’s Arena I thought that would be a game I played for years. RPG turn-based battles and being able to combine parties of Disney characters that never interacted sounded extremely appealing. I mean I was already also deep into Disney Heroes: Battle Mode at the time so how could I not love it?

Well here we are in mid-2021 and I haven’t touched Disney Heroes: Battle Mode in forever and after months of barely playing I just gave up and uninstalled Disney Sorceror’s Arena yesterday. I just have no urge or motivation to play them anymore.

Was I done with “Gacha” games where you collect heroes and have them team up to fight other packs of heroes? It’s arguably the most popular genre of mobile game out there, there are literally dozens of these licensed and original games where pretty much all you do is collect and level up characters to battle other characters. Maybe I’m just done with that genre as a whole?

Turns out the answer is definitely not. When I first started dipping my toes into mobile gaming (and I still consider myself very much an amateur in this area) the fF2P stuff never really stuck with me, what really did were more tightly contained experiences. One of the games that I super enjoyed that really stuck with me was Teeny Titans. Teeny Titans is very much a gacha game, and I’ve stated previously what appealed to me about Disney gacha games was the crossover aspect so a game with a limited roster that is mostly a lot of variants of a smaller cast of characters absolutely should not have been my jam but it absolutely was. I played the hell out of that first game.

I hadn’t tried the sequel, Teen Titans Go! Figure because I thought well it’s more of the same and I’m not sure that’s for me. But last night I was really looking hard for something new for my iPad and I remembered how much of a good time I had with the first game, so I figured it was worth a few bucks to see if this had something games like Sorceror’s Arena were missing.

And I played Teen Titans Go! Figure for several hours last night and I really want to play more. And I realized the difference really, is in the presentation. Teeny Titans and Teen Titans Go! Figure have a lot of similarities but the Teen Titans games have an authored experience and a fun story and are bright and colorful and just well, feel fun.

By contrast, the Disney gacha games just feel incredibly drab and lifeless. Like the colors are so much duller, the animations so much more muted. I’m pretty lukewarm on Teen Titans Go! as a property and I like Disney so much I have dedicated an entire hobby based around it, so this shouldn’t be the case that I like one so much more than the other unless Teen Titans Go! really makes an effort whereas the Disney equivalents are just kinda there and really beyond the dressing of Disney don’t encompass the license like they should.

And Disney gacha games can have this! A cheap authored single-player experience that has a post-game loaded with opportunities to still gouge people for money but presented in a stylized and fun manner with bright fun colors! Granted this isn’t specifically on Disney, but on the various developers that get the license to do mobile games for them. Hopefully, somebody will realize that at some point and we can have a Disney gacha game that’s just as fun.

That’s all for today, I will definitely have at least one post next week so see ya real soon!