Solomon’s Keep brings the basic fundamental mechanics of the action RPG genre and implants them on iOS and Android devices. Offering a simple and free to play adventure with a range of skills and bosses you’ll fight your way to the top of the dark tower of Solomon as your magical mage acquires randomised skills and items through the equally randomised level layouts. While this free mobile game doesn’t ever reach the heights of the top tier mobile titles in the genre it offers ample enjoyment and challenge with some replay potential thanks to the randomised elements. For those that enjoy the experience a spin off titled Solomon’s Boneyard allows for an endless arena style version to test your skills against waves of evil and undead.
Released by Rapidsoft in April 2010 Solomon’s Keep has players take control of a newly graduated wizard as they attempt to pass their final exam of defeating the dark wizard and necromancer Solomon who sits at the top of his keep just outside of town. With power well above that of a recently graduated wizard his constant dark laugh will be hard as you climb the floors in his keep and attempt to acquire the skills and items to defeat Solomon.
With a standard mobile control scheme players will control movement with one thumb while they use the other to blast various spells at their enemies. These spells will vary based on the items you equip and the skills you select which are presented randomly once you acquire enough experience. This mechanic gives a minor rouge-lite touch to your Solomon’s Keep adventure as you’ll often have to adjust to what the random number generator offers.
To support this skills are one of the deepest elements of Solomon’s Keep with primary, sub, secondary, passive and combination skills to unlock. Primary skills are the staple magic attack that you’ll use for your adventure and includes fireball, magic missile, lightning and frost jet that have their own strengths and weaknesses although all have some element of attacking multiple foes when upgraded through sub skills.
Sub skills act as upgrades to your primary skills with magic missile for example having damage and missile number upgrades while lightning benefits from a stun effect and additional chaining of attacks. When your primary and sub skills reach a certain level they can go even further with combination skills that will combine two primary skills into a new deadly attack such as ball lighting born out of magic missile and lightning.
Supporting these main attacks that you’ll spam endlessly is the need to balance it with secondary and passives that offer additional utility. Secondary skills come with long cooldowns but can help players in a pinch with skills like teleport to move you to a random location, magic shield to absorb damage, magic circle to slow time, flash freeze to freeze enemies, ring of fire to unleash a deadly fire wave, acid rain to poison foes and turn undead to weaken enemies and make them flee from the player. Meanwhile passive skills can boost health, mana, regeneration, speed or increase your number of available skill options on level up. Like primary skills these must be unlocked randomly upon level up leading to some powerful combinations along with combinations that lack cohesion and provide additional challenge.
Throughout this adventure players will also find items randomly which can provide skill boosts to all of these aforementioned skills along with their own unique benefits from additional gold or experience gain. Gold can also be used to purchase items from town or improve skills to combat some of the randomisation players face.
For those that master the Solomon’s Keep formula though and want even more pain a series of challenges can be activated in the town that limits players access to mechanics. Overall Solomon’s Keep is a fun game experience that makes up for its limited content with plenty of randomisation that will have you playing this game for both short and long game sessions.
Summary:
- Finish your wizard training by climbing Solomon’s Keep and defeating the dark necromancer mage.
- Simple but challenging gameplay filled with random mechanics that require you to adjust your playstyle.
- Select your primary skill and pair it with additional utility through items, sub and passive skills to create the perfect mage.
- Find, sell and buy items with their own skill and stat boosts to support your challenging adventure.
- Harder game modes available for those who want a challenge.
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Review Platform: iOS
