Druid Rising: Idle RPG

I opened Druid Rising because of the cover art: an Elementalist girl standing next to a white wolf. I figured it would be the kind of RPG that fights for you so you can switch your brain off, and for the first half hour it really was. My character swung her sword on her own, the wolf charged in and bit on its own, and all I did was pick another power-up whenever the buff bar filled.

But when I opened the Shop to see what was worth getting, the game's tone changed completely. The best items are priced in a kind of point that never drops, however long you play.

A stage lasts a few minutes; the challenge is in the buff picks

Each stage is a strip of forest running sideways. Your character walks from left to right and fights everything in the way, while you watch the kill counter at the top creep up. In stage 1-2, for instance, you win by taking down sixteen monsters within the time limit.

Losing only costs you time, not attempts or hearts. It sounds generous, but it's also why the game is in no hurry to take your money in the combat part.

What kept my eyes on the screen was the buff bar running along the bottom. Every time it fills, the game pauses and offers four cards for you to pick one. I took ATK Boost, plus thirty percent, in the first stage and the clearing speed changed completely. The fight runs itself, but these card picks still decide whether you clear the stage or get stuck.

Below the card area there are six empty slots for holding buffs. A new account only has two of them open; the other four are padlocked. In the left corner, a wheel of five elements shows which one beats which, so the further you go, the more you need to check a monster's element before you choose.

Flowers sell for gold, and the gold goes back into the tree

Outside the stages, you spend most of your time in the forest around the World Tree. Tap the watering can in the bottom-left corner to open the planting panel, where a patch of sunflowers costs sixty gold and a patch of roses ninety-six; once planted, they bloom on their own over time.

Once the flowers bloom, customers line up along the right edge of the screen. Each slot is an order showing exactly how much gold it pays, and one tap completes the sale. I tapped ten in a row, sold thirty flowers, and my gold jumped from 844 to 1,402.

That gold then goes back into upgrading each patch so it produces more. The loop is very easy to understand and very easy to get hooked on: a few taps and you see the numbers go up, which makes it hard to put the phone down.

Woven into the loop is the main quest chain, shown as a yellow banner at the top of the screen. Finish one, tap to claim the reward, and the next one appears. This chain is what gradually unlocks features for you, from the Challenge button that takes you into stages, to the companion panel, to the tabs still padlocked at the bottom.

Wolves at your side, and ten companions to unlock

Companions are my favorite system in Druid Rising. The Partners panel lists all ten, starting with the gray Wolf and then Druid Wolf, Frost Wolf, Flower Deer, Sun Lion, Unicorn, Flame Wolf, Moonlight Wolf, White Tiger and Black Panther.

Each has its own stats and its own upgrade branch. The one you bring along runs beside your character both in the forest and in stages. It really looks the part, rather than being just an invisible line of bonus stats.

Upgrading costs summon tickets, a hundred of them for the first upgrade. And tickets only come from the Shop, so every road leads back there.

Next to Partner are three more tabs: Summon, Transform and Spirit Stone. All three are padlocked on a new account. Judging by the names, that's where the game hides its depth, and also where it leads you the furthest before asking for money.

Mileage, not gold, is what's hard to come by

The Shop has five tabs, and it's worth going through each one before deciding whether this game gives you room to breathe. The Summon tab sells pulls for skills, gear and accessories. But all three rows carry a note saying they unlock after main quests fifteen, twenty-six and forty-two, which means a long grind before you're even allowed to spend there.

The Premium tab is where it hurts, because it sells the most worthwhile things in the game, all priced in Mileage. The Frost Wolf costs three thousand, the five-hundred-ruby pack costs five hundred, and a skill summon ticket costs one hundred.

I played a whole session, cleared a few stages and finished nearly ten quests. My Mileage wallet stayed at zero, because these points only flow when you spend real money. That's where the game squeezes you, and it does it very quietly.

The Play listing puts in-game items at anywhere from a few dollars to a few dozen dollars each. The game also hangs up a three-day First Purchase Gift board: two thousand rubies on day one, five thousand on day two, and on day three the Flame Wolf itself plus another thousand rubies. The claim button stays gray until you make your first payment.

Two switches in the MOD menu, and the three-thousand-point wolf

Our mod puts two switches in the MOD menu, which opens from the red octagon button floating in the left corner of the screen. The first switch is called Buy without paying, the second Remove purchase conditions, and both take effect the moment you flip them.

Before turning anything on, I tried to buy the five-hundred-ruby pack with an empty Mileage wallet. As expected, nothing happened. With the first switch on, I tapped the same card again and the reward banner burst open. My rubies jumped from 8,800 to 9,300, while Mileage stayed right at zero.

The more meaningful test was the three-thousand-point Frost Wolf. I tapped buy and the wolf dropped straight into the Partners panel at level one. I could take it along, and it ran beside my character in the next stage, so the item really arrived rather than just a number changing in the status bar.

After the purchase, the card switched to SOLD OUT, since each account can only get it once. That's where the second switch comes in: flip Remove purchase conditions and the Frost Wolf card shows its old price again, and I bought it a second time without a hitch. The purchase-limit lock comes off as well.

Three things to know up front so your expectations are right:

• Items marked as unlocking after main quest fifteen stay locked, because the game gates them by progress, not by price.
• The P-point reward slots inside the Mission Shop go through a separate path; tap them as often as you like, you won't get anything.
• The three real-money tabs show no items when the game runs inside VipMod, so I haven't had a chance to test the paid packs and won't promise anything about them.

What deserves praise and what gets annoying

The clearest strength is the art: a forest painted in a watercolor style, every flower patch blooming its own way, and a wolf that casts a shadow and kicks up dust as it runs. It's much easier on the eyes than the average garden-growing idle game.

The pace at which features unlock is well judged too: something new appears every few minutes, so the first half hour flies by. The daily check-in is generous, handing out five thousand rubies on day one.

The game is in English, and the Settings panel has no language option at all, only sound, screen shake, a gift-code box and an account-save button.

The real annoyance is that it requires a connection. Turn the network off and the game stalls on the loading bar, then reports a connection error and never reaches the forest. Guest accounts also live on the company's servers, so everything you get stays put after you turn off your phone.

In terms of popularity it's still a small game. The Play page lists more than ten thousand downloads, the current version was last updated at the end of December last year, and it's rated for ages seven and up. The publisher, Lunosoft, is a Korean studio with a Discord channel linked right in Settings, so there's somewhere to ask questions.

So who should download it

If you're looking for something to open when your hands are free and you enjoy watching a garden grow, this is a gentle choice. The plant, sell and upgrade loop is tight enough that five minutes of play still feels like progress, and the stages with their buff cards vary enough that you won't get bored in the first week.

And if you installed it once and gave up the moment you saw that three-thousand-point Frost Wolf, the mod unties exactly that knot. Two switches, one flip, and the Shop's most expensive tab opens up for you to explore all the way through.