Relic Bag: Shadow Hunter

The first six waves go down smoothly; the bill only comes when you lose

We opened Relic Bag with fairly low expectations, assuming it was an auto-battling stickman game to tap at while waiting for dinner. The first six monster waves went by so smoothly that we forgot every game has to make money somehow.

Then the campaign summary popped up and split the screen into two very blunt options. On the left, a later button that gives you 79 coins; on the right, a button for 237 coins with a little video icon. In other words, finish a whole campaign without watching an ad and you walk away with exactly one third of what you just earned.

We tapped the right-hand button to see what would happen. A playable ad came up with no close button for almost two straight minutes. In the end we had to kill the game and reopen it to get out, losing the reward of course. We're telling this first because it's exactly why people go looking for a mod.

How a wave plays out when you don't get to press anything

Your shadow guy stands on the left, monsters come from the right, and they fight entirely on their own. You don't control a single swing, and there's no dodge or skill button, so every win or loss is decided before the fight even starts.

What you actually control is the bottom half of the screen: a nine-slot bag and a shelf showing three items that just dropped. You drag items from the shelf into the bag, the three stats in the middle of the screen go up, then you tap Fight to send him into the next wave.

Those three stats are damage per second, armor generated per second and health regenerated per second. They add up directly from whatever is in the bag: a sword gives 12 damage, add a bomb and it's 18. It looks simple, but this is the whole depth of the game. You only have nine slots, and there are always more items than room.

The nine-slot bag and the merge rule everyone trips over at first

Each item takes up its own shape on the grid, and you can't rotate them. The long sword takes two slots vertically, so does the bomb, while the axe lies flat across two neighboring slots, so one badly placed item can waste the entire bottom row.

The second rule is merging: stack two identical items and they become one stronger item that only takes up one item's space. It's both how you get stronger and how you free up slots, so by mid-campaign every decision revolves around whether to merge or keep two separate items.

If nothing on the shelf suits you, there's a reroll button: 10 gold the first time, 15 the next. Gold only comes from the waves you just fought, and it all vanishes when the campaign ends. So gold is for spending on the spot, not for saving.

Every few waves the game pauses and deals you three boost cards to pick one. Common ones raise crit chance or XP gain, while the ultra-rare ones grant a whole effect, like healing 30% HP when you're about to die. The three cards are random every time, and they're the bit of roguelite spice that keeps two runs from being identical.

Death Coins, gems and the stat board outside the campaign

Lose a campaign and you go back to the main screen, which is where the game's second layer shows up. Everything in your bag is gone, the gold is gone, and the only thing that comes home with you is Death Coins, the red currency the summary screen just handed you.

Death Coins go into a permanent upgrade board with three lines: +8% attack, +5% HP and +2% armor, 30 coins per tap. We tapped ten times in a row and watched the character's power creep from 12.00K to 13.13K, so each tap gives fairly little, but it all stacks forever.

The board also has a milestone worth more than all three stat lines: the tenth bag slot. Upgrade enough times and the game adds space to the bag, and in a game choked at nine slots, one more slot means one more item in every fight.

Gems are the other currency, blue, and they sit on a whole other level. Gems don't drop from waves; you mostly buy them with real money, from 20 gems for the $0.99 pack to 9,000 gems for the $99.99 pack.

What holds you back is a 30-minute timer, not the monsters

Every time you tap Play to start a campaign, the game takes 5 stamina. The stamina bar maxes out at 30 and refills exactly 1 point every 30 minutes. So a full bar gets you six runs, and an empty one takes fifteen hours to fill back up.

Six runs sounds like plenty, until you remember that quitting midway also counts as a loss and still costs the full 5 points. We lost a run just by tapping back to the main screen to check the stat board; the game asked one question and then marked the whole campaign as failed.

The stamina screen offers three ways to top up, and all three lead to the same place. One: watch a video for 10 points, twice a day. Two: buy a 15-point refill pack with gems. Three: claim a daily 10-point bonus. The refill pack also gets pricier each time you buy it: 15 gems the first time, 25 the second.

Put that timer together with rewards being cut to a third and the picture is pretty clear. Relic Bag doesn't hold you back with difficulty; it holds you back with waiting and with videos. And if you want to move faster, there's a display case ready to sell you everything.

The mod opens that display case, all the way

The mod for this game has a single line in the MOD menu, which you'll find by tapping the red button on the left edge of the screen. It's called Free shop packs, it's part of the VIP plan, and it waits for you to switch it on rather than running by itself. Flip it and you're done, nothing else to configure.

We went into the Shop and tapped straight on the most expensive item in the Packs tab: the $19.99 permanent ad removal pack, which comes with 200 gems and 1,000 Death Coins. No payment window appeared; the game opened its own Rewards screen, and the balance jumped from 5 gems to 205, and from 24 Death Coins to 1,020.

That balance is really spendable, not just pretty numbers on the status bar. We took 300 of the new Death Coins and upgraded stats ten times in a row, and all ten went through. As for gems, we bought two stamina refill packs for 40 gems, and the stamina bar went up exactly as the game promised.

The biggest surprise was that the ad removal pack actually works. After claiming it, the watch-a-video button for 10 stamina paid out instantly without playing an ad, when earlier this very kind of button had kept us sitting for almost two minutes.

A few things to know up front so your expectations are right. First, after flipping the switch you have to reopen the game for it to work; flip it while you're standing in the Shop and the screen just dims and gives you nothing. Second, the mod doesn't touch the stamina bar; you still have to wait or trade gems for stamina. Third, everything you receive is saved on your phone, so it's all still there after you close the game.

How it actually plays, even with the internet unplugged

The art is what kept us playing longer than planned. The whole game is black-and-white dark fantasy, glowing-edged characters against a gray cursed forest. The fight animations are clean, with no flashy effects hiding what's going on.

We turned on airplane mode, then closed the game and started it fresh to see how far it would get without a connection. Relic Bag went straight into a campaign with the balance intact, and merging and fighting worked as normal. We made it to the eighth wave before losing to the boss.

Funnily enough, the video buttons get a lot more generous offline. The revive button brought us back with the full 125 HP without watching anything, and the end-of-campaign summary paid out 111 coins instead of 37: the whole reward rather than a third.

The downsides are real too. The loop starts repeating fairly early because there are only nine slots to arrange, and wins depend a lot on whether the shelf feels like dropping two matching items. The no-rotation rule also means you'll often be holding a good item and have to throw it away.

To be fair, most players rate it generously. On Google Play the game held 4.67 stars from 7,672 ratings and over a hundred thousand downloads when we checked.

So who should download it?

If you like backpack games where you arrange your gear and watch the outcome, and want something easy to pick up in spare moments, this is a pleasant choice. It's easy on the brain, each wave lasts about half a minute, and you can play it on a plane or anywhere with a weak signal.

And if you once installed Relic Bag and quit because it made you watch ads to collect the other two thirds of your own reward, the mod removes exactly that. The whole Shop opens up, the ad removal pack is yours on the first tap, and the rest of the game stays intact instead of turning into mindless tapping.