Aardwolf is a text-based RPG game and it might just be the best one of its specific niche on the android market right now. Go on, I dare you to prove me wrong. The game holds much more depth and detail (despite not having graphics) than most of the other typical role-playing games available. Now it is important for me to say that this is not a choose-your-own adventure game in a sense that there is an open-ended storyline involved that you only have to put half of your ass into. Instead, in Aardwolf you begin much like any other large scale adventure game. There is character creation with races ranging from the very obvious and dull human to trolls and humanoid rats. It really is quite enjoyable and I didn’t even touch on the classes or skills yet.
Aardwolf takes place in Andolor which means ‘greatest world’ according to the in-game lore. In
text-based titles like these the worlds vary insanely in size. On the up-side you never have to worry about rendering or lagging, on the down side the lack of graphics can put off potential players totally. So a crutch can be beneficial, in this case Aardwolf features a little map that is super handy if you are playing this on a PC. If you are at all familiar with Gemstone IV by Simutronics you know how tedious the command input lines can be. This is where things get technical and where the learning curve starts to put people off big time.
For the sake of an example let’s say that some geeky dude was playing me as a character in a MUD right now. He would use commands that I would then understand and carry out. Some people can’t get into this kind of robotic style of playing games, understandable. But where the fun comes in is that these commands are usually pretty flexible and they could apply to most in-game objects. So let’s say my overseer typed ‘PICK NOSE AT KEYBOARD’ I would pluck all that delicious gold down at my screen. Gross enough for you? Try ‘SWING AXE AT GOBLIN NECK’ while playing one of these games and enjoy the gore to follow.
With that amount of flexibility you can’t just ignore the actual fun details like character classes and skills. They run deep which is only to be expected. The developers went with a traditional approach with your typical classes (mage ,thief,warrior..) but branching off of those pre-existing skills is important in multi-player roleplaying games because of that sense of individualism you get from that. An example of this is based off a unique class called Psionic. This is a person who is a master of their own minds and the minds of others. There is a weapon preference, and internal skills like luck and wisdom that have effects on your resulting performance. And you can even dual-class some stuff which is always a nice touch. It’s a solid game honestly, a little bit dated with the UI but solid. If you’re looking for something to kill plenty of time with then give Aardwolf a go. Specifically, if you’re a hardcore MUD player you should enjoy this regardless of the platform.
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