World Flipper is a new mobile game from Cygames, and naturally, one must try it out to give first impressions! As promised, it’s pinball-themed, with various mechanics to keep it really exciting. It has your regular gacha trappings with a fairly generous 5% 5-star rate, daily logins, beginner missions, and so forth.

This is not a fully voiced game, not even for the main story or 5-star characters (unlike Dragalia Lost), if you were expecting that. The overall design of the game is bright and colourful, with full sprite art for characters. In the game proper, they’re rendered as tiny pixel characters. It leaves you free to focus on the quite rapid action.

Three characters will be your party’s frontline. Later on, you can attach characters onto them as support. Each character possesses passives, as well as leader effects. They likewise have activate-able skills that can damage or heal depending on the character type. They’re pretty varied too: homing beam attacks, directional sword strikes, and healing supports. Even if a character may not be a great front-line, think of the synergies placing them as supports!

Support characters will provide additional effects to the main character’s active skills, so consider various combinations! A character’s damaging skill can be supported by a healing effect with the appropriate character. Characters also can be equipped with… equipment. At launch, it’s in a separate box at a cheaper gem rate, so you have slightly less to worry about getting something you don’t really want. Duplicates will add to a “stack” of the same unit or equipment, which you can then use to limit break (up to a maximum of 4 times).

Action can get pretty hectic. The basics of it are still pinball, yes. You need to defeat enemies, which attack like a bullet hell game. Launching into the attacks head-on seems to do a little less damage – you’ll see “Guard” pop up – but everything else is probably gonna hurt some. Elemental resistances are also around, with six of them.  There’ll be bumpers and enemies you can launch off from. You also have a limited ability to change direction mid-motion. You’ll still need momentum if you want to move further. The spike pit in the middle will deal damage, as you might expect.

The ability to move in mid-air is important: you can build up a fever gauge with enough combos. Fever mode can spawn extra bumpers for even more combos! The flippers at the bottom can launch your characters with additional effects or fire off beams of their own and really rack up that damage. Each stage is timed, with a maximum SS rank, so you’d want to do well for first clear and SS rank clear rewards! Take advantage of the stage; some have “sentries” that will clear waves or damage the boss!

Boss fights can have “Break” points, and doing so will prevent them from firing a powerful attack and leave them vulnerable. There can be stage effects too, like wind, that can slow you down. Status effects likewise exist. If you’re confused, even if you can’t read Japanese, you can tap the helpful “?”. It will provide a guide with motions, so you don’t have to completely rely on the text.

Co-op quests have a maximum of 3 players per room. If everyone casts their skills in quick succession, think of it as a “chain burst” attack, dealing massive damage! You unlock the auto function fairly early and the AI is fairly competent, so you can still watch the sparks fly. If you just want to jump in to a random co-op room, the bell at the top left will flash and you can tap it to enter instantly! Co-op quests, at least for these boss rooms, have contribution rankings too.

World Flipper gives quite a strong first impression, with a cute design and high level of polish. It’ll be interesting to see this IP go far, or globally! You can check out their website here. Login now and you can get Shadowverse‘s Arisa, and enough orbs for a 10-roll off the bat! Incidentally, I’d recommend the 5-star character in my homescreen below: she’s the one who fires a fairly wide homing beam, for both as a frontline attacker, and an off-element support!

Courtesy of HDKirin, you can follow these steps to reroll quickly. Let’s go pinball!

Download

World Flipper

Publisher: Cygames, Kakao Games

Developer: Citail

Release Date: 2019-11-27

Android, iOS

Have you ever thought pinball to be so exciting? Get into the colourful bouncing world of World Flipper!