Today I sat down with Nicolas Caris and Nick Witcher to talk about their trading card game ‘Urban Rivals’ for iPhone. Originally developed for mobiles back in 2004, the game was popular, but not a hit. However, when they brought it to browsers, where it can be played on your PC or Mac, it was an instant success. With the release of the iPhone, the development team saw the potential in the device and decided to take a second leap into the mobile market. With a ready made Urban Rivals.com audience of between 40-60 thousand users per day, and around 10 thousand active players at peak times, they should have more success.

Urban Rivals is a card trading game along the lines of Magic: The gathering, with you buying, selling and of course battling with collections of cards. Now, I’ll be honest in saying that this isn’t usually my kind of thing. Our very own Dave LeClair is the man for this. However, I was far more inclined to check out Urban Rivals based on two key things.

One: the art style is more to my liking. So instead of orcs, trolls and wizards, you get Hoodies, Gangsters and Punks… All lovingly illustrated in a manga-meets-graffitti style.

Two: the battles are far shorter, with games in the 5-minute region instead of Magic’s longer, more drawn out, battles. This isn’t so much to do with my short attention span, but I feel that these shorter play times are a perfect fit for the iPhone, where you might be hopping on and off buses and trains during your daily commute.

On starting the game you register for an account. This is free and gives you eight pre-selected cards. These used to be random, but players found it unfair that you may or may not be handed a good deck. Instead you choose from three personality types. Cool, Danger and Action. These then give you cards that best represent those types. The object of the game is to collect cards and level them up to become the most effective in battle. The cards are each represented by a character, which have different power and damage attributes, as well as a range of abilities that can help or hinder it in battle. Some of these characters have abilities that are either triggered or countered by another card’s ability, particularly if they are part of the same group, or clan. There are 500 character cards in all, with new cards added every 2nd Friday, averaging out at around 100 cards per year. During the lifetime of a card, the developers may decide to remove the ability to purchase it. These cards then become collectors items, which can only be traded between players, and adds to the thrill of collecting.

To get into a battle you can enter a quick match, which finds similarly ranked players. You can also play in tournaments, but you must first get to a certain level before you can enter.  On entering a battle, four cards are randomly selected from your deck. Each player is awarded 12 life points and the player left standing with the most, wins. It’s up to you to strategically select which card to play and when, in order to beat your rival. There is one round per card, so 4 rounds in all, and fights are won and lost based on that card (or characters) attack power. If you remember Top Trumps, then you are halfway there, so if you have an attack ability of eight and your opponent’s card has only five, then you should win. I say ‘should’ because it’s not quite that simple. You see, you also have up to 12 pills at your disposal (this is Urban Rivals after all… so instead of magic potions, you have hard drugs!). Each pill multiplies your attack power. So if you decide to use 3 pills then your attack power becomes 24. However, if your lesser-powered opponent uses six pills, then he’ll beat you. How many pills you use is hidden from the player, so it’s all about when to use them… if you blow them all at once, you might not make it to the end of the four rounds!

As well as the attack and pills, you also have abilities. There are too many to list here, but for example, one of these is Poison. If the card you play has this ability and wins, then your opponent will be poisoned and will lose life points on each of his/her remaining turns. Many other abilities have different effects, as well as the ability to counter effects of other abilities.

After each fight, whether you win or lose, you will gain experience points. You will earn more experience if you beat someone with a higher level than yourself. These points not only benefit your own stats and characters power, but also earn you Clintz (the in-game currency) that will allow you to buy 2nd hand cards.

Another way to earn both experience and money is to enter tournaments. Tournaments appear hourly and the top third of players with the most points win credits to purchase new cards. Also, each time you win, a small amount of credits goes into a jackpot, which is divided out evenly to the winners… acting like a lottery of sorts.

The iPhone version brings the online experience of the Browser version to the palm of your hand over EDGE, 3G and WiFi, with all information designed and laid out for easy access and readability. Plus of course the added bonus of the touch screen for menu access and scrolling through your card collections.

It’s very easy to bring up your collections, view each card, as well as stats, biographies and view that characters appearance. A cool feature is the ability to flick through the characters previous looks before they were levelled up. Another feature allows you to group various cards into custom decks, so for instance you could create a deck called ‘Porn stars’ and place cards from your collection in there that look like a porn star! You can then publish these decks to share with the Urban Rivals community, where other players can download them.

As well as your own info, you can access friend’s lists. You can text chat with them, view their collections and follow their progress, as well as check out other players cards in the store. Here you can purchase and sell cards for your collection using credits, either won though battles, or bought with real cash. Due to the inability for free games on the AppStore to allow in game purchases, Urban Rivals is available in two flavours. A free version which allows you to play but with out the ability to purchase cards, and a paid version which is ‘in-game-purchase’ enabled. Pricing for the paid version is to be at the rock bottom 59p/$0.99 price.

Entering into battles was very fast, with barely a few seconds before finding a battle. This is due the large install base on the web version, and the fact that the iPhone version can play with the web version seamlessly.

After the demonstration, which you can see in video form below, I also got to experience a battle. I was swiftly beaten of course, but I came away with a very good first impression of the game. I particularly like the intuitive user interface, and of course the artwork, which I mentioned before. Each of the 500 characters are beautifully illustrated as well as the various backgrounds that you battle on, it all really pops on the iPhone’s bright screen.

All in all, Urban Rivals looks to be a great mobile package for both new comers to card battling and seasoned pros. It is due for release at the beginning of September, this year.

Note: the developer was talking me through the game as he played, so a battle would typically be much faster than this.

Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here

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