Flick Home Run! Duel is an attempt to make a swipey multiplayer game built around baseball. It certainly looks the part, and the mechanics are pretty much spot on. But it’s got a few problems that keep it from really …
Flick Home Run! Duel is an attempt to make a swipey multiplayer game built around baseball. It certainly looks the part, and the mechanics are pretty much spot on. But it’s got a few problems that keep it from really catching fire – not least amongst them the decided lack of any other players.
Of course, that’s a problem that should hopefully be solved over the next couple of days, and hopefully it will be, because there’s a lot to like here. The game sees you taking it in turns to throw and hit balls – you get three hits and then it’s time to swap over. Whoever gets the most points through two innings is crowned the winner.
Those points are based on a few things. The main one is distance – the farther you hit the ball, the higher your score. There are also balloons you can pop to get more points. And there’s a crash bonus too. You’ll also nab more points if you hit the ball out of the park for a home run.
When you’re throwing you can choose the sort of pitch you’re going to make. You collect balls in card packs, and they have different properties. Some are fast, some wiggle about, some are just generally tough to hit. It adds an extra edge to the pitching sections, which would be a bit flat without it.
The progression here isn’t quite right, though. It takes a little too long to get anything new, and when you do it doesn’t really change much about the game. The early part of the game is a grind, and it’s made worse by the lack of other players. Beating the AI is fine, but it doesn’t have the zing of beating a real human.
Plus you have to wait 40 seconds for the game to match you up with a computer-controlled player, and quite frankly that’s too long. Flick Home Run! Duel needs to be a lot sharper, otherwise new players are going to find themselves losing interest far too quickly.
There’s a lot to like here, but it’s all put together in a way that doesn’t quite gel. You want excitement and engagement and fast paced play, but right now there’s a lot of waiting, a lot of grinding, and probably too much putting the game down to go and play something else.
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