I was being kinda smug a few days ago when I confidently mentioned to someone that I had quit my addiction to F2P mobile games. I’m DONE. They’re OVER.
I was lying, naturally. I play too many word games with my sisters every day over group chat; Squaredle, Waffle, and a few of the New York Times word games. I still play Godville every day, and I still have ProgressQuest running on a computer. I guess that last one doesn’t really count as a F2P. It’s free, but you don’t really play it.
And I’ve been playing La Brute, the resurrection of a game we knew back in the day as My Brute. It’s F2P in that there’s a potential to pay, but that doesn’t seem to be hooked up while the game is in beta.
Starting in La Brute is easy enough — you go to the website, type in a name, maybe fiddle with the random character it starts you off with, then go to the Arena and choose from random people to fight. Your characters (you can make three to begin with, and earn more as you play) fight against the other character until one wins. Each character gets six bouts per day (the day starts midnight, Paris time). When you level, you can choose to advance upon your destined path — usually gaining a new weapon, pet, ability, or a stat boost. You get to choose between two.
You start as the lowest rank, “Padawan”. You can sign up your character for a tournament every day or two; winning a tournament allows you to gain points toward a rank up, which resets you to level 1, but your standings are based on your new standings. During your next and subsequent leveling with a character, you have the option to choose the level up choices again, just like before — or, to choose something different and take a different path up your talent tree. This is called changing your Destiny.
You can join clans. My clan is called Les Perdants, and you should join this one. Characters in your clan will occasionally come help you in battle (unsure if this is from your clan, or just one of your other characters — since only my characters are in my clan, it’s impossible for me to know).
Clans can also fight a megaboss, Goldenclaw, who has millions of points of health. Damage is preserved, so you can give him a couple whacks every few days. Clans can also fight each other.
I don’t know what this is like, because I only have five characters, two of them are low level by just going through a rank-up, another is close to a rank-up, so at the moment, I don’t think Les Perdants would work well against another clan. But I guess I won’t find out unless you join my clan.
Mais je ne connais pas le français et je refuse d’apprendre!
My mom’s side of the family came from Quebec in the early 20th century to work in the New England mills. They spoke French as a first language. When my grandma was dying, she could only speak French, and my mom’s new husband was the only one who knew enough French to talk to her.
Which was weird, as mom was always trying to teach us French when we were little. My sister Jenn suggested that maybe… mom didn’t actually know French as a first language; maybe she just took it in school.
This blew my mind. I had always been proud of my Canadian heritage, and bragged that my mom was bilingual. She sure talked French with our likewise Canuck neighbors, but it could be that she was just stumbling along and I never knew.
Anyway. I don’t know why this game is in French. Sure, the developers are French, but when this was My Brute, it was in English. The main landing page is in English sometimes. Then the French happens.
But it doesn’t matter. There is nothing really deep going on, and if something isn’t clear, I know Chrome, and probably all other browsers, will seamlessly translate the page to English or any other language if you like.
I just really have to urge you to join my clan. Seven characters is all I need.
