Mobile version first impressions compared to PC

dugman

Being out of town for a few weeks, I finally decided to try the Mobile version of DbD out in earnest. And overall it’s not bad! 🙂 There are some things I like and things I’m not so fond of so far.

• 👍 You can set up custom matches to play against bots. The bots obviously aren’t the brightest opponents, but it’s a nice way to learn the game mechanics and explore maps. You earn no experience or bloodpoints against bots but at least its an option. Bots also take the place of players who disconnect which is, while again not as good as the human player, still better than having nobody at all.
• 👎 Virtual Controls on the tablet are definitely WAY harder to use than mouse and keyboard on PC. It’s intuitive how the virtual controls work, at least, but in terms of having fine control of where you run and what direction you face it’s difficult to get used to. On top of which you have to be ready to tap a specific spot on the tablet with your right thumb to do a basic attack or ability button, but that also means not being able to change your facing while you use them since your right thumb also controls your facing. There does seem to be a bit of auto facing by the game to keep you looking at the opponent you’re chasing, but it sporadically doesn’t work all the time, especially when you make tight turns or strafe. (I know you can hypothetically use an Xbox controller with a tablet, but I’m not going to spend $40 or whatever on a controller for a mobile game. 😄)
• 🤷‍♂️ Mobile uses a different leveling up and bloodpoint system from the bloodwebs on the PC. I haven’t decided if it’s better or worse yet, but basically you get new Perks automatically every character level (so they cost no bloodpoints but they’re entirely random) and you spend your bloodpoints solely on add-ons and offerings. Also the bloodpoint “store” you buy add-ons at always has add-ons for all your characters, it’s not a unique list for each character. So for instance I own Doctor and Trapper, and my store has both types of add-ons in its store slots. I’m not sure how well this works if you unlock a lot of killers since you could end up having a ton of add-ons for characters you hardly play, but it’s just a first impression so maybe I’m misunderstanding something about it.
• 👍 Mobile does have a fairly generous list of daily and weekly missions, more than just the 3 dailies that you get on PC. And it’s a mix of survivor and killer missions which is nice. I didn’t notice a Rift type challenge though, so in a sense I think the Weekly challenges are fitting that niche,
• 👍 The game is free to play with Trapper as the only starting unlocked killer. That’s great if like me you just want to try it out and see how it goes. Characters are $5 each, though with discounts you can get them at half price basically, and like on the PC version you earn shards that can unlock the unlicensed characters for 9000 shards. Overall it’s not a bad value, assuming you unlock a character or two that you enjoy playing. It could get a little pricier if you buy every character, but it would still probably be cheaper than the PC version.
• 👍 The mobile HUD has additional features that are kind of handy, such as pointers to where noises like generators being worked on are and popups to do things like open lockers and pick up survivors. And the graphics are not bad at all for a mobile game!
• 👎 Some of the balance changes that PC got haven’t made their way to mobile. For instance, keys and moris and the hatch all use the old system where the hatch appears based on a formula involving how many generators are done and survivors are alive, a key can open the hatch instantly and let all the survivors out, and a Red Mori can let a killer kill a survivor after only one hook. It’s a bit disappointing that some of these issues which were dealt with on PC are still on Mobile.

Overall if it weren’t for the controls being hard to get used to compared to mouse and keyboard I’d definitely play this more often, it really does play quite a lot like the PC version, albeit a slightly out of date version in terms of balance patches. As it stands I’ll probably play it a bit more using Doctor (one of my favorite characters on PC) and see if the controls grow on me at all. Even if they don’t, though, this does seem like a decent choice for a travel game for DbD fans, certainly worth a try!