Devikins

Overview

Devikins is a Cute Eldritch Horror RPG game. You take the role of a controlling and demanding parent. The first stage of the game is raising your Devikid [child] into a Devikin [adult]. This is achieved in the nursery by putting the Devikids through various tasks which are a combination of goofy and horror in the nursery. Such as bottle curls and sharp blocks. These tasks improve a mixture of the Devikids stats, however some of them also have negative effects - so you need to be careful with what you train.

The mood of the devikin is also important so you find yourself switching between training and feeding/sleeping. There is also the Devikins personality to consider, as this has an impact of which actions they get the greatest benefit from. At the start of playing this gives some aspect of strategy to the game, however between guides and collecting plenty of resources, it becomes pretty simple quite quickly. The resources required are either purchased from the shop or received as a bonus for watching ads.

Gameplay

Once your devikins are fully grown they are then used to go on adventures into the void. Similar to the actions in the nursery, these are just selected tasks with timers. There is some aspect of strategy as different adventures require a different mix of personalities and attributes, but again this becomes pretty simple as your team expands. This is also where you find the first major paywall - certain adventures are completed by very rare personalities which are very expensive to buy. 

You get rewards for completing the adventures in the form of mynthseeds. These mynthseeds work as the points within the game. The more that you get in the a week the higher you finish on the leaderboards and the more rewards you get.

With your devikins you are also able to breed them to get new devikids. They have also added other areas on the main hub, such as for rituals and the wicked well. Groups of players can also work together to form a guild. These guilds compete in the guild leaderboards. It also allows players to share resources with each other. 

On top of that, the team is working on a battler system, but at the time of writing the review this isn’t live. It is going to have both a PvE and PvP aspects. You’ll be able to equip your Devikins with items to boost their skills, then you’ll battle a team of devikins. You then pick which moves for each character it then goes through combat cycles through them all.

Review

The lore and the art of Devikins are engaging, however, the current main game loop is very niche. It is mainly just a load of different timers, with the strategy aspects disappearing pretty quickly. The time demand of these timers is reduced with their premium subscription, but this doesn’t change the main loop but just reduces how often you have to check-in. The length of training, 7 days, can also mean if you can’t login for a few hours then you might actually ruin the full 7 days of training.

If you are looking for an “active” game, this isn’t it. However if you enjoy very detailed and displayed progression, as well as the eldritch lore, then you’ll probably enjoy the game.