Video Game / Primal Legends

Primal Legends is a Mobile Phone Game published by French/Scottish developers Kobojo. The game's story tasks players with assembling an army of mercenaries to save Theria, a fantasy land populated entirely by anthropomorphic animals, from the forces of your brother, the Evil Overlord Rog. In addition to the collectible Heroes, you are joined by NPCs such as the fast-talking squirrel Jayce, the tough wolf Kareen, and the elk mage Alcor. The game boasts hand-drawn graphics, a limited but lush soundtrack, and core gameplay that's a unique spin on the "Match-Three Game with RPG Elements" formula popularized by the likes of Puzzle & Dragons. The boards of both the player and the opponent, whether that's the CPU in the campaign or another player in the Arena, are displayed onscreen. When you make a match of red, blue, yellow, or green units, a small amount of damage is inflicted on the leading edge of your opponent's board. Hundreds of Hit Points are the standard, and standard matches only inflict between 15 and 25, so they won't get you far. Make enough matches of a Hero's color, and you will fill their Primal gauge, be able to place them on your board, and activate their unique Primal ability. That's when you're able to deal out the real damage, and when you need to start considering surprisingly complex strategy of choosing and positioning Heroes, and timing their attacks.

A trailer is available to watch on the official site.

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This game contains examples of the following tropes:

• Animal Stereotypes: All over the place as bases for heroes.
• Anti Poop-Socking: The game will tell you when your locksmith is full, so you can't collect more chests from beating levels or winning Arena battles, to encourage you to take a break.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI likes to activate Primal abilities as soon as they're charged, regardless of whether that would actually be a good move, such as attacking a fixed area where there are no units to damage.
• Bears Are Bad News: Torr and Drall are both bears that launch strong attacks in straight lines, with Drall essentially being an Epic-rarity version of Torr.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Squy is the first Rare hero you obtain, but sees frequent use in campaign levels and PvP because his Herd-Hitting Attack wipes out large numbers of basic units, dealing damage in the high double digits depending on his level^note destroying one basic unit deals five damage to your opponent's health bar, and can chip away at enemy Heroes, especially those that occupy two or three units since they're larger targets.
  • Similarly, you obtain Bane very early on, but the random area his healing affects is likely to give you broad defensive coverage, his Primal gauge charges quickly enough that he can be used frequently, and his abundance in chests makes him cheap and easy to upgrade.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Obtaining and upgrading rare Heroes is very slow without using Rubies to buy high-grade chests.
• Captain Ersatz: Gwynn is Elsa as an ermine.
• Carnivore Confusion: It's never clarified what the carnivores in Theria eat. Sausages and hams do make an appearance - in the art and skill animation of Cipaï, a hippo.
• Cheap Gold Coins: The basic currency of the game, used for leveling up your Heroes once you collect enough cards of them from treasure chests.
• Color-Coded Characters: Different colors of Hero tend to have broadly similar abilities, though none are hard-and-fast categories:
  • Many Red heroes focus on dealing moderate damage to wide areas of the board, often with an element of randomness to them, such as Hiru, Squy, Kiit, Erys, Liu, Wakaï, Kaala, and Shura. Exceptions include Isiaaki^note directly inflicts damage on the opponent's HP bar and Cipaï ^note directly restores a small amount of your HP, not bolstering the health of your units.
  • Yellow heroes are still mostly offense-focused but more precise attackers, often targeting single columns (Torr, Drall, Horis), rows (Tali), or enemy heroes (Limbani, Horis again, Skunkix, Waru, Hembala) for more damage. Exceptions include Masha^note boosts the eight units encircling her and Asaro^note turns himself into a one-unit Stone Wall and boosts yellow units when summoned.
  • Many Green heroes, such as Bane, Borg, Rey, Sokal, Kane, Styr, and Pyk, are Support Party Members that increase your units' health or other stats. Exceptions include Rod^note randomly places bombs that explode at random times and inflict random effects on your opponent's board]] and Jasser^note inflicts damage on 2x2 areas at the corners of your opponent's board.
  • Blue heroes like to inflict a variety of status effects such as freezing (Gwynn, Konil) or poison (Uku, Nara). Exceptions include Huron^note deals heavy damage to a random 3x3 area and Mori^note boosts a 4x2 area at the center of your board.
• Excuse Plot: Your brother Rog is an Evil Overlord trying to take over Theria, go battle his armies!
• Gatling Good: Squy is a squirrel whose Primal attack is to spray machine-gun fire all over the opponent's board.
• Honorable Elephant:
  • Maarrar is an elephant who grants much more life than other "healer" Heroes to the row in front of him.
  • Sokal the mammoth is also a healer, affecting all of the two back rows.
• An Ice Person: Gwynn and Konil can freeze opposing units, although in the latter's case it's a homemade Freeze Ray rather than magic.
• Life Drain: The green hero Chasqa can do this, inflicting damage on a random enemy Hero and gaining that much of her own health. Naturally, she's a bat, and the animation for this is a bite.
• Lightning Bruiser: For a given value of "speed" in this game. Huron becomes this over the course of a match he's in because he has massive HP and attack power (enough to one-shot weaker heroes or two-shot most), and recharges more quickly after each use.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": Many of the characters are named this way:
  • A squirrel named Squy.
  • An elk named Alcor.
  • A moose (Alces alces) named Alceyr.
  • A falcon named Falkor.
• Master Poisoner: Uku the rat is described as such in his lore. His Primal skill is to inflict damage and poison on the enemy Hero with the most life.
• National Animal Stereotypes: Masha is a snowy owl with a (poor attempt at a) Scandinavian accent.
• Noble Wolf: The player character is never seen, but is strongly implied to be one given that Rog is their brother.
  • Also played straight with Gyle according to his lore.
  "A helpful soul, he will readily sacrifice himself for his friends, family, and clan. If Gyle were to one day disappear, the Wolf pack's soul would likely die with him."
• Premium Currency: Like most mobile games in this genre. Here, it's Rubies.
• Rascally Raccoon: Hiru and Huron are raccoons who relish in experimenting with exploding potions.
• Rhino Rampage: Roku is a rhino Hero whose ability is to increase the power of the row he's placed in and then launch them all at the opponent.
• Situational Sword: Some heroes are only really useful in specific level types.
  • Liu is best for destroying targets situated in the center of the board. His coverage and attack power are otherwise outclassed by other red Heroes.
  • Wakaï absolutely breaks any level where you're tasked with destroying a target that does not move forward from the back two rows. Bosses almost always take up the entirety of this area.
• Squishy Wizard: Gwynn the ice mage has low HP for an Epic-rarity hero, since she's the first one you get.
• Stone Wall: Some heroes in this game:
  • Pyk's purpose. He's three units long, has a massive HP stat that slightly regenerates every turn, and activating his Primal gauge increases his defense.
  • Asaro's skill is simply to regenerate his own health.
• Suicide Attack: The ability of Banka. His Primal skill is solely to build up power for launching a powerful frontal attack when he's killed.
• Support Party Member: Comes in two flavors:
  • Healers like Bane, Masha, and Mori, who grant "life" (HP and attack power) to units in their area of effect.
  • Boosters like Styr and Taï, who grant other favorable effects to your heroes like increasing attack and defense, or decreasing their Primal gauge requirements.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Some Heroes, such as Uku and Limbani, target the enemy Hero with the most HP remaining.
• Timed Mission: Some campaign levels task you with destroying a target within a certain number of turns. If you fail to do this, the target will activate and deal an unsurvivably ridiculous amount of damage, defeating you immediately.
• Vocal Dissonance: Some of the voice lines, especially those shared between characters.
  • The teenaged Hiru and the adult Huron share the same high-pitched voice line.
  • Torr is a young man, but also an anthropomorphic bear, and so has a gruff but mid-ranged voice line. Drall is an older and even larger bear, but uses the same.
  • Kiit and Sokal use the same "My ancestors are with me!" clip. Kiit is a meerkat and Sokal is a mammoth.
• World of Funny Animals: Played straight. Carnivore Confusion is never addressed, and there are no human characters to be seen.
  • World of Mammals: For the most part. The vast majority of heroes are mammals, though there are some birds (Horis and Falkor the falcons, Masha the snowy owl, Floyd the flamingo), reptiles (Banka the armadillo lizard), and amphibians (Nara the frog, Shura and Shi the salamanders).

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