Trying the Splinterlands Mobile App -- How playable is it?

Splinterlands is one of the "Big Three" for me with blockchain games right now, the other two being Lost Relics and Gods Unchained. Even though I never expected to get into an Autobattler game, I just can't help myself, I keep coming back to the Spliterlands.

One advantage that Splinterlands has over the other two games I mentioned is that it's the only one with a mobile app.

If I can lay on the couch and play a few games of splinterlands without having to sit up at the computer, that is awesome. On the other hand I'm a little skeptical of how playable it will be on a phone.

Let's check it out.

Setting Up the Splinterlands App

Setup was very easy.

I went to the Google Play store on my phone and searched for splinterlands. It showed up immediately.

Download was quick. I also installed Hive Keychain since I hadn't put that on my phone yet. Using keychain it was easy to copy my public key and use it to log in for Splinterlands.

In under ten minutes -- including the Hive Keychain setup -- I was in.

How The App Looks

This is the first screen that greets me in the Splinterlands app. Looks fucking great.

There are five tabs in the app. Here's what the other four look like:

All of these screens look great. It's exciting to see a Hive app looking so good.

The question is... what's it like to actually play the game?

Playing a Match

My first match didn't load properly. I think it may have been my fault -- I was in the furthest possible part of the house from the wifi, using my phone, and it doesn't always load well from that spot. Here's what it looked like:

I was not able to submit my team -- I tried twice, both times it loaded for a while and got an error.

That's an L :-(

Let's try again but closer to the router, see if it works better?

Loading up a fresh match, this time everything loads perfectly.

I am able to submit my team and get into a match. The battlefield looks a little cluttered. It's not very easy to tell what monsters my opponent is using, even though by now I am very familiar with most of the bronze league strategies. Just a lot of info on a small screen.

I lost this one too lol. The losses don't worry me, this post isn't about strategy and I haven't started my push towards high ranks for the season yet.

Oh well.

My Thoughts on the Splinterland Mobile App

I ended up playing 5 games to get a feel for the app. Playing more makes the app a lot easier to use in the battle. I got pretty good at assembling my team, and it's really easy to see all the important information like opponent's recent teams, checking up on the ruleset, and seeing your collection to build a team from.

The only lackluster part is the actual playing out of the battle. It's just way too hard to get a feel for what the opponent's team actually is.

The battle plays properly and without any bugs, the whole thing is well coded. I think everything in the app looks fantastic except for the result of the battle itself. That one page, where all the monsters are visible at once, is too cluttered or something.

I think if the Splinterlands team can improve on the UI of that one page, this game would be very playable on mobile. Right now, idk. You could do it if you are already familiar with the game, but it would be really hard to learn the cards and develop strategies as a mobile-first player. The visual layout of the battles is just so much cleaner and easier to grok on a computer screen.

So my final verdict is: Mostly good app, but needs work on a few of the core features.

Have you tried the Splinterlands mobile app? If so I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Do you like it or dislike it, and why?