Collect The Artifacts, Turn-By-Turn.
With the eagerly awaited Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End arriving on shelves worldwide May 10th, 2016, Sony released Uncharted: Fortune Hunter, an app that preempts the game’s arrival and offers opportunities to unlock in-game items in Uncharted 4’s multiplayer. The experience is of a decent length and varies in difficulty, but it’s an experience not unenjoyable and somewhat useful (if you like Uncharted multiplayer).
So what is Uncharted: Fortune Hunter? To keep it simple, Fortune Hunter is a turn based puzzle game, where each block moved counts as an action (but not necessarily a turn). As you progress through the levels and stages, Drake finds himself face-to-face with an increasingly difficult set of tasks. The goal of each level is to proceed to the artifact without meeting your doom. However, the formula is simultaneously more simple and complex than that.
In Uncharted: Fortune Hunter, each time you stop marks the end of your turn. You could move seven blocks on one turn; each block, however, causes an action to be taken, so if there are dart launchers, they will fire on each step. Should you attain the artifact before using the suggested move amounts, you’ll be rewarded with a key. The keys are used to open up locked treasure chests that Sully finds for you. Within the chests are a plethora of items. You can score money, Uncharted 4 currency, magical orbs, pieces of maps, and treasure.
Obtaining each collectible yields different results. Gold allows you to speed up Sully’s search for treasure chests or buys unlockables like costumes and orbs. The currency found for Uncharted 4 will be able to be linked to your PSN account to unlock items in the multiplayer. Orbs allow you to simplify the difficulty or resurrect you midgame in order to make it easier to win the key for a stage. Enough map fragments unlocks future stages, while costumes allow you to gain certain in game bonuses.
Uncharted: Fortune Hunter is meant to play as a companion app to Uncharted 4, especially in terms of unlockables in the forthcoming triple A title. Yet when examined on its own, Uncharted: Fortune Hunter stands up surprisingly well. Sure, there isn’t much of a narrative; and the colorful and cartoonish graphics almost downplay the solemn tone of the final game, but the puzzles increase in difficulty at an acceptable pace, and they do become challenging. In fact, even towards the end of the first set of stages, I found myself often using up too many turns and leaving the level empty handed. But my favorite part of the game is that it does not rely on in game purchases to play.
Excited for Uncharted 4 and looking for a little extra Drake to get you through the day? No, don’t turn on your radio and start from the bottom. Open up your android or Apple smartphone or tablet and download the free Uncharted: Fortune Hunter app to get started collecting currency for Uncharted 4’s highly anticipated multiplayer. With many cosmetic unlockables available now – including gun skins and accessories – you’ll have plenty of value in working toward your goals.