Marvel is not only dominating the big and small screen but also spreading its Mr. Fantastic-like reach to the mobile gaming market.
Games like Marvel Puzzle Quest and Avengers Alliance have already developed a “cult” following , and now another Marvel game is rising in the ranks of the App and Google Play Store - Marvel’s Future Fight.
The action/RPG mobile game had a huge presence at San Diego Comic-Con and that’s where iDigitalTimes sat down with the Netmarble team to discuss its brand new Ant-Man movie tie-in, long-term plans for Future Fight and what Netmarble has in store for the American mobile game market.
“Just like Ant-Man, we updated with a patch and we are still in contact with Marvel to add more characters from comics, movies and other media,” CEO of Netmarble Monster Ken Kim said. “There will be more characters. There are a lot of characters [in the Marvel Universe] and we are still trying to catch up.”
Marvel’s Future Fight was added to the App and Google Play Store in late April and in that short time since, the game has reached 20 million downloads and was the sixth most downloaded mobile game on both iOS and Android in the month of May.
The number one mobile gaming company in its home country of South Korea, Netmarble came to Future Fight when the publisher was approached by Disney.
“We’ve had a business relationship with Disney before the Marvel collaboration,” Seung-won Lee, President of Overseas, Netmarble Games said. “We made a game with the Disney IP so we talked about a Marvel project and we agreed to do two games for them. One being Future Fight and the other using the Disney IP.”
While the Disney mobile game wasn't up for discussion, Lee hinted that the game could be announced later this year.
Future Fight was a “win/win” for both companies. Lee explained that Marvel’s desire to cement its mobile presence worked well with Netmarble's drive to produce successful, popular mobile titles. now that the game is a hit, both companies will continue to support the game. This support means more characters like the Ant-Man tie-in that is currently available. Future Fight will continue to roll out the Marvel heroes and villains.
“We have a lot of updates planned. Going forward we have a lot of new characters coming,” Kim said. “We will be pulling them out from movies, TV shows and stories in the comics. We will be adding new characters regardless of tie-ins.”
One example given was the alternate costumes for War Machine and Captain America. The Iron Patriot armor and Sam Wilson Cap were made available for the Fourth of July.
And some characters or groups of characters will be getting their own side stories that appear alongside the main story of Future Fight. The Guardians of the Galaxy characters have already been introduced this way and now the Ant-Man movie heroes and villains are in the action RPG game so expect more events like that.
One character in particular that Kim wants to bring to Future Fight should make fans of Agents of SHIELD happy.
“I hope to get Daisy Johnson in,” Kim said. “I want to have my own take on her story in Future Fight.”
But while Netmarble continues its success with Marvel’s Future Fight, the mobile game company looks to take the rest of the world by storm with a couple of games that have made it the number one game company in Korea.
Seven Knights and Raven are the two mobile games Netmarble looks to bring to the rest of the world later this year.
Seven Knights bring the turn-based RPG to mobile as players take control of the seven knights that govern this world. In it, players can customize the knights in a variety of ways. You can upgrade weapons, upgrade abilities and do so much more.
Check out the trailer for Seven Knights below.
Raven puts you in the armor of a Steel Lord in a medieval setting. What makes this game different from usual RPG games is that while you normally upgrade and enhance your hero, in Raven you upgrade your armor and weapon. Those make the hero and you can gain new abilities and attacks with what your hero is equipped with.
The game also lets you go on raids with your friends asynchronously. This allows for your character to defeat enemies much easier.
Gameplay of Raven can be seen here.
With Netmarble looking to take its brand of mobile gaming West, it won’t be long till every mobile device has at least one game from this company on the peak of success.
