

The art style reminds one of anime and JRPGs such as the Atelier series. The monsters strewn about the maps don’t even put on a pretense of being part of a virtual ecosystem, instead seeming more like something set up for a sort of digital whack-a-mole.Įven the pets, which is the mechanic that is supposed to set Cloud Song apart, end up becoming just another set of equipment that players try to optimise. Every map is designed in an unnaturally convenient way where NPCs have barely any personality, and each location disparate enough to call attention to its specious nature. The trade-off with this fuss-free system is that the game world inevitably feels artificial and doesn’t allow for deep immersion. When a game is built in a way that allows people to not pay much attention to it, perhaps the choice to devote focus on it simply highlights the vapidity of its hyper-efficient gameplay loop. There won’t be much in the way of acknowledgments for those who choose to approach the game in a more tedious fashion, and the completion of each task points to even more tasks to complete, like a kind of Sisyphean labour. When pretty much everything in the game is designed to be easily cleared by auto-pathing, even if there is room for optimisation on the players’ part, it doesn’t necessarily feel rewarding.

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Players who instead prefer to have full control, to play the game in a way they believe games should be played may find themselves wanting more of a challenge. Cloud Song is able to give that intoxicating dopamine rush to players who are already tight on time. For those chasing after the nostalgia of grinding after-school hours away immersed in virtual worlds where strength is unambiguously measured and almost mind-numbingly simple to build up, this game offers itself as a solution. It is the feeling of having played a game without actually playing it. Simply put, Cloud Song gives players the feeling of reaching a high level, progressing, and becoming successful in an MMORPG without requiring players to actually sink in the countless hours of focused attention required to get there.

So while Cloud Song does offer players a seemingly endless list of quests to complete and milestones to reach, when most of them can be done without players engaging much with the game, it begs the question – why even play the game to begin with? The proliferation of auto-pathing as a mobile MMORPG staple stems from the sheer ease it affords, allowing players to multitask and be distracted by more important tasks while the game is still progressing and moving on their devices.
