Online game "Shakes and Fidget"

The name of this game is hardly known, it is not in the earshot nowadays. Meanwhile, Shakes and Fidget has already existed for 9 years, its audience numbers more than 50 million people, and many people play it not dozens but hundreds of hours. What is the phenomenon of Shakes and Fidget?

So, Shakes and Fidget is a browser-based comic RPG with strategy elements. Here we play as a comic book hero, who just fights for fame and first places in ratings with other players and characters. And for this we perform quests, clean up gloomy dungeons, go to the arena, build your own fortress, join a guild or create your own.

But mostly we pump. In this sense, Shakes and Fidget can be partly compared to Munchkin board games and similar projects - everything here is basically designed to constantly make your character stronger. We click on the battle interface and chests, collect "loot" and experience, click on the level up screen and on the buttons that increase characteristics, click on merchants and equipment to put on our hero or heroine more powerful iron pants or armored bra.

Shakes and Fidget occasionally starts to resemble a simple clicker (although it's not simple at all, but we'll get to that later), and everyone knows how addictive clickers can be. This game is also addictive with the constant desire to take one more level, and then another and another - especially since some features and game mechanics are revealed only on the 100th level, and others - on the 200th...

And it's all accompanied by humor. We can't say that it's the level of "Monty Python" or Terry Pratchett's works, but it can be not that funny, but funny. This is evident in the descriptions of many quests, and in the style of drawing (especially in comic inserts). Some quests consist of finding...three rolls of toilet paper during a dungeon crawl. In other dungeons, the enemies are caricatures of famous fairy tale characters. When at some point we will be able to access the book, where our achievements are recorded, the game will carefully inform us - for those who can not read, we have good news, there are pictures there. And everything like that..

What is the actual gameplay? As in any RPG, Shakes and Fidget starts with character creation and race/class selection. with 8 races and 9 classes, there's plenty to choose from. Human, Elf, Dark Elf, Orc, Dwarf, Demon, Dwarf, Goblin - every race except human initially has some characteristics higher, others lower. Especially revealing is the demon, which has a bonus of plus 3 to strength, but the same 3 points reduced luck. Only humans have neither bonuses nor penalties.
As for classes, they are also quite classic - there is a warrior, mage, battle mage, scout, paladin, assassin, berserk, demon hunter, druid, bard. They are distinguished by their damage reduction rate and unique abilities. The warrior can use a shield, the assassin can use two weapons at once, the mage's attacks cannot be dodged, the bard sings inspirational songs, and the druid can wear masks of other classes to use some of their abilities.

Whatever character you create, initially your home will be a tavern, where we play thimbles, get our first quests and go on hikes to find the very three rolls of toilet paper or some other more or less funny items like ashes or witch's potion - each customer has a different reason to ask for all these things. The faster we do it, clicking on pictures of items and enemies to find what we need, the more "heroism" bonuses we get.

At the end of the quest you will have to fight with the boss. For the victory and success in the fulfillment of this and other quests we get new equipment, various useful items and gold, for which you can buy clothes for the hero and increase his performance. All battles in the game take place in automatic mode, where the heroes themselves deal damage or dodge, and the success of all actions and the amount of damage/defense/life is determined by the key characteristics of the character. These include strength, agility, stamina, intelligence and luck, which determines the chance of a critical hit.

As the levels increase, a blacksmith and a witch become available - the first one improves our equipment, the second one enchants it. In addition, we can open the arena, where we fight with other players, dungeon mode, where we consistently fight with increasingly tough bosses, and expeditions, where we go in search of nests of various pets - if you get them, the character, of course, will be rewarded with various bonuses. By the way, pets in Shakes and Fidget can and should be fed and bred. There is even a PvP mode, where players' pets fight among themselves.

However, like in all MMOs, it is better to fight against other players in Shakes and Fidget in a group or guild. Joining a guild gives you access to a shared treasury and a guild mentor, which gives you an experience bonus. In addition, special modes like guild raids (these are battles between guild members and dungeon monsters) and portals, where everyone in the community can attack powerful enemies, become available. Finally, there are occasional special events for guilds. One of the latest is the so-called Hellevator, an elevator that takes us down into the depths of hell to fight powerful demons alone or together with other guild members and move up the ranking table.

In addition, in order to fight with other players on a serious level, it is better to first get your own fortress. It can be improved and developed in every possible way to extract and store resources there (for this purpose you need to build a lumberjack's hut and a quarry) and equip an army there (you will need barracks). From the fortress you can raid other players' castles to try to steal resources from the treasury. Accordingly, we also need to take care of defense and build various fortifications.

One of the main advantages of owning a fortress is access to a mine of gems that can be inserted into equipment to increase its characteristics. Therefore, the mine is most important to protect, and you also need to improve the hall of knights, which directly affects the amount of gems that can be mined. In these mines you can also obtain an artifact called "Heart of Darkness" - after obtaining it you will open another large layer of gameplay called "Underworld".

In fact, this is the underground analog of the fortress, where you can collect souls to improve buildings and collect gold. And for those same souls, we're free to lure other players here, defeat them, collect souls from them, and even torture them in a torture chamber to collect even more. As you can see, Shakes and Fidget is a humorous game, but you should not relax, for it will be no laughing matter.

Of course, as in any such browser game, there are different time limits here - we are forced to wait for the character to return from a hike or overcome some obstacle, when the next opponent in different modes becomes available, and so on. And sometimes this wait can be not tens of seconds or a few minutes, but a whole hour. To skip time, as usual, you can use different items. Some are given a lot at the beginning of the game, but the most valuable of them - mushrooms - which are also used for spinning in the local casino, are mostly sold for live money. Naturally, Shakes and Fidget has a donation fee, but it is quite acceptable - at least in the first stages of the game.

Shakes and Fidget is a very pleasant and exciting browser RPG, which behind the external lightness and humor hides deep and varied gameplay, a lot of modes and mechanics, including building your own castle. Yes, the Russian language has been removed, but the game is officially available in Russia, so there is still a chance to try Shakes and Fidget