Super Auto Pets, my favourite auto-battler, is now on iOS
Roll me, you piece
Excellent auto-battler Super Auto Pets is now on iOS devices too, joining PC and Android version in making cute animals fight. It's a cracking little auto-battler, with simple art hiding pleasingly complex possibilities for fiendish builds. The free-to-play version is extremely generous, too. Highly recommended.
Super Auto Pets reminds me far more of Darkest Dungeon or Monster Train than auto-battlers like Dota Auto Chess or Teamfight Tactics. You buy and upgrade units from a random draft in the shop between rounds, like the big names, but arranging them so their abilities and stats best attack, defend, buff, and counter really scratches that line-based battling itch for me. Endless hours of fun building combos, optimising placement, and attempting to counter the strategies you might face from random opponents. It's asynchronous, too, with no timer pressure and the surprise of random opponents every round.
I declared Super Auto Pets my favourite auto-battler in November, and Ollie joined me with praise when we called it one of our favourite games of 2021.
Super Auto Pets is free-to-play on Steam, Android, and now iOS too. It's very generously free-to-play, only selling an expansion with extra animals and a separate matchmaking pool (so no advantage over other players unless they opt into cross-pack matchmaking), plus two cosmetics. Honestly, I bought the expansion and still play on the F2P pack as often as not.
Along with the iOS version, Team Wood have also been working on a new expansion and a big update. They've said that the expansion will be wholly new pets and food, while the update will add the option to create a custom pool of animals to roll from.
My greatest hope is that Super Auto Pets will now receive an influx of fresh new players. SAP players are too good these days. I still get wins but everyone's really putting up a fight. Outrageous. How dare you. I look forward to encountering more fun gimmick builds again, too. Less meta, more mayhem.