Short Game: BoM Beat Battle



BoM Beat Battle

BoM Beat Battle is a short fighting game found on the Mormon website http://www.bomtoons.com/games.php. The point of the game is to defeat your opponent in hand-to-hand combat by pressing buttons in specific patterns. The player first selects to play either a 1-Player game in which he/she fights the computer or a 2-Player game where two players sit down at the same computer and fight each other. From there, the player chooses one of two characters to play as, either Captain Moroni or Gadianton. Captain Moroni was, according to Alma 43:16, the man who took command of the army of the Nephites when they fought against the Lamanites (http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/43?lang=eng). Gadianton was, according to Helaman 6:18, the leader of a group of criminals who opposed the Nephites (http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/hel/6.18?lang=eng#17). Nephites are basically those who obey God according to Mormon teachings and are descendants of Nephi. Lamanites are those who do not. This creates an interesting dynamic in the game then, since you actually do have a hero in Mormonism potentially fighting a villain. At this point in the game, the player selects which of two levels they will fight on and then the battle begins. The player starts off first on the attack and presses Z, X, or C in one of five different orders displayed on the screen in order to attack. They must press them at the appropriate time as a red bar passes over each letter that needs to be pressed. The better timing the player has, the more damage his attack will do. Attacks are classified as being high, low, or a throw. When the player misses or is blocked, he/she switches over to defense and must choose to perform either a high, low, or throw defense. Defense only works if the player picks the right kind of defense to perform. Whoever wins two rounds out of three is the winner. At the end, points are awarded for life left over, technique, and style, though these have no bearing on gameplay.

Actually playing the game was very difficult at first. The timing is not that difficult, but determining which defense to use is. Since the defense is broken up into three different kinds, the player is forced to try and figure out what kind of attack his opponent is using. Even if the player is able to determine what his/her opponent is doing, he/she then has to react quickly enough to perform the appropriate defense. At first, I actually had to have a friend stand over me whose sole purpose was to watch what my opponent was doing and then calling it out to me so that I could perform the appropriate defense. Eventually though, I learned that most of the defenses start with the same letter. Then, once I saw what my opponent was doing I hit the other buttons to perform the appropriate defense. Once I learned this, the game became very fun.

Mine and other players’ biggest gripe with the game was that there were only two available characters (though there are blank spaces to imply that there should be more) and only two stages. The comment section is almost exclusively people that all say they enjoyed the game, but want more characters to use.