Devil Maker: Tokyo is a Korean Card Battle Game from Palmple Inc., released for both iOS and Android in 2013. It was first released in Korean, then the English/Global version came out a few months later. Other versions were released for different servers later, as well.
In the near future, the city of Tokyo has been enveloped in darkness. Various Devils have come out from the darkness, led by the legendary serpent Yamata no Orochi, and ravaged the city. Only 'contractors', people who are able to make contracts the Devils, can stand against the rampaging Devils. However, one day, a certain contractor banished Yamatano Orochi and his minions with the help of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, and ended the war.
Ten years later, you play as a man who has no memory before 10 years ago. Hoping to find clues about your identity, you work as a private investigator. One day, you received a particular client, a Devil called Yuki, who wants to help you find her master. To fulfill Yuki's request, you have to contract with powerful Devils, and investigate the darkness still remaining in the world.
In the game, you can collect over 700 Devils based on various mythological figures (nearly all of which are CuteMonsterGirls, even the male figures), divided into seven different ranks based on their power. The game offers many customization abilities for your Devils, like skills and equipments. One of the most important feature is the Evolution System, which allows you to transform low rank Devils to higher ranked ones, and is absolutely necessary to obtain the highest ranked Devils.
This show provides examples of:
- Alternate World Map: The Gate dungeons are located in another world. They contain extremely high level enemies.
- Battle Couple: Technically any pair of lover Devils that you put in your party. However, some of them do give Party Bonuses when placed together in the same party. Zeus and Hera's Party Bonus is explicitly called "Power of the Couple".
- Big Bad: Yamatano Orochi. later, Amaterasu.
- Big Good: Amaterasu. Turns out she has exactly the same goal as Orochi, and is only using you for her own purposes.
- Bloody Murder: The various "Blood" skills, such as Blood Prison or Blood Hell.
- Boring, but Practical: Blood Hell. It's one of the strongest single target attack in the game, but is very easily obtainable. It also deals recoil damage to the caster, but the amount is negligible on higher ranks. Spamming Blood Hell is actually recommended for intermediate level play.
- Boss-Only Level: Hell. It's unique from other dungeons that each area only consists of one boss fight, making going through it similar to a Boss Rush.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Per the usual practice of this kind of game. It isn't particularly severe, though, as even paying players are still subject to RNG, and all contents are available to all players including non-paying ones. The most severe example so far are the Christmas an Valentine card sets, which contain cards only available from paying, and they carry powerful equipments.
- Cast from Hit Points: The various "Blood" skills deal very high damage, but reduces the caster's HP afterwards. However, the recoil can be mitigated to negligible amounts, making them the skills of choice for everyone.
- Clothing Damage: The Raid bosses has 3 different stages with different "weaknesses". The transition is shown as an article of clothing getting torn or destroyed.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Each attribute have a different color associated with it. Otherworldy is purple, Underworld is red, and Celestial is white or gold, although the icon is light blue.
- Cards of different ranks have different colored borders. Rank 1 and 2 cards have gray border, Rank 3 has white border, Rank 4 and 5 have golden border, Rank 6 has red border, and Rank 7 has purple border.
- Like the cards, skills also have different colored borders on their icons. The standard skills have gray border as the weakest tier, then white border, and gold border as the strongest. The purple-bordered skills are "unique" skills, and can only be found on certain Devils. They are usually stronger versions of the standard skills, but can also be one-of-a-kind skill not belonging to any skill family tree.
- Competitive Balance: Different attributes have different Stat distribution.
- Glass Cannon : Underworld type Devils generally have high AP, but low HP.
- Stone Wall: On the contrary, Celestial type Devils have low AP but high HP.
- Jack of All Stats: Meanwhile Otherworldly-type Devils have moderate AP and HP.
- Critical Hit Class: Some Devils, like Ea and Rhea, are geared towards doing a lot of critical damage. Crom Cruach is an extreme example. She has a huge chance to do critical damage, but she cannot use any skills at all.
- Crutch Character: Yuki. She's a level 20 Rank 3 Devil, a welcome addition at the start of the game when your party still consists of unlevelled Rank 1 or 2 Devils. However, she gets useless quickly since you can immediately pull a Rank 4 card from Ticket Summon right after completing the tutorial.
- Cute Monster Girl: A majority of the Devils appear as girls.
- Deadpan Snarker: The first few chapters are filled with Yuki snarking to the main character. Mainly about how he will never get a girlfriend with his attitude.
- Damsel in Distress: Hikari in later chapters.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Whenever you defeat a boss, there's a small chance that you will obtain the boss as your own Devil.
- Demonic Possession: The Contractor of Darkness and bosses of Closed City are all possessed by devils.
- Disc-One Nuke: Blood Hell. Easily obtainable and deals high damage.
- The Dragon: Leviathan is the Dragon for Orochi.
- Dub Name Change: Among Rank 7 cards are Lestat, Armand, Akasha, and Memnoch. However, shortly after their release, their names were changed into LaCroix, Herman, Neferure, and Mephistos, respectively. The reason for this is not yet known, but some suspect it's due to copyright problems.
- Dungeon Town: Almost the entire game takes place in the streets of Tokyo.
- Episodes: The various events. Some of the have the event-specific variants of some Devils.
- Beach Episode : Some popular cards have Unique "Beach" versions of themselves. These cards are not present in the Global version of Devil Maker: Tokyo.
- Christmas Episode: Christmas Street event. Notorious for having some of the strongest, pay-only equipments.
- Fairy Tale Episode: Fairy Tale World. The longest event so far, spanning four seasons, while most events only last for one.
- Hot Springs Episode: Hot Spring Village event.
- The Olympics: Sports Day event.
- Valentine's Day Episode: Valentine's Street event. Along with Christmas event, also notorious for the most powerful pay-only equipments.
- Evolution Power-Up:
- From Rank 1 to 5, Devils can evolve into a random Devil of the next rank of the same attribute. (A Celestial Rank 3 card will evolve into a random Celestial Rank 4 card, for example)
- Rank 6 cards, however, are basically stronger versions of Rank 5 cards with different artworks. Their names are just the Rank 5 name with something added. (Nyx evolves into Nyx of Night, odin evolves into Odin the Ruler, etc)
- Rank 7 cards are formed from two Rank 6 cards, plus a Seal Card, performing a Combination Evolution.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The Devils are based on various mythological figures, including but not limited to Greek Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Norse Mythology, Cthulhu Mythos...and Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles.
- Fixed Damage Attack: Mainly the "Black Wave" line of spells, which deals fixed damage attacks that pierces through DP.
- Flavor Text: Each card has one, mostly explaining the mythological origin of the Devil, and a quote by the Devil. Plus some comments about they looking like cute girls.
- Fusion Dance: Rank 7 cards are formed from two specific Rank 6 cards, plus a Seal Card, performing a Combination Evolution. The formula ranges from making perfect sense (Vidar = Odin + Fenrir) to seemingly nonsensical (Seraph = Hastur + Belldandy)...
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Summoning Amaterasu is treated like a big deal in the story. Gameplay-wise, RNG aside, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from summoning her as soon as you finish the Tutorial.
- The flavor texts also sometimes say things contradicted by the gameplay. For example, Athena's text says you shouldn't have both Ares and her in your party. However, you actually want them together since Ares and Athena gives you a beneficial party bonus.
- The story also treats Yamatano Orochi like one of the strongest devils in the game.
When fought outside the story however...
- Gender Flip: Many, many male mythological figures appear as girls instead. This is lampshaded on many cards' Flavor Text. Galahad, one of the cards that stays male, has this golden quote:Galahad: "My father Lancelot was a woman? What in the world is happening here?"
- Idun is a rare inversion. Originally a goddess, she's a male Devil instead in the game. Her husband Bragi still get turned to a woman, though.
- Quote from the first male Raid Boss:
Black Turtle: "Hehehe. What's that defiant look in your eye? Are you disappointed because I'm not a girl?" - Gimmick Level: Some areas:
- Chaos Sphere. Here instead of Fountain of Light, you will find Attribute Force. It heals Devils with the same attribute, but damages Devils with attribute weak to it. For example, Celestial Force will heal Celestial Devils, but hurt Underworld Devils.
- City of Illusion consumes no light, but can only be entered for 5 times a day. You can encounter three different bosses depending on how far you are when you get a Boss Encounter step.
- The deeper areas of the Gate dungeons can only be entered with a full party of a specific attribute.
- Similar to the above two, Training Center dungeon can only be entered a limited amount each day, and requires a full party of specific Ranks.
- In the Slums, you will battle other players instead of random Devils.
- Heal Thyself : Sometimes you can find Fountains of Light inside the dungeons that can heal your devils.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The main character takes your user name as his name.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Several throughout the story. Usually with bosses with highly bloated HP. Even if you're strong enough to win, the story still treats you as if you lost.
- Also against Sweet Dionysus in the Candy Party event. She has HP so high it's displayed as "????", 100% skill activation rate, and a skill that does damage to all enemies based on HP. Given all of that, she will one-shot your your entire party the moment she gets her turn.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: The many Old Story Books and Silver you find scattered everywhere.
- InfinityPlusOneSkill: Trinity. It deals huge damage to all enemies, and has a high base activation rate to boot. You also can only get one in the entire game.
- Last Disc Magic: Trinity, Memory Absorption, Full Moon Slash, and the attribute Punishment skills are generally accepted as the ultimate skills in the game.
- Mons
- Noob Cave : The earlier dungeons become this after a while.
- The Daily Theme Park for Rank 3 Ingredients.
- Number Two for Brains: Leviathan. She can't remember two orders at once. Whenever she discovers something about an order, she will drop whatever she's doing, even if she's in the middle of a mission, to immediately report to Orochi.
- Odd Friendship: If you count Party Bonus combos as friendship. The combos can range from obvious pairs like Zeus + Hera to downright bizarre pairs like Siegfried + Ganesha. Rank 7 combo pairs in particular seem to aim to make as little sense as possible.
- Player Versus Player: You can fight other players in the Arena, Coliseum, or the Slums dungeon.
- Playing with Syringes: The bosses in the Closed City dungeon are results of an experiment to combine humans and Devils together.
- Power Crystal: The evolution ingredients.
- Power Equals Rarity: Cards have three different versions: Common, Uncommon, and Rare, with slightly different art for each. Rare is the strongest while Common is the weakest. Cards can be evolved from Common to Uncommon and then Rare. There are also Unique rarity cards, whose Rarity cannot be changed. Unique cards also come with equipments.
- Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Many Devils have longer hair when in Rare form.
- Psychotic Smirk : Dionysus.
- Running Gag: The main character will never be able to get a girlfriend. Not even Cupid can do anything about that.
- Sibling Team: Several party combos feature siblings, such as Sisters' Grace combo (Amaterasu + Tsukuyomi + Susanoo) and Fate Interruption combo (Urd + Skuld + Belldandy).
- Stone Wall : Deus ex Machina with her impressive 30,000 Defense Points as a boss. Defeating her may count as a Luck-Based Mission, since she has a skill that deals huge damage but reduces her DP to zero. Fighting her is basically hoping that she uses the skill as it's very hard to damage her otherwise...unless you're strong enough to just get over her DP anyway.
- Sweet Tooth : Azazel is never seen without her lollipop. She also mentions eating a lot of candy during the story.
- Valentine Ares is another example.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Celestial is strong against Underworld. Underworld is strong against Otherworldy. Otherworldly is strong against Celestial.
- Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: The game takes place in Tokyo, and the dungeons are various regions of Tokyo.
- Too Awesome to Use : Transfer Potions. Using them ensure the success of a Skill Transfer, without destroying the victim card. They're also incredibly rare and expensive to buy. Most players save them for Trinity.
- Took a Level in Badass: Yuki. There is a Rank 7 version of her, made from combining Rank 6 Amaterasu and Rank 3 Yuki. This is the only Rank 7 combination that does not require two Rank 6 cards. Also, Aurora, a mere Rank 3 Boss card, got turned into a Rank 7 as well. In her case, it's apparently due to Leaning on the Fourth Wall Popularity Power, since the players love her design so much.
- Trademark Favorite Food :Yuki: "My favorite? Snow is my love. For food, probably sherbet?"
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia : The protagonist can't remember anything that happened 10 years ago. However, it is later revealed that Amaterasu erased his memories so he would make another contract with her in the future.
- Also happens with Jin and Yura, commonly known as Experiments N-127 and C-909.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Takes place in 2033, apparently.
