As if it were made by the Canadian Devil himself!
"This game contains both in-app purchases and the option to watch ads for rewards. To disable the ability to make in-app purchases adjust your device settings. In-app purchases cost real money and are charged to your account and for those reasons this game should not be played by anyone."
South Park: Phone Destroyer is a 2017 mobile phone game based on the South Park series, published by Ubisoft and co-developed by RedLynx and South Park Digital Studios. Once again, you enter the world of South Park (or more accurately, the eponymous mountain town) as an avatar called the "New Kid". This time, your New Kid is a prodigy at the phone, and is guided by Cartman to fight with and for him by doing battle with various opponents. To accomplish this, your New Kid summons various characters from their phone. These characters are collected as cards, and can be one of fivenote types, along with two types of non-character cards:
- Fighters, who fight at close range and are balanced between strength, speed, and durability.
- Rangers, who fight at a distance, but may suffer from other weaknesses.
- Tanks, who aren't very quick, but can take a massive beating and have decent strength.
- Assassins, who don't take hits well at all, but make up for it with absurd speed and power.
- Spells, which are instantly consumed to bestow an instantaneous or limited-duration effect.
- Totems, which act as buildings providing a passive effect as long as they're active, with their constantly draining HP acting as a time limit.
- Traps, which act as field hazards that apply a debuff to any enemy characters who come across them. Currently, the Superheroes theme is the only theme that uses these cards.
Players have more to do than just following the story, however. Cartman also runs a shop for the player to purchase various cards, which can be guaranteed characters, guaranteed attacks, guaranteed items, or freemium content in card packs, which contain a set number of cards that get more and more guaranteed for containing rarer stuff. They can also take a visit to "Don King" Butters and do battle against other players, for various rewards such as in game currency and more cards. There, they can join a team of other players to give each other cards and gain other exclusive bonuses.
The game was formally released on November 9th, 2017, but soft-launched sooner in select countries a week after its reveal at E3 2017.
To get past the Great Trope Wall of China, you must list these tropes
- Ad Reward: Watching an ad after a match grants you either one extra destroyed phone if you won the match or gives you access to lockers if you lost the match. You can also watch an ad to open one extra locker reward (but only if you didn't already buy an extra locker with cash) and to get an extra hourly card pack.
- Adaptational Heroism: Not just Cartman, like in Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole, but even Nathan and Mimsy are shown to be playable through their character cards.
- Allegedly Free Game: You could play without paying and hope you get lucky, especially if you participate in events, but it is a very slow journey to completion if you don't pay real money, particularly when it comes to getting legendaries. Ironic, given how the show deconstructed this tactic. The game also lampshades it, with the kids imploring you to spend money and getting sad at the very end if you didn't spend any real money or spent a small amount of money.
- Asian Buck Teeth: Don King Butters wears giant buck teeth as part of his yellowface.
- Bare-Bottomed Monkey: Weaponized — Dr. Mephesto's four-assed monkey from the show makes an appearance as a card, with the special ability wherein if it's destroyed, its many bare asses will actually fly off and explode on enemies.
- Body Horror: The Poison card art depicts Bebe and another kid breaking into bleeding boils and bleeding from the eyes.
- Covers Always Lie:
- Even when an event pack advertises itself as offering a certain card and shows the character on the pack cover, in many cases there's no guarantee that you'll get that specific card even if you complete the event (except for the events that officially debut the card).
- One of the loading screens shows Kanye West (in his "Gay Fish" persona) fighting alongside the Mythical kids. Kanye isn't playable in the game and likely never will be due to copyright issues.
- Creepy Crossdresser: Four out of five of Randy's cardsnote have him crossdressing, and it's played for weirdness.
- Deadly Game: These kids (and adults, animals, robots, unholy creatures, and whatever-the-hell Towelie is) are basically killing each other with guns, swords, knifes, hammers, blowing themselves up... you name it! Also, the death animations for some of the characters (Shaman Tolkien, Inuit Kenny, Poseidon Stan, Angel Wendy etc.) don't look like a very pleasant experience, with their weapons hitting them in the face. For most of the kids, it appears that they're just pretending to die, but Inuit Kenny unambiguously gets killed in battle, with his tusk stabbing him in the face.
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- Mint Berry Crunch, Mysterion, and the Coon appeared on comics covers in Gizmo Ike's card art before they became playable characters.
- The Woodland Critters appeared on the Unholy Combustion card and in the background of the Santa Claus card (albeit as mutilated corpses) before the Woodland Critters card was released on Christmas 2020.
- Hermes Kenny's card art features Scuzzlebutt in the background, who would be released as a tank card in May 2021. Hunter Jimbo's card also includes a Scuzzlebutt cameo, but was released only a couple of weeks before Scuzzlebutt, making that more of a case of Five-Second Foreshadowing.
- Sparky, Stan's pet dog, first appeared on Medicine Woman Sharon and Friar Jimmy's cards. Years later, Sparky ended up getting his own character card (as a Legendary no-less!).
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In order to get the Good Ending, you'll have to spend a lot of money in order for the kids to express their gratitude towards you for playing their latest game.
- Eye Scream:
- The Arrowstorm card art treats us to the lovely image of a cowboy taking an arrow to the eye.
- The Poison card shows Bebe bleeding from the eyes from the titular substance.
- Fan Disservice: Four out of five of Randy's outfits include sloppy crossdressing. Sixth Element Randy and Mary Jane Randy's outfits are particularly stripperiffic, but with his wig falling off and his mustache still visible.
- Foreshadowing: The caption for the Manbearpig card is "HOLY SHIT IT'S REAL!" The season 22 episode "Time to Get Cereal", released about a year after the game, confirms that yes, Manbearpig is real in the show itself.
- Fragile Speedster: Assassins are small and speedy, but have the lowest HP of any class.
- Funny Background Event: Some cards have other characters making cameos in the background in what is often this. Examples include Nathan being raped by a cow in the background of Mimsy's card (while Mimsy himself is blissfully distracted by a pretty flower) and Liane Cartman being burnt at the stake in the background of Incan Craig's card.
- Gender-Inclusive Writing: Around halfway through the story, the kids of South Park start referring to the New Kid in gender neutral pronouns when they start to suspect they might not actually be a boy.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: The kids are playing a simple game, with several characters joining in; among them Scuzzlebutt, Satan and ManBearPig.
- Glass Cannon: Assassins are very small (many of them are animals or kindergarteners) and have extremely low HP, but very intense attacks.
- Groin Attack:
- The Amazingly Randy's defeat animation has him clutch his groin in pain and groaning - which makes sense, since his battle technique involves throwing cocks (as in roosters and... not roosters) at you. One of his defeat quotes is "Oh, dickshot!"
- When Sizzler Stuart is attacked, there's a chance he might say "Not there! or "My nuts!".
- Highly Specific Counterplay: Professor Chaos is immune to the Mind Control status effect, which makes him a good target against Cyborg Kenny and Mecha Timmy, who can inflict Mind Control onto opponents. However, as an assassin he's a Glass Cannon, and there's another more powerful card in the Superhero deck, Tupperware, who's immune to all status effects and spells. Luckily Professor Chaos has another ability, where he stuns opponents in front of him when he's deployed.
- Immune to Mind Control:
- All non-living units — like the Robot Vacuum, Alien Drone, and Thunderbird — cannot be mind controlled.
- From the Superheroes theme, Tupperware, Professor Chaos and the Chaos Hamsters cannot be mind controlled, though Tupperware and the Hamsters are immune to all status effects by default.
- Improbable Weapon User: Alongside more traditional weapon choices such as swords, knifes, axes, broken glass bottles, bombs, guns, bows and arrows, bare fists, kicks, slaps etc., other characters fight with more bizarre weapon choices, such as Mayor McDaniels (who throws jars of marijuana and cocaine), Mr. Slave Executioner (who hits enemies with a large dildo), President Garrison (whose weapon is the flag of the United States) and Towelie (who hits enemies with a hookah), just to name a few.
- Jack of All Stats: Fighters are well-balanced.
- Loophole Abuse: Kenny chooses to dress up as an Inuit for the Cowboys vs. Indians game. When Cartman tries to point out that it shouldn't count, Stan notes that Inuits are technically Native Americans and thus fit into the "Indians" category.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: All the playable characters as a whole. On the one hand, it's stated that the 4th Grade boys and girls are simply playing a game, with the adults and some animals joining in. However, the New Kid is able to summon their friends and a variety of traps and magical abilities from their phone, and some characters like Medusa Bebe and Sorceress Liane unambiguously transform other characters into animals.
- Mighty Glacier: Some Tanks are slow, but very durable and hit hard.
- Multiple Endings: The ending varies slightly depending on how much money that you've spent on the game after defeating Grand Wizard Cartman in the last stage.
- Mythology Gag: Has its own page.
- Number of the Beast: Pete's ability allows him and other allied Goth Kids to recover 6.66% of their HP whenever they attack.
- One of the Kids: Seeing as the adults are going along with the game the kids are playing, it can be assumed that most of them joined in on their own free will.
- Painting the Medium: The premise is that the player, AKA the New Kid, is a "master of the phone", so the story mode occasionally has characters talking to the player via Facetime.
- Premium Currency: The standard currency, "Cartman Coins", can be acquired in bulk by winning matches. The premium currency is a form of in-game Cash, which you only get in measly amounts, but can be spent on more valuable things, like entire card packs, extra chances at Challenge Mode, or the Premium Battle Pass that scores you extra rewards from the Battle Pass. PVP tickets aren't as valuable as Cash, but are slightly more valuable than Coins as they can purchase outfits and special card packs.
- Promoted to Playable: Several secondary characters, such as DogPoo, Bebe Stevens, Red McArthur, Ike Broflovski, and Terrance Mephesto can be used as character cards to battle. Even the adults, such as Randy, Sharon, Mr. Garrison, Liane, and several others have character cards of their own.
- Punny Name:
- Don King Butters' Great Play Wall of China.
- Kyle's Mystical Character Card is The Master NinJew.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: The Cock Magic and Transmogrify Fantasy Spell Cards display their targets being turned into a chicken and a rat, respectively, while their armor remains unaffected. It's also implied that the target shown in the Transmogrify Spell is Stan's Fantasy persona, Stan the Great, as his clothes and sword are displayed in the card art.
- Shout-Out:
- The Sci-Fi cards in particular have a lot of references to various science fiction media.
- Alien Clyde is pretty much wearing a home-made Xenomorph suit.
- Marine Craig is designed after the Primaris Space Marines.
- Gizmo Ike and his ability to multiply himself is a reference to Gremlins.
- Enforcer Jimmy is a RoboCop reference.
- Program Stan is a reference to TRON.
- Sixth Element Randy is, as you might guess, a reference to The Fifth Element.
- Mecha Timmy bears quite the resemblance to the Gundam.
- Space Warrior Tolkien, who looks like a Klingon, and Commander Hat (AKA Spock Garrison) are both references to Star Trek.
- Warboy Tweek is a reference to the mutants of the same name from Mad Max: Fury Road.
- Robo Bebe is a female Terminator. Pretty much everything she says is a reference to the Terminator movies.
- The Adventure cards also have a lot of references to various films from Western media.
- Gunslinger Kyle's quotes upon being summoned are "Make my day." or "Feeling lucky?"
- Pocahontas Randy is a reference to the 1995 Disney movie of the same name.
- Swordsman Garrison is a reference to Zorro.
- War Hero Ned's card art is based off Sergeant Elias's death scene from the American war film Platoon.
- One of Le Bard Jimmy's quotes is "I'm no spoony bard."
- Quotes from the Mormon Missionary include "Hello, my name is Elder Price!" and "Back to biblical times, 1823."note
- Mary Jane Randy's name is derived from Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man's Love Interest (as well as "Mary Jane" also being a word used to refer to marijuana), but his outfit is based on Poison Ivy.
- The Sci-Fi cards in particular have a lot of references to various science fiction media.
- Slapstick: The girls (and the adult women like Liane, Classi, Mayor McDaniels and Sharon) are just as prone to being beat as the boys. Nelly has a quote that also sums up the situation pretty well, but in reverse.
- Status Effect-Powered Ability: Infiltrator Kevin's attacks deal more damage against frozen or stunned enemies.
- Stock Audio Clip: Some lines of the characters are recycled audio clips from previous South Park games or episodes.
- Stone Wall: Some tanks function as meat shields.
- Stop Poking Me!: Cartman in the card shop becomes increasingly annoyed the more you tap on him. By the fourth tap, his grunts of pain are more annoyed than pained and he briefly clenches his fists and grimaces before allowing the player to tap on him again. From the seventh tap onwards, his grunts of annoyance are almost exaggerated and he slams his fist on his desk, shouting "Quit it!" at the player. Averted with "Don King Butters" in the PvP card shop, who goes "ow!" when tapped on but otherwise doesn't react.
- Self-Deprecation: The disclaimer at the beginning of the game outright states that because of the freemium nature, the game should not be played by anyone.
- Sssssnaketalk: Medusa Bebe dips into this in one of her defeat quotes.Medusa Bebe: Impossssssible!
- They Killed Kenny Again: Twice, and both times he meets his end at your hand. The first time you do it, it's even an achievement!
- Visual Innuendo: The game has fun with the "cock" card, which summons roosters to attack you. The characters who summon the card are all notoriously lustful or lewd: The Amazingly Randy (whose "cock magic" has always referred to the other kind of cock), Mr. Slave Executioner (the cocks emerge from his pants after he's defeated), and Sorceress Liane.
- Yellowface:
- When Tolkien calls Cartman out on pretending to be a Buddhist monk, Cartman points out that white people are allowed to play Asians.
- Played straight with "Don King Butters". Cartman intended Butters to dress up like boxing promoter Don King, but the latter didn't know who he was and thought it was just a generic Asian name.
