Derby King: Quest for the Triple Crown Review

Derby King is a game of the type that appear to be flooding mobile phone app stores in recent times. A free-to-play (F2P) steady single-player experience that ramps up the difficulty over time in order to incentivise the player to buy tokens with real-world cash. With so many of those around, however, I’m not going to judge the game on its F2P model.

In Derby King you take on the role of a newly-minted racehorse owner looking to win the coveted Triple Crown series of races. You start off with a single horse and rider and through a number of challenges are tasked with earning cash, reputation and fame in order to progress.

There are ten tiers of difficulty, each with a set number of generic competition races, a warm up section that does not affect the progression and premier races which give you the chance to win big. Each race pits your horse (I chose to lovingly refer to mine as “Always Last”) against five others. Initially the races are straight dashes across the track but later stages will have you competing in steeplechases and more complex routes.

Racing is performed via a reaction test, where the player has to line up three bars as the game counts down to the starting pistol. Aligning them properly gives your horse a speed boost out of the gate. Should you need an extra burst of speed, however, the option is available to whip the horse, performed with a similarly-themed timing mini-game. With each strike, however, you sap your nag’s energy, meaning they must be well timed to have the best effect.

In later stages of the game you’re able to buy up more horses and riders and compete in multiple races at once. Getting there is an issue, however, as the repetition of the main mechanics get very boring very quickly.

Presentation-wise the game is a fairly attractive one. Developers Third Time have used the Unity engine to create relatively life-like horses that move in a convincing manner. The tracks, crowd, environments and music are all well-realised and can create a real race-day atmosphere. For a game that is designed to fit into your pocket, you can’t really knock Derby Kings on its aesthetics - they do the job.

With only three race types per tier, high-priced upgrades requiring multiple races before advancement and late-game features being unlocked far too late in the game to retain interest though, Derby Kings cannot really be said to be anything other than another journeyman F2P title.

Derby Kings won’t blow you away but it might help whittle down a long train journey or give you something to do while in the queue at the post office. In the end isn’t that the true purpose of a mobile game?