Exploring AFK Journey
Posted on May 6, 2024 by Aywren
I don’t recall how I was introduced to the game AFK Journey. But I immediately took notice of the game’s art style, so I checked more deeply into its website.
While I don’t usually play gacha games, I (at first) thought this might be more of an idler game. This is incorrect, however – you do amass resources while you’re AFK, and the tactics-like battles can play out automatically, but the rest of the game is a full story-based, voice-acted RPG adventure.
I was also pleasantly surprised that it’s available for both PC and mobile. Once you make an account, you can log in between the different platforms. So, you can play on the go, or you can play on your gaming machine when you’re at home.
It does help that I rounded up all kinds of codes that helped give me a pile of resources to get a head start. It also helps that the game has been generous in giving away all of the characters in the roster – there’s one or two I still really want to pull, but logging in daily should eventually help me get them.
What is AFK Journey?
I was surprised by the merged game elements as I didn’t expect a story with quests, tactical battles, and a full journey through a fantasy world. Again, the art style, voice acting and the character designs (which I later learned came from this team’s first game – AFK Arena), caused me to stick around despite it being a gacha game.
It’s not often that I remember character names in the many random indie-type games I play anymore (old age setting in). But these characters seem to stand out, especially since the characters you unlock are part of the storyline you eventually play.
While the story isn’t incredible, it’s interesting enough and gets the job done. It does build up a high-fantasy world that’s at risk due to a mystery that you and your companions must unravel. Your character is the esteemed Magister Merlin - who can glamour themselves to look differently, and for some reason, struggles with random memory loss. So, while you start out as a powerful mage, it’s the folks that come along for the ride whom you must level up and earn gear for.
The nice thing is that you don’t have to level all your characters individually. You choose a group of five as your main set of focus-characters. Whatever the lowest level character is of that five is the level all the rest of your un-used characters will be. Gear is also shared across characters.
While I said “un-used” characters, that’s not exactly true, either. There are many battle modes – from PVP, labyrinth, daily boss battles, and legend trials. The legend trials in particular require you to build four different teams based off their affiliations, which means you must pull in characters that you don’t usually use as your main team. This is nice, because it’s neat to see what other characters could bring to the table.
Of course, there are community features such as friends and guilds, which can help earn you extra rewards each day. You can also team up with other players for bigger world boss battles – I haven’t tried these yet as I’m still working on finishing up the story before the next season drops.
Oh, that’s right – season 2 is just about to launch this week, which will unlock new areas, characters and story. Though, I hear that you can visit these seasons at your own pace, so hopefully the story will just be there for new players who come in later.
I also like that you can not only customize your character from the start, but you earn titles and cosmetics as you finish quests and achievements. This includes outfits, cosmetic head pieces, hairstyles, and all sorts of things. Even as a free player, I’ve been able to unlock plenty of things as I’ve just made my way casually through the story.
Overall, I’m having good fun with AFK Journey. I’ve been play about a month now, at a very slow pace, and haven’t really felt the need to spend money to progress so far. We’ll see if this game holds on to me in the future. But if they keep doing what they’ve done this far, I’ve got no complaints.