Hammer & Chisel is a new development studio founded by Jason Citron, the same guy who created OpenFeint to bring achievements and leaderboards to mobile before Apple and Google ever did. Hammer & Chisel has a fascinating dedication to bringing meticulously crafted hardcore games to tablets. Their first effort is Fates Forever — a beautiful MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) built from the ground up to be a tablet exclusive. The team at Hammer & Chisel is tiny but packed full of talent and industry experience. Their dedication to their craft is obvious within moments of launching Fates Forever, which is shaping up to be something truly special, indeed.

League of Legends (PC/Mac) is far and away the most successful MOBA in today’s gaming scene. With its massive success, it’s no surprise that several companies have tried creating MOBAs for mobile. The problem is, all of the current MOBAs available for Android and iOS make concessions on their way to becoming mobile games. They suffer from poor control schemes or sacrifice strategic depth, resulting in decidedly more casual gameplay. Fates Forever seeks to resolve both of these issues and does so with aplomb.

Fates Forever makes a great first impression. The 2D and 3D art is all vibrant, detailed, and beautiful. The character designs are creative and interesting. The music is rich and cinematic. The sound effects are convincing and each character has a full professional voiceover. Bottom line: it looks and sounds great.

The game is super easy to get into. A 15-minute tutorial against bots is all it’s going to take for anybody to figure out the rules of the game and how to control it — whether they have hundreds of hours invested into playing MOBAs or none at all. Moving and attacking requires a simple tap of your target. Icons along the left side of the screen let you trigger special abilities. Some of these fire right away and others require some input for targeting — say, a swipe in the direction you want to charge or a squiggly line drawn to create a burning path of light. You can stop attacking with a two-finger tap and you can warp back to your own base by holding two fingers on the screen. The gestures are intuitive and provide tight control over how you aim your special attacks.

Gameplay is similar to other MOBAs. In this case, matches are 3v3 and the map is divided into only two major lanes (for those familiar with League of Legends, the map’s layout is nearly identical to Twisted Treeline). Each team has a base on their end of the map where they can shop for items and heal very rapidly. Each base also hosts a large building called a Gyro. Victory goes to the team that can destroy the opposing team’s Gyro. Each team has defensive towers on their side of each lane. In order to damage an enemy’s Gyro, a team must first eliminate all of the enemy’s towers in one lane. Each team constantly spawns minions that go down each lane to attack enemy minions, heroes, and towers. Heroes gain experience and gold as they wipe out enemy minions and heroes. Gold lets them buy equipment back at base, experience lets them level up and unlock or strengthen special attacks.

If you’re new to the genre, the key mechanics of MOBA gameplay may be confusing when you take it in through a single paragraph. It makes sense quick when you’re playing the 15-minute tutorial though. The gameplay is fast-paced, action combat with some RPG elements. A single game in Fates Forever only takes 15–25 minutes, about half the length as in popular PC/Mac MOBAs. For all MOBAs, relatively small map sizes and short gameplay sessions means they are all about quick wit and tactical decisions. Teamwork is all-important too, and teammates can take advantage of voice chat as long as they have headphones with a built-in microphone.

Like many MOBAs, Fates Forever has a middle area connecting the lanes called the jungle. It is filled with neutral creatures who can be killed for experience and gold but will not attack unless they are attacked first. Either side of the jungle is home to a shrine that players can claim for their team by standing on it for several seconds. Each claimed shrine improves the power of the entire team. As such, shrine control can quickly turn the tide of battle, especially when one team has control of both shrines at once.

It’s evident that Hammer & Chisel knows exactly what’s needed to bring hardcore gaming to mobile. Especially when you make direct comparisons to other mobile MOBAs that usually have bad controls or overly simple gameplay. The core gameplay that makes League of Legends and other MOBAs so great and deeply strategic is intact — things like fog of war, timing your attacks so you get the final hit on a minion (and therefore claim its gold), shopping for gear, warping back to base, and juggling one passive ability with four active ones. It’s all there, but it’s streamlined to just the core gameplay. Fates Forever also takes advantage of being a mobile game. The shrines aren’t exactly new to MOBAs, but Hammer & Chisel wisely chose to incorporate them. The shrines add to the intensity and strategy of the game, but also serve to shorten the length of a single play session. Your team must balance making progress on the lanes while also trying to claim the shrines for the important bonuses they provide, and those bonuses are a big enough boost to speed up the destruction your team dishes out. The game is only 3v3 instead of 5v5, but having one less lane and a smaller map size keeps things intense even with four less players. Touchscreens have the potential to feel better than a mouse and keyboard since they offer a more direct connection to the action. Hammer & Chisel’s control scheme feels great and even capitalizes on the advantages a touchscreen has over a mouse with the attacks that let you draw organic lines to aim them. There’s no way that would work so well with a mouse. Another way it’s taking advantage of mobile is that once you are in the matchmaking queue, you can go do something else on your device. Fates Forever will then send you a push notification when it finds a match for you. Matchmaking doesn’t take too long, but while the game is young and the player base is small, it’s going to take a few minutes, and spending those minutes using another app makes the time go by faster.

The easiest complaint to make against Fates Forever is that it currently only has seven playable characters, with an eighth currently announced. The game launched with only five characters though, so surely the options will grow over time. All of the characters are animals — a warthog, mole, hare, frog, lynx, bird, and rhino, to be specific. What the characters lack in quantity they make up for in quality. Each character looks great and has a unique role to play on the battlefield. Their 5 abilities (1 passive, 4 active) are carefully considered and fit the character’s role and theme well. Each character has rankings for their Attack, Defense, Magic, and Difficulty that are helpful for picking out a new hero to try. As you complete matches, you will earn experience to level up each hero as well as your overall level as a player. Hitting new levels unlocks relics that can be equipped to provide your hero with one additional passive ability and one additional active ability. The relics add a lot of extra depth to your hero selection, as you can select relics that complement your selected hero, your individual playstyle, or both. That said, the raw number of characters is important and it pales in comparison to mobile competition like Heroes of Order & Chaos (30) and Solstice Arena (23). The comparison grows even more stark when you throw in PC/Mac MOBAs like League of Legends (117) and Dota 2 (105).

Fates Forever is handily the best MOBA I’ve played on mobile. Being tablet exclusive as its ups and downs. The extra screen real estate really lets it be optimized for hardcore gameplay, but Fates Forever will miss out on much-needed players who have a smartphone but no tablet. It looks, sounds, and controls great. It’s really easy to pick up and equally difficult to put down. Hammer & Chisel is constantly working on refining Fates Forever by adding new content and balancing the content that’s already there. If you have an iPad, there’s no excuse for you not to be playing this, especially if you are a fan of hardcore, multiplayer gaming.