General information

Urban Rivals is an online multi-player card game. Each card represents a character (some of which are based on real people or well-known fictional characters). Each character has specific Power and Damage values, and belongs to a clan. Some cards have abilities that are either triggered or countered by another card's ability.

Free registration gives a player 8 character cards; further cards can be purchased using ingame currency. 4 new characters, usually from 4 different clans, are added every two weeks, these are added to the 'New Blood' pack in the shop which contains the 35 most recent additions to the game. Sometimes 6 characters are added, usually for a new clan. Usually every 6 months a new clan will come out. Lately at 06.05.2011 a new clan was released which has been called "Berzerk".

The game uses affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts...

 to encourage existing players to recruit or sponsor new players; such sponsors can offer bonuses for purchases of credits, describing them as cheat codes.

An associated comic book is published online every month, with 9 panels each on the Urban Rivals official website. Sometimes this comic gives out hints of a new character or clan.

Game play

When 2 players enter a battle, 4 cards are randomly dealt 'face up' from each of their decks. Each player chooses one card and plays a number of 'Pillz,' resulting in an Attack Value equal to the cards power value mulitplied with the number of pillz + 1. In a random battle the card with the greater Attack Value has a greater chance of winning the round and dealing its Damage Value to the opponent's Life Points. In a non-random battle, the greatest attack always wins the round and deals its Damage Value to the opponent's Life Points. The game ends after 4 rounds or when one player loses all of their Life Points, the winner being the player whose Life Points are greater.

After each fight, players receive battle points. These points are used to upgrade a player's level. More points are earned from having a character defeat a higher level opponent, or your character leveling up after a fight. A bonus is given if a player has Pillz remaining after inflicting a KO, but a penalty is incurred for causing a battle to time out.

Characters receive experience (XP) after each fight, with which they level up (the starting and maximum level is determined by the character, with 1 being the lowest, and 5 the highest possible) and become stronger. Characters earn more XP when fighting characters at higher level and when they win. Some characters receive an ability to help them in battle when they reach a specified level

A player's level is based on their current number of battle points. When a player reaches Level 5, they can join a Guild. Upon reaching Level 10, they can create their own Guild. Upon reaching Level 15, they can play in ELO

Elo rating system

The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born American physics professor....

 mode. A player receives a "Leader" card every 5 levels until level 50.
The current flash client for Urban Rivals is as3, which, unlike its predecessor, features ambient music, additional sound effects, and animations displaying the effects of the characters' abilities.

Tournaments, Missions, and Events

Every other hour, there are one-hour tournaments where players have the opportunity to win Clintz or free credits. There are also more strategy-based ELO tournaments, with stricter deck-building rules, which last a week. In ELO, players start out with 1000 points. A player can challenge anyone up to 150 points above him/her, or up to 50 points below. Players gain more points from defeating higher-ranked opponents, but will also lose more points if they lose to lower-ranked opponents. Players will gradually have their scores reset to 1000 if they do not play ELO mode for a few days. At the end of the week, 12 random players of the top 100 receive a CR (collector card). 50 random players above 1200 points receive a random Rare card. You are also able to win credits; the top player gains 50 credits, ranks 2-25 gain 20 credits, player below rank 25 get 10 credits, if they scored at least 1300 points, 5 credits with 1200 or 2 credits with 1000 points and a minimum of 5 matches done. A similar gradation is made in sharing out the Jackpot (Clintz) to the tournament participators.

In December 8, the game added a new Event creation feature, allowing any players above level 40 to create his own customized tournaments. Rules can be set with a high degree of flexibility, in terms of scoring, matchmaking and more. The community has created more than 10 000 different Events in 3 months, some are based on story telling, others on guild vs guild.

On December 18, 2009, the creation of mission mode was released. Doing missions gave players a new way to receive, cards, clintz, and credits. There are currently over 300 missions with more expected to come in the near future.

Miss Clint City

An Annual Competition at Urban Rivals held at the end of the year to crown the most Beautiful and Talented women of Clint City. The rules are simple: there are many Female cards competing and after some voting, they are cut down to 8 and then to 3. The result is we get a Miss Clint City and the winning card gets a special card so they remember their victory. The Miss Clint City Beauty Pageant Winner is chosen by the players of Urban Rivals. In 2007, Chloe of the Sentinels won. In 2008, Lulabee of Ulu Watu Won. In 2009, there was no Miss Clint City. After bad reception from the fans, they brought back Miss Clint City in 2010. In 2010, Jessie of the All Stars won. In 2011 Stella of Sakrohm won.

Winners

2007: Miss Chloe

2008: Miss Lulabee

2010: Miss Jessie

2011: Miss Stella

The Clans

There are currently 22 clans in Urban Rivals which offer different bonuses. They are as follows: All Stars(who are based on sportsmen), Bangers(hip hop artists), Berzerk(people affected by a mysterious gas), Fang Pi Clang(martial artists), Freaks(circus acts), GHEIST(an underground organization), Jungo(human/animal hybrids), Junkz(Ravers), La Junta(revolutionaries), Leaders(powerful overseers of the city), Montana(the Mafia), Nightmare(monsters), Piranas(pirates), Pussycats(feminists), Rescue(emergency services), Roots(hippies), Sakrohm(extraterrestrial priests), Sentinel(the police force), Skeelz(private academy for super-powered schoolchildren), Uppers(upper class bureaucrats), Ulu Watu(surf experts), and Vortex(warriors from the future). There are more 727 characters (June 15, 2011) available in the shop and 56 collector cards (tagged as Cr). These are discontinued characters that cannot be purchased from the shop and can only obtained from trading with other playes, winning the daily lottery or winning the weekly ELO draw. Such as popular ones like Manon and Scarlett Cr both part of the all female clan of the Pussycats

Critical reception

Urban Rivals received 88% from Game Vortex, praising the typical five-minute game length, free access and poker-like element of the gameplay. However, the presentation was seen as functional, with inconsistent artwork quality and lack of sound.

Urban Rivals released an app for the iPhone OS.