Hands on With April Fools' Game Fate/Grail League

Type Moon has been famous for its April Fools' jokes since all the way back in 2005. In the past, these have been anything from fake movie posters to in-character Fate series live streams. However, in more recent years, Type Moon has released a new Fate/Grand Order tie-in parody smartphone game every April 1—with each game only being playable for a scant 24 hours.

This year's game is called Fate/Grail League. It is a simplified clone of popular baseball smartphone games—only with the entire cast of Fate/Grand Order as the recruitable players. The plot involves our heroes being transported to a world where they need to compete in a baseball tournament. While some of the servants, like Altria and Mashu, join the protagonist from the start, most split off to make their own thematically appropriate teams—such as BB making a team of Moon Cell servants or Nero making a team full of her Roman brethren. By beating any of the myriads of other teams, you are able to add their team members to your roster—though it may take a game or two to collect them all.

As for the gameplay itself: You play a total of two innings—and start with a point deficit that grows depending on how hard the team your facing is. Luckily, getting runs is easier than you might expect. When at bat, all you need to do is tap the screen to swing the bat when the ball is directly over the plate. Swing a bit early and the ball goes to the left. Swing late and it goes to the right.

This is important because the back of the stadium is lined with pads. Depending on which pad you hit, you get either a single, double, triple, or home run—and the locations of each pad changes with each batter. Moreover, as the inning progresses, the “homerun bonus” counter goes up. Because of this, you can easily grab 40+ runs in a single home run—meaning that all you need is one in either inning to win any individual match.

But of course, hitting is only half of the game. You also need to split your time pitching. For pitching, you can choose to throw a fastball, slow ball, curve ball to either side or a limited-use special throw that changes depending on your pitcher. After you choose your pitch, a power meter appears—increasing and decreasing automatically until you tap the screen. If you hit the sweet spot on the gauge, a strike is guaranteed. Meanwhile, if you miss by a mile, you'll beam the batter, resulting in a walk. However, even if the batter gets a hit, it's possible your team members can catch the ball—however, this is all up to their stats which level up a bit with each game you play.

As the tournament goes on and you unlock harder teams, each character's special skills become more important. This is especially true when it comes to pitchers. Jeanne d'Arc has a special pitch that makes the ball disappear right before it hits the plate. Meanwhile, the last boss has a pitch that literally destroys your bat if you hit it—meaning you can't swing again until a new batter is up.

Beyond the actual game, you get special baseball character art for each servant you recruit to your team with the backgrounds changing as they level up. You can even use your smartphone camera to take AR pictures of the servants.

All in all, it's a fun little game to spend an afternoon with—though a single day hardly feels like enough time to master it. It's really a shame that the limited time to play means these games are basically lost media after a single day. Still, I'm sure I'm not the only one to fill their smartphone with screenshots of this game while we had the chance, so at least it's not totally lost.

Fate/Grail League was available from April 1, 2023, to April 2, 2023, on iOS and Android.