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Saturday, February 15, 2020

Wood Turning (simulator)



Today's game:
Wood Turning (simulator) by Voodoo 

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You can find the game here: Wood Turning

This is a game I've seen advertised in several mobile game ads. This game is short, simple and well... Glitchy. 

The basics:
You start off with a chunk of wood, metal or even fruit. You use either one of the three tools to carve away the material until you get as close to the shape as possible.


Once you move on, you use a sponge/sandpaper that you control the width of it. A sponge seems very unusual for such a task. You will move it around to smooth out all the curves.

At this point, the game crashed when I tried to take a screenshot, so these next screencaps are from another play:

Now onto spray painting. The last 3 colors are locked behind videos you must watch to open them up. That feels very silly to me.

Now for the last step. You can not skip this step:

As you can see here, there are several locked. You start off only with the first two unlocked. The rest are unlocked via video or $3,000 in-game currency. It is the only thing you can use the money right now.

After you peel off the stencil, parts of the original material are revealed. It's not even very pretty. Then you collect money based on how well you copied the original shape. Rinse. Repeat. Infinite♾️.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Overall, the game is fun for about 10 minutes. The game is very forgettable. On Google play, you can find a long list of clones, which I can not say is better or not. 

Amount of ads:

High levels

This game is loaded with Ads. You get a mini thumbnail ad at the start. You get ads between each step that can be skipped after 5 seconds. I recommend unlocking the three colors then play with airplane mode on. (More about ads and this kind of game later in the blog.)

Advertised as seen:
๐ŸŒŸ ๐Ÿ’ฏ%

You get what is shown in previews. Simple, straightforward and no real meat to the game.

Graphics:

 1 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are very simple and lack anything beyond the 3d part of the game. The stencils ruin the finished product and make it look ugly.

The different kind of material is a small interest but doesn't add much.

Audio:

0 of 5 cogs.

Non-existent. No sound effects, no music. The only noticeable thing is the phone vibrates as you lathe.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Simple and fast to pick up and put down. It is very repetitive and boring. 

Free play:
 ๐ŸŒŸ๐Ÿ’ฏ%

This game is 100% free to play at this time. No microtransactions. No loot crates. But this game eats data for videos. Watch the initial 3 for colors and play in airplane mode.

Fun factor:
๐Ÿคจ Variable. It starts out fun, ends mediocre.

Once again, fun for a short time.



Now that we are this far down the blog, this is what is called a Hyper-casual game. The publisher gets money based on how many ads a player watches. These games are normally made very quickly and are rarely maintained. They are loaded heavy with ads and tend to have a very short lifespan. 

As someone that has been working to help develop a game for an independent company, I feel this kind of game bog down the market with low-quality products. Once again, this is why I started this blog to give insight into the games that exist.

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