Idle Kingdom Clicker

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Today's game: Idle Kingdom Clicker

(No link today as it's in early access so there's no link)

Today's game is an infinite kingdom builder game. You go about starting with a simple castle and you must acquire food, wood, and technology to grow. Prices climb exponentially as you progress. 

This is the main map screen. You gain food and must buy more land using that food. Across the top is food stores and production amount, followed by wood. Next is technology/research. Next is prestige trophies and lastly diamonds, a premium currency.

Here is a shot of all the food producers. Some you must research to unlock.

Here are all the building materials. It's conveniently all lumped into a single type and makes it simpler to progress.

Lastly, is all the research buildings. The university is what does the heavy lifting and must be used to buy new land types or building types.

Here is a simple foraging hut menu. Here you spend food and building materials to upgrade the level of the building. At stages, you get boosts that multiply your output.

The number two button opens a menu where you can select temporary boosts to increase output further.

This screen shows you how much you've produced per run. Here you reset and gain trophies that permanently boost your outputs. If you have enough trophies you can choose a new map with higher multipliers.

Next, we come to the actual research tabs. You will be grinding out a lot of techs to progress among the tech tree. Some open new buildings and others increase the output of your buildings. You will have to reset a lot just to start down this tree.

Welcome to the university. Here a portion of your technology is funneled into research. This is a very slow process. So be comfortable backing this game once a day.

Lastly, you can watch videos to get further temporary boosts. As of right now, you can not watch videos to gain premium currency.

I will wrap up with diamonds here. The only use they have is to buy chests that give you special temporary boosts, with a small chance to also unlock permanent boosts. You can skip this currency as you only get it through daily login rewards or you can pay money to get more.

Overall:

 

4 of 5 cogs.

The game is very easy to play and you spend a lot of time forgetting about it and let it gain stuff while you wait. It is still in early access and has several aspects to micromanage.

Story:

 0 of 5 cogs.

There is no story at all.

Amount of ads:

There are no in-game ads beyond the optional videos you can watch for boosts.

Advertised as seen:

💯%

This game is honest with the screenshots on google play. I can not recall ever seeing a video ad for this game.

Graphics:

5 of 5 cogs.

All of the buildings are 3D and the menus are 2d buttons. The GUI is easy to read and all assets match and feel like they being in the game.

Audio:

 2 of 5 cogs.

There isn't much in the way of music. Every time you reset a shirt and very loud music clip plays.

The sound effects become repetitive very fast and it's best to turn off all sounds for this game.

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Easy to play, pick up, and put down. There are a lot of incomplete things in this game as it's being actively worked on. New content takes time as it seems like only a single person is working on this game.

Free play:

💯 %

You can play this game without paying anything for it.

Fun factor:

🤗 mostly fun.

I have played this game a lot since almost the beginning. For a time I stopped playing and came back to find the new research system. This renewed my joy for the game.

I hope everyone is staying safe during these times. Take time to try out new games and experience new things.

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Crush Them All

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Today's game is: Crush Them All

You can get the game here:

Today I bring you a simplistic idle game created by Godzilab Inc. Offline idle is not infinite and is based on your overall progression and power level.

You are greeted with a quick and generic story. Then you are thrown into a quick tutorial.

This is the main game screen you will see the most. The small box with a 09 is a skill on cooldown. A 3-star unit gives you special skills to attack enemies with. There isn't much interactivity except for leveling and skills.

On the left side, the red donut-like gem is the premium currency in this game. You use it to buy more team members to fight on screen, or more artifact slots, or buy new troops.

The multicolored triangle is a currency you get for ascending at level 130. This will permanently give bonus levels to each troop. These levels affect clans and dungeons.

Last is gold. It is used to level troops and upgrade the village.

This is the village. You buy and upgrade shops up to level 50 to make them automated. These will produce gold and must be manually collected after a time.

This is the collection screen. You can see each troop you own. You can obtain medals for each unit to upgrade its star level.

This is the dungeon screen. You get a limited amount each day. Here you get special currencies to buy artifacts that give you big boosts. That covers all the basics of the game.

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

This is very simple and easy to play the idle game. The game practically runs itself and you have to ascend a lot in this game, at least 20 times to get every building in the village.

Story:

 0 of 5 cogs.

There is a short intro story, that has zero influence on the whole game. After that, there is no story at all.

Amount of ads:

Aside from a single in-game ad to try to get you to buy something, there are no outside ads. You can watch optional ones get a couple of small boosts or premium currency.

Advertised as seen:

✳️✴️ 60%

I've seen several ads where you collect pieces of armor and then magically upgrade the troop to a new type. This simply is not the case. Most of the ads are very misleading. The screenshots on the play store are accurate.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The game features clean and crisp pixel art. All of it appears to be fully original.

Audio:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The game has nice sound effects and the music is calming. There isn't much to set the audio apart from any other game.

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The gameplay is simple but it can get repetitive very quickly. I do not see many features that will keep someone playing for too long.

Free play:

 💯%

You can play this game without spending any money at all. It is possible to unlock everything from playing the game a lot.

Fun factor:

😌 Above Average.

This is a clean and crisp game. You can play as much as you wish and can progress fairly quickly with daily play.

I hope you enjoyed the illumination of another game during these confusing times.

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Metal Slug Infinite

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Today I bring you: Metal Slug Infinity.

Download Here

This app is created by Ekkor and I honestly can not tell if this is legitimately licensed but Somewhere they did mention SNK but I forgot to screencap it.

That aside, this is a standard inflation RPG. You get so many units to unlock (and upgrade). 

There is zero interaction during the main game loop except for spamming units to launch based on AP.

Here is the first screen you go into the main game by clicking on Sortie. On the top right, you see two currencies, medals which you get on resets or from videos. The second currency is some form of credits. Both currencies are used to upgrade everything in this game.

Click that Sortie button now.

Welcome to... Earth. You travel along the world clearing out each area of bad guys. You unlock more as you clear the previous level. The number next to a metal slug is your remaining energy. Each area requires a certain amount that refills fairly quickly.

This is the main battlefield. The important stats is base HP and AP. You click on the guy under the AP to increase max and production speed. AP is used to launch various troops at the enemy. They will do the same. This continues until a base falls.

This is the troop upgrade screen. You get a description of the troops and upgrade costs. These troops use those same yellow credits.

Here is the other upgrade screen. You power up random aspects of your base. To improve things like AP production or base HP.

Lastly, is the shop. You buy more troops here with medals via gatcha system. There are other loot crates as well. You've been warned.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Nothing really new here at all. I've seen all these kinds of mechanics, time and again. I'm still unconvinced this game has full legal right to Metal Slug as SNK has a very similar game on the market. I'll leave that to you to decide.

Story:

 1 of 5 cogs.

There's a very small story loosely based on Metal Slug but nothing substantial. 

Amount of ads:

No popup ads that spam you. All ads are optional.

Advertised as seen:

💯%

You see what you get. There's no deviation away from advertisements it screenshots on the game page.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Standard Metal Slug styled art. The game is most appealing but very gritty.

Audio:

 1 of 5 cogs.

Repetitive and not really a match for Metal Slug games.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Very average inflation RPG. There is supposed to be an idle element but it appears to be broken according to Google Play reviews.

Free play:

 💯%

You can play 100% free. You can progress without paying money.

Fun factor:

😐 average.

Not much to say. Nothing stands out except it being Metal Slug.

I hope you enjoyed learning about this game.

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Galactic Colonies

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Today I bring you Galactic Colonies.

You can download it here: Galactic Colonies on Google Play

In this game, you explore the galaxy. You are giving a colony ship and you must travel around and building structures to gain wealth and rank. This game is hard to classify, there is only a minor idle game aspect that doesn't count for much. The only idle rewards are credits on your active colony. The simplest way to classify this game is to call it a casual space simulator.

This is your map. It is divided into sectors. Each one has a handful of planets, sometimes a space station or even an asteroid field. You must complete a certain number of planets to open up a wormhole that takes you to a new sector.

You also have a player level that offers perks as you progress. More on that later. In the top left are "time capsules." These are a kind of premium currency that you use to buy a better ship or use various buffs.

When you choose a planet, you get this screen that shows you your objectives. So far all the objectives are fairly easy and you can complete a planet normally in one sitting.

Welcome to the planet's surface. Here you get a rundown of stuff. The in-game tutorial will explain what everything is so I will skip that.

Each colony starts with the same basic needs. You build a farm. Connect it to a warehouse, and then connect that warehouse to the residential building. Each resident requires food. You then grow colonists over time. I found that each warehouse can have four input connections and four output connections.

You then must explore the hexagons using credits to gain more places to build. Overall, there are only about 20 buildings and you only use them about half of the time.

When you level up, after level 5, you unlock skill points. Each skill gives you a permanent boost in some way. I recommend rushing the upgrade that looks like waves. This allows you to uncover whole oceans with one exploration.

If you click on one of the grey hexagons on the HUD, you get to choose temporary buffs. You watch a short video to get these bonuses for 15 minutes. All ads are optional and are not needed to complete the game.

Next is research. Taking time, you can research upgrades or new buildings. The highest research takes 20 hours and that can be knocked down using boosters. Each one will remove 4 hours from research. This will idle along and requires no resources. There are 3 categories, each relating to the same build categories you find planetside.

Space stations allow you to buy a new ship. Each stage gives you more speed and more colonies. This is supposed to allow you to have 2 or more active colonies but this is worthless as you can only interact with a planet your ship orbits, so just complete planets one at a time.

Lastly... The cosmetic upgrades. These cost real money and can not be purchased with collected currencies.

Overall:

 

4 of 5 cogs.

This is a fun game. It's fast and simple to play but can get repetitive. I feel noncompletionists will get more with the repetitive gameplay. Other than that, anyone can pick this game up and play for just a few minutes a day.

Story:

 

1 of 5 cogs.

There is no story beyond the tutorial. This game seems open-ended and has no real endgame.

Amount of ads:

No pop-up ads. All ads are 100% optional and you can do everything without money unless you want the paints.

Advertised as seen:

💯%

Every screenshot and ad I've seen matches the game. No hidden agendas and everything is straightforward.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are 3d and simplistic. Everything is visually appealing and adds to the feeling of the game.

Audio:

 

3 of 5 cogs.

The music is nice and peaceful but loops very quickly. It has a general sci-fi feel. The sound effects are very similar and will get repetitive very quickly. There isn't anything that stands out about sounds.

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Easy, fast, and simple. Each planet takes a short time to complete. The strategies are easy to master but it does get boring after doing the same thing all the time.

Free play:

💯%

You can play and unlock everything except paint. If you play long enough, you are given everything you need. The only thing is you may have to watch videos to get enough time capsules to upgrade your ship. There are microtransactions to speed up gameplay but you don't need them.

Fun factor:

👽 out of this world.

It is great fun for your whole space family.

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