Blackout Age

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Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Today, Duck away from aliens with: Blackout Age

Today, I bring you a post-apocalyptic game that is not about zombies but instead about aliens. Take Pokemon Go, Add in the ability to move anywhere on the map you want, and then go scavenge for food and weapons.

This game is very unique as you have to build up a shelter and recruit survivors to help you scavenge. There is a lot to discover and you can use the geolocation function to physically raid things or you can walk there along the map. A recent update allows you to teleport/fast travel around the map as well which takes up a lot of actions. Currently, it seems to be a very short range as only a portion of the map shows around you at once.

The game assigns your 'group' a randomly generated name. You can reroll it a few times if you wish. The big currency is Food, Water, and Bandages. These are the main things you seek out to survive. Each "day" takes 1 food and water per survivor. Along the top bar are your overall prestige level and the amount of "credits" and "batteries" you have. These are special currencies that are used to buy extra food or build things around your shelter. Now you have an option to watch videos and take surveys to get batteries. These are your lifeblood to surviving in this game.

You start off with 1 survivor and have the ability to pick up a second one immediately on the map. These survivors rotate out and there are about 20 to choose from. Your starting survivor has all skills revealed starting off. When you recruit someone, you have to take Physical time to wait for them to reveal their skill. An hour per, you can spend batteries or watch a video to make it instant.

Just an example of the wait timer for a skill.

You can click on each skill to get an overview of how the skill affects the survivor. You want to ultimately train in strength and stamina to gain more carrying capacity. This is a very important stat you need to keep in mind when out in the world of aliens. You earn experience from either training or killing monsters for the day. Staying home and training is safe but takes food. You use direct exp to raise up one skill a point and it seems it takes a lot of points to see any noticeable changes in something. I do not know if there is a stat cap or exp cap.

Clicking on the mission tab pulls up this menu that allows you to choose either daily missions or story progress.

Daily missions allow you to get bonus items in physical time, about once every 24 hours. The missions generally require you to collect very random items to help others with.

Story missions have your progress along a track. Each point takes only 1 mission to complete to advance. When you land on a space, you gain some form of reward. You hold 3 missions at a time and the nice thing about this is when you're on a map, you get a pop-up showing you a mission is close by. There are some translation errors as this is a Russian designed game.

Prestige is used to unlock more rooms in your shelter and you have to bring back materials to upgrade the rooms. You eventually get things that produce food and water for you. It takes a lot of random materials and as I said earlier, you have limited supply slots per run.

There is a menu here that displays a few things. Including my flock which is the clan system in this game. As long as I've played there have never been any active flocks available and I had to make my own. That allows you to start at another base, giving you even new areas to explore.

Each alien has several hundred facts about them you unlock as you fight them. Sometimes they drop interesting items as well. There is a lot to learn about this game and this blog only scratches the surface.

Here is the screen you are shown once you set out on a scavenge. You can choose at your home base, which is default at the closest big city near you. Or you can choose to start at your GPS location. If you live in a rural area like I do, you have a lot of walking you have to do. I hope they add functions to start at other close by towns as well. The question marks are survivors in your main start town. You can only recruit them once you upgrade a slot for them. I recommend not to until your base can support the food and water needs.

The map is covered with purple fog. Inside these gasses that move hide monsters. When you make contact with the fog, the bar on the bottom fills up and you are attacked by a random enemy.

Each survivor has a set of two weapons. You can equip a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. Ranged weapons use ammo and melee weapons lose durability and can break. Combat is odd as you see a pattern on the screen and a red crosshair. You have to tape the attack button again on one of the green marks to damage the creature with a critical hit.

When you defeat an enemy, you sometimes get a card detailing information about the enemy you slain. There's a lot to learn in this game.

All that random stuff goes into upgrading your settlement. You have to grab everything not nailed down but at that, you have very limited spaces. You fill up very quickly when you start off. Like items can stack as well. You can only do 5 raids until they refill by waiting an hour or watching a video.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

This game is so much fun if you live in a big city. If you have time you can travel the hard way around the world and it helps if you have an understanding of where you are going. You can do just one scavenge run or 20. There is really no limit to how fast you progress.

Story:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Wait, there's a story in a geolocation game? There's a lot in this game to learn but some translations are a bit off but still readable.

Amount of ads:

 

 None.

There are no in-game ads but there are optional ones for rewards.

Accurate Advertising?:

100%

Everything I've seen in the play store matches the game. I do not recall ever seeing a video add for this game.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The graphical style is very somber and monochrome minus the few bits of color for emphasis. Its simple and easy to see on a cellphone screen.

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

It's simple and fun. It takes a lot of work starting off and careful planning. As long as you take time to heal in between fights and keep your supplies up.

Free play:

100%

You can play this game and not pay anything. It is easy to gain anything you need with no paywalls. You may have to watch ads but other than that, it is very friendly on your wallet.

Fun factor:

Out of this world!

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