Mana Maker

 

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Gather your forces as we mine for: Mana Maker

Mana Maker does not have a title screen. When you start up the game it throws you straight into this screen. You choose your gender and you are throwing into the game with no real tutorials. As you progress, you get a few text boxes that tell you how to do things, but instead, there is a help manual that is included in the game to help you along. The creator of this game does not appear to be a native English speaker so translations may be off.

This is the first of the two main screens you will see most of the time. This is where you collect mana to sell to the wizards of the world. The first button with the plus in a red box will be things to update your idle mana collection. The green box with the arrow allows you to upgrade manual clicks and mana storage. The diamond is videos you must watch to earn special mana crystals used to buy some things in the store you manage to collect gold. Lastly, the grey button takes you to our storefront where you sell mana to random wizards. At least there are no microtransactions in this game.

The first tab gives you options to buy workers and other upgrades that increase your idle collection. Each item is capped based on the store level and adds many walls you have to overcome. Each one of these upgrades uses only the mana you collect.

Here is the second tab. You can customize your character here also with the gems you get from watching optional ads. Here are all the upgrades for the things you purchased in the previous screenshot. These are multipliers that grow as you buy them. They are subject to the same upgrade walls based on the store level.

Now onto the second screen. The red box here takes you to all the fixtures you can put into your shop. These all items can be leveled up and require an upkeep of mana and gold. The gold can be negated with the hiring of a repairman. The green box takes you to upgrades for the shop to increase the size of the building or hold more gold in your safe. Also at the start of the year, you get shown a tax amount. You must make sure you have that much gold by the end of the game year. You can also click on a customer, (which is very hard to do), and they will tell you what kind of object they want to see in the shop if they have a red exclimation part. The problem is, you have to click the blue lock and then kick out all the customers just to put out a new item.

The fixtures are divided into several subsections here. Employees require a lot of mana crystals to employ but the do a lot to keep your store running for you.

Lastly is the upgrades for the shop sise and a few other items. Everything in the shop requires both mana and gold to be able to purchase.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

This game is a very middle of the road game. It is a complete game loaded with some easter eggs but there isn't anything that really keeps you playing. You could potentially play through in one sitting and make it to the new game plus. The game is mostly stable but it does suffer from a few odd design choices

Story:

 2 of 5 cogs.

There is only a very small part of a story in this game. Most of it is just advancing along and buying more expensive machines to get more customers in. This game really forces you to have at least 1 of eachc individual item to make everyone happy.

Amount of ads:

  None except for optional ads

There are optional videos you can watch to unlock mana gems but other than that there are no other ads at all. This game is mostly ad free.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

This game is completely straight-forward and isn't doing any silly things. This is a very transparent game.

Graphics:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are kind of a tall and skiny sort of pixel art. This game reminds me of very early 90s computer games with simplistic graphics.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Again this game has very middle of the road gameplay for the tap mechanic. That being said, the shop aspect is an interesting to the game. Though it is a very simplified game and it looses depth real fast. I feel this game doesn't have enough in it to keep people playing for too long. 

Free play:

💯%

There are no microtransactions in this game at all. This is truly a game you can play without breaking open the wallet at all.

Fun factor:

😶 average.

Are you an indy programmer or game dev?

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