Still unable to post new content.

 The blog will remain on a break until the new year. Too many problems that need my attention.

Idle Inn Tycoon

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Rest your steam-powered horses in the stables of: Idle Inn Tycoon

I am reducing the overall number of screenshots in my blog due to many issues with my connection that are out of my control to fix. As a result, the blogs will be shorter from now on.

Today I bring you back to the past, where steam power was more essential and magic ruled the lands. Here you become a manager of a run-down Inn in the middle of nowhere. The king of the lands thinks you will fail but still wants a cut all the same. The game is simple. You idly make money from every single thing in the game and you have to wait to gain enough money to buy the next upgrade. Clicking on the exclamation will give you all your current goals to complete. Eventually, your Inn becomes 5 stars and you move on. From what I can tell, the money you make at a maxed Inn becomes useless as money does not transfer between Inns.

Each room in the Inn has several upgrades that affect how much income you get a day. All the upgrades use standard gold except for 1 item you can buy with premium currency to get a very small buff to income. These optional items are not really worth the gems. As you progress, some items require having available magic and you must upgrade your mage room to get more before you can continue to upgrade stuff.

Here's a quick example of the missions you can do. You can click on the arrow and the game will take you directly to the item or room you need to upgrade. No need to search for it. Once you clear out all these missions you normally get a very small premium currency reward and you get more missions to do. Each mission helps you gain stars faster.

Be sure to grab your daily rewards from the shop stall icon in the bottom left of the screen.

Another small thing that drains premium currency is the card system. You can obtain these cards by buying them or unlocking them via the daily spin wheel or by completing some tasks. Rarely even video ads will give you a chance to get these.

When you click on the clipboard you can come to this management screen that tells you how far along something is upgraded or not. This screen will give will also tell you how much you pay your workers a day in the third tab. Other The second tab is for landmarks.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Overall, this game is a good 'start' but there isn't much going on in it. There are some events that crop up that can give you extra bonuses but you have very little time to complete them.

Story:

 2 of 5 cogs.

This game has a story but I dislike the characters in this game. They are parodies of real-world actors or famous people and bad renditions at that. The personalities are rude and flat.

Amount of ads:

 

 optional only

None, only optional ads to get rewards.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I have not seen any ads for this game so I can only go on what is shown on google play. As far as I can tell there are no click-bait or misleading screenshots.

Graphics:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are simple polygonal and very rough 3d models. The characters lack depth or originality.  The rest of the assets are non-shaded graphics. Normally I don't have an issue with this style of art but it feels incomplete.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

This game is one that I feel could possibly be completed in less than a month of playing everyday. This game feels so incomplete and doesn't have much going for it. Once you clear an Inn there is no need to ever go back there. 

Free play:

💯%

You can do everything in this game for free and never pay. You don't even need to watch the optional videos to progress any. Overall this game doesn't feel very sustainable for long-term play.

Fun factor:

👶 Far too easy and not much depth.

Are you an indy programmer or game dev?

If so, you can leave a comment or contact me on social media for a chance to have an interview with you posted on my blog. I am looking for many devs that focus on mobile programming. If you have a cross-platform game, that is fine too as long as it's on mobile.

Thank You for reading my blog. Please consider donating to the tip jar as these are tough times and every bit helps. You can get updates by joining my newsletter. If you enjoy these reviews please show others this blog by retweeting or liking my posts on social media. Please leave a comment with feedback if something needs fixing or improvement.

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Merge Mayor

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Want to be updated when the next blog goes live? Join my newsletter at: https://tinyletter.com/Hakuzo

Today we drive our steam-powered cars into town to become: Merge Mayor

Today I bring you a nice merge 2 game where you only have to focus on matching 2 of the same item and not 3 or more to form massive chains of clutter. This game is very simple compared to other merge games and is a lot more chill. You become mayor of a town that is broken and needs to be repaired from the ground up.

The main screen is the city map. It is a 3D voxel world even though the buildings have a lot more detail. You can move around the map to find each quest yourself or you can click the bottom-left of the screen to bring up all the current quests there are. You can click on the green play button to reach the main merge field like most other merge games. This game has 2 different currencies. Coins are used to buy landmark upgrades and Premium gems are used to buy extra items or used to unlock various things. I recommend saving all of these as you need them to open storage space, another part I will cover later in this blog.

Let us get the boring stuff out of the way. This is the basic options page. Not much to see here.

If you click on the button on the far top right of the screen on the building, brings you to the shop menu. Here you want to grab your daily pack of batteries. You can save up these batteries and merge them into better ones to restore energy for free. Other useful things show up here as well as the token shop to buy those rarer items you need to complete a mission.

Clicking on the hat will show you areas with landmarks. From what I can tell, these landmarks affect how much your production items can create before running out of resources. These landmarks require specific items to upgrade and lots of coins. After that, it also takes time to upgrade these buildings as well. 

As you gain more hats, you unlock more passive rewards that will help you progress in the game. The one displayed here ties into the next screenshot.

The third tab has a daily reward. You want to grab this as this item must be dragged onto the board and clicked to collect everything you need to progress in the game. This is the ONLY way you can collect more parts of the production buildings, which are the most important thing needed to progress.

The last tab is a special vault. As you use energy and spend gems, a percentage of them gets stored in the vault. You 'can' buy it to open it anytime or you can save up these keys you find and merge them to open this vault for free.

Here is a quick preview of what a landmark takes to upgrade. You can click on an item to see what producer makes it. 

You click on the number with a circle around it to see your mayor level. This only seems to give you a bonus reward and doesn't seem to affect anything else in this game as far as I've noticed.

Here is the main merge field. The objects with a yellow highlight are the buildings that produce all the different products. There is quite a bit of space in this game to work with compared to other games I've played and blogged about. The cardboard box will bring us to the last screenshot of this game.

This is the warehouse where you will store a lot of stuff to make space for merging rarer items. You have to clear away a lock and open a space to see what the next adjacent objective is. As you can see here there are a lot of locks that require gems to open.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

 

Overall, this game has kept me playing for a long time after trying it. This is one of my current top favorite merge games to play at this time.

Story:

 4 of 5 cogs.

There is surprisingly a lot of story as you rebuild up the city. The story is simple but there are some random special missions that pop-up that give you some small behind the scenes building of the game from the devs.

Amount of ads:

 

    Optional Only

This game only has optional ads. You only have to watch an ad to gain free energy, up to 3 times a day or to upgrade the daily reward to gain more items.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I only recall seeing the ad for this game maybe once or twice and this game doesn't use any click-bait tactics to get people to play.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are simple but they all match the theme of this game pretty well. The only odd thing is the people are 3d Voxel while the rest of the graphics are not voxel-based.

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Simple, Easy, and relaxing to play. This game has a lot to discover to keep you going for a while.

Free play:

💯%

This game is very generous to you. You can eventually unlock anything you need as you just play the game.

Fun factor:

🏬 Not so Sim City, but easier.

Are you an Indy programmer or game dev?

If so, you can leave a comment or contact me on social media for a chance to have an interview with you posted on my blog. I am looking for many devs that focus on mobile programming. If you have a cross-platform game, that is fine too as long as it's on mobile.

Thank You for reading my blog. Please consider donating to the tip jar as these are tough times and every bit helps. You can get updates by joining my newsletter. If you enjoy these reviews please show others this blog by retweeting or liking my posts on social media.

Throw a cog(tip using PayPal) to your blogger.

Unable to post a full blog this week.

 Im having major internet problems again so no blog this week. Consider looking over past games. Now with less ads.

Merge Gardens

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Want to be updated when the next blog goes live? Join my newsletter at: https://tinyletter.com/Hakuzo

Find the land of merging at: Merge Gardens

Today I bring you another merge game that falls into the same trap as others do, and gives you very little space and way too many items you have to merge. This one also has a match-3 mini-game that feels a bit tacked on and doesn't even match the theme of the game in any way. The game is similar to Merge dragons or Merge Magic. You combined 3+ of the same item to get the next stage up. You then have to collect and merge, in this case, nectar, to expand the areas around you. There are at least 3 plots of land you have to buy with real money that cost around $20 USD per plot.

You can click on the book to see all the items you have merged already and get rewards for each new stage you complete. 

When you click on the egg you can see all the animals you've collected from eggs. You can mearge 3 or 5 from this screen even though their eggs do take up space on the board.

Next up is all the mini-shop tabs. This tab uses purple gems to buy rare items with the premium currency. This game offers a fair amount of these gems as rewards for doing the match-3 minigame or other events along the way.

The second shop tab is where you can buy animal eggs. Some are easy to buy with coins but the others require more of the premium currency. You have to collect stars from completing the missions that show up along the left of the screen, just to unlock more options to buy.

The next tab is where you will access most of your building items. Here is where you build all your resource generation buildings. They get exponentially more expensive as you buy them.

This last tab is used for all the direct loot crates in the game. You literally do not get anything of worth in these boxes and you can find chests when your animals gather from trees.

This last tab is the real money shop. You can buy a range of things that doesn't give you much value.

When you click on the green play button you access the mini-game. This screen gives you an over-view of what you have to accomplish.

The mini-game is a basic match-3 game where the pieces look like plastic toys. As you progress on you can unlock power-ups to help you clear the board or earn objectives.

Here is a quick shot of the option menues. You can connect your game to facebook here to save all your progress incase you lose your phone.

Lastly, this is an example of one of the quests you have to complete to get stars.

 

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

This game has a common engine that many of these games use. This games doesn't offer anything unique to a merge type game. It uses a lot of under-handed things to try to get you to spend money. Loot crates being one of the biggest.

Story:

 0 of 5 cogs.

There is really no story at all in this game. The event area's may have a very small intro of a story but this game doesn't have any direct story you learn about aside from the little clips in the item encyclopedia.

Amount of ads:

 

 None

There are no ads in this game at all that I can remember. There are no optional ads either.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

From what I remember of the video ads, there are no click-bait tactics here. All of the screenhots in the store are accurate as well.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

I like the art for the animals in this game but the art for the humans I do not like at all. The art for the match-3 is 'clean' but it makes to sense in this game and doesn't match the theme of this game. The art is kind of all over in this game.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The game is an average merge game with poor choice in tactics to earn money. This game feels scummy to play as you have such a limited amount of room and the game quickly throws things in that will eat up your space because it takes a very long time to merge them with other things.

Free play:

60%

You can kind of play the game for free but you run into many issues and hassles that you have to work around if you wish to play this game for free.

Fun factor:

😒 poor copy-cat.

Are you an indy programmer or game dev?

If so, you can leave a comment or contact me on social media for a chance to have an interview with you posted on my blog. I am looking for many devs that focus on mobile programming. If you have a cross-platform game, that is fine too as long as it's on mobile.

Thank You for reading my blog. Please consider donating to the tip jar as these are tough times and every bit helps. You can get updates by joining my newsletter. If you enjoy these reviews please show others this blog by retweeting or liking my posts on social media.

Throw a cog(tip using PayPal) to your blogger.