Solitaire Dragons

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

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The airships have found rare dragons eggs in: Solitaire Dragons

Today I bring you a very fast and simple game. I won't take too much time to go over things as Solitaire is a pretty standard card game that most people know how to play.

A quick reminder of how the game works is a goal of moving all the cards into 4 separate piles of all matching suit. You move cards around the board by moving an opposite color but lower notation card ontop of the higher card. You can only place cards in descending order and you can never put a higher level card next. You can also double tap a card and it will move it from where ever it is to an 'legal' move be it to the ace pile or to a play stack. Once you have the board solved, all cards automatically move to the ace piles for you.

You unlock gold coins for beating levels. As far as I can tell you can only win 10 coins per game you win. Sometimes you can't win a solitaire game and have to replay from the start.

You get to ollect many random presents for playing daily. When you get a coin day, you have a chance to watch a video to gain a boost to your coins.

As you progress along and grow levels you get access to dragon eggs. Each one costs coins to buy and then takes time to hatch. As far as I can tell these are just small little pets thast get added to the game that doesn't really change anything for the game except have animations of a pet dragon as you play.

You can only hatch one egg at a time at the start of the game. You can pay coins to buy new slots to expand the number of eggs you can have hatching at one time.

Lastly you can buy coins if you really want that rarer dragon but you still have to play a lot to be able to unlock them all anyways.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Overall this game is average in every way. It doesn't have any flaws or glitches that I've found but it doesn't really do anything more for Solitaire except for adding an on screen kind of pet. 

Story:

 0 of 5 cogs.

Nope, no story at all unless you look up the history of the person that created Solitaire.

Amount of ads:

 

 many

After you get past level 5 you start to get a video everytime after you complete a playthrough. To avoid this you can play with airplane mode on.

Accurate Advertising?:

80%

This game is one that has been shown a lot the past few days again. The ads for this game does try to hype up the dragons and act like they help you in a game. They literally do nothing special.

Graphics:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are average quality art that could possibly be found in any asset library. There isn't anything that sets the graphics apart or make them memeroable. 

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

This is a solid game that will keep most people that play solitaire happy for some time. It is the same classic version of the card game you can find anywhere. The ads can become annoying sometimes as well but as I've recommended before you can play in airplane mode.

Free play:

💯%

You can play as much as you want for as long as you want. There is no energy or other things that make you stop playing every few seconds. This is a game you can play stress free when you have any spare time.

Fun factor:

😐 average.

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 to 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.

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Merge Inn

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Congrats to Burt Price. The blogpost hit 161 views as of the posting of this so you are the winner. As a reminder, I sent you a reply in the last blog post. Please contact me or let me know how I can contact you for your $10 reward. Thanks, everyone for the views and comments!

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Note: I do not have control over the number of ADs placed on this blog. It is an automated process and I've noticed that there have been a large number of ADs displaying and inturrupting my blog on Mobile devices. I will see If I can do something about lowering the number of ads if at all possible.

Take a seat and wait while the steam boiler cook up a meal at: Merge Inn

Today I bring you a very simple merge game. This one is food themed and so far out of all the merge games I've played, it doesn't hard sell you to buy land or other oddities. There are many micro transactions in the game as well as a couple of free daily. There are a few things to keep track here. The purple bar is your level. As you progress along the level you gain items that help you merge and create new foods. Energy is something in every game of this genre, though this game has a cap of 100 energy that can be recharged, it does recharge much faster than any other game of this time. Next is coins. This is the main currency you will use to expand your inventory space. Once you max out this space you can use the coins to buy energy tanks that give you a chance to refill your energy faster. Lastly is the premium currency the every popular blue diamond. This can also buy you 5 upgrade slots at a time (beyond the max buyable by coins.) or they can be used to buy other items you need, reduce time for item generators. There are many uses for these gems, note, in a recent update you can now use them in a new daily mini-game that replaces the daily spin wheel.

The blue chech is a milestone check you unlock by reaching the different levels. You collect this to give you some items you need to progress through new challenges in the game as you beat levels. 

As you complete orders (levels) you gain a star that is used to open this chest. This chest gives you even better rewards and needed items to progress through the story.

When you click on the shopping cart, you open up the shop menu. You can collect free piggy banks here that give you coins every day. Note that the dail-spin wheel is no longer an option and a new daily system is in place (not screenshots available.) From here you can buy missing foods or things you need to progress faster.

The second button on the bottom of the screen is the Collections button. This page shows you all the items you have ran across in the game and with that it will give you rewards for every stage you complete. The boxes with colored question marks are levels that give you blue diamonds instead of coins for unlocking them.

The scroll button brings you to side jobs. These are missions that rotate out every couple of days and gives you a lot of things to do if you have spare energy from waiting for all your item producers to refill. The rewards can be very minimal for the effort you put in.

Options screen and settings is the last button. Nothing fancy here.

Here is the main screen. You start off with very limited space and you have to merge items together to start opening up the play field. As you level up this playfield neven expands. Because of this you will use the storage drawer to hold things you don't need yet or completed items you have to hold onto to fill orders.

You start off with 5 spaces in the storage area. You can spend coins or diamonds to expand this space. The price to buy a single space goes up exponentially. I have yet to find the maximum number of slots available to buy. There is a bug where when I updated to the current patch, that all the spaces I bought were removed, and I got the coins back for the amount I spent. I think this was because there was a cost rework for these slots.

Here are the orders. Random residents of this area will visit you with speccific requests. Once you complete them you get experience, a star, and various items that help you unlock better equipment to produce foods from.

Lastly, when you complete every order on the list you get puzzle pieces. These give you a small preview of the new items you will unlock in the future. As you do so the main screen will also change to this picture once you complete all the pieces.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

I am very suprprised by this game. It is very gernerous and this is one of the rare few merge games I acutally want to work to unlock everything in. Its a relaxing game where you don't have to focus on doing some limited time events to get everything. You just play when you can or let it idle and recharnge and you can play all day.

Story:

  0 of 5 cogs.

To be fair, there is no actual direct story here but there is a very loose one with the charachters in the game and the progression of levels. There isn't a deeper meaning unless there is some hidden lore in each picture you unlock.

Amount of ads:

 

 only optional

You have a chance to watch some optional ads for only a couple of small things. There is a very limited number of chances to watch ads so you really don't want to stay online unless you watch ads to refill energy on reduce timers on item producers.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I have only ever seen this game advertised once in a video Ad. From what I remember and the screenshots shown in the store, there is no clickbait. It is 100% legit game that doesn't try to push you hard to spend money.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are HD cartoons that remind me of early 90s cartoons. This game has a nice and relaxing style and the food will make you hungry. Do not play this game on an empty stomach!

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Byfar the best merge game I've played. It is chill and relaxing to play. There is no stress of what to do, you get ample space to do everything if you focus on orders one at a time. Due to randomness, you sometimes complete later requests due to some of the item producers creating 2 different branches of items.

Free play:

💯%

Very much so. This game is very generous to you and you can play as much as you want without hitting a paywall. This is a game I highly recommend to try out and play. Any one can easily play this game and make progress in it.

Fun factor:

🐭 Full of animals.

What can I say? I enjoy games that feature non-human charachters.

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 to 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.

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Forest Island

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

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Take a relaxing cruise on the steamboats to: Forest Island

Today I bring to you a simple game full of animals. You start with a tiny island and you grow it by collecting light and hearts. As you expand the island you unlock more animals the rate of collection increases. There are many different objectives that pop up that give you bonuses but some of these require you to watch Ads to collect.

There is a daily log in full of bonuses. The tickets give you a time skip to gain a time skip for collecting light or hearts. The chests are the main way you get more cards of the animals you already have or have a chance to get special alternate colored animals that give you massive boost to light or heart production.

This is the main island you start off with. As far as I can tell this island is a set design and there is no randomness to its design There are several things going on here and I will break down what I can on this screen. At the top, you see several currencies. The first number with the paw is the total number of animals you have. The second is the hearts given by clicking on animals. Hearts are used to upgrade the level of your animals to make them collect more light. The box in the middle is the light you collected and this is what you use to upgrade the island. The hexagonal button on the bottom of the screen you can quickly upgrade by clicking on the red button or you can click the double up arrow to upgrade any part you want if you have enough light. Next are these green egg-like objects is used to upgrade special upgrades that I will cover later in this blog, which you can get these from the quest button under the trophy. The Trophy is a list of achievements. The last two buttons are the shop icon and a mail system which will sometimes send you updates about the game. Lastly is a rainbow gem that is used to buy extra chests from the shop menu. This is a premium currency that has very limited uses.

These tasks are the main way you gain rainbow gems for free. This game is very generous in earning premium currency.

Lastly, quests are ever-green and are the main way you collect the green eggs. These quests you can only have one at a time but this is the only way you can get these eggs.

The shop has many different things you can purchase or you can gain free chests as well here once a day. You can also buy gems as well under the next tab. 

There is an egg that shows up. Once a day you can hatch the egg for a chance to unlock a special bird that gives you very big boosts for every bird you own.

There are many birds you can collect but there is a very low chance of getting one when you hatch an egg. You do have a chance to get free chests or other rewards. You have the option to watch videos to reduce the timer until another egg appears but there seems to be a daily limit of eggs as well.

I now return to the big button at the bottom of the screen. As you progress along it takes a large amount of light to unlock a new part of the island.

When you click on the growth tab, you come to a list of very big upgrades that affect everything about your progress. These upgrades are ones you need to focus on for the most progress in this game.

When you buy a new island you get a small cutscene for each animal you unlock. This also brings you back to 'meditate' mode where you can sit back and watch the animals play and just listen to the music.

One of the quests you get from time to time is to enter into picture mode. You gain bonus light for taking pictures of the animals on the island. It doesn't seem to matter what you capture, it gives the same amount of light every time.

You access this menu by clicking on the paw button hidden at the bottom of the screen. As you level up the animals they boost the light each part of the island produces. Sadly at this time, it is very difficult to gain up hearts to level up all the animals.

The rare animal tab shows you all the cards you have collected to unlock them. Every level of the rare animal adds an extra animal that acts as the base animal per island. The more animals you have the more times the multiplier counts towards light collection.

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

This is a chill game that claims to be relaxing. A lot of the time you're waiting offline to collect light or hearts. Other than waiting, there isn't much you can do but watch the screen. Sometimes you can collect coins from cleaning up bits of corruption on the islands.

Story:

 0 of 5 cogs.

This is the story you are looking for.

Amount of ads:

 optional only.

There are no ads that pop up except for the optional ads you can watch for the various rewards or advancement.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I've seen this game advertised many times and the ads never really show much, but from what is shown exact screenshots from this game.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Graphics are very simple and follow a simple shading style like many indy games I have seen lately. The animations for the animals are well designed and look fairly realistic.

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The game consists of simple tap controls. There isn't much you can really do in this game but try to make the numbers grow and idle as you watch animals moving around their small sections of the island. I considered giving this game a much lower ranting for gameplay but it has some simple charms to it. I doubt anyone will play this one for too long sadly.

Free play:

💯%

This game is very generous to those that play for free. You can collect rainbow gems just by playing and completing objectives and working to unlock everything. There are some balance issues that do make the game feel bogged down a lot as you progress and soon will become stuck waiting for enough light to continue on.

Fun factor:

☃ Chilly.

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 to 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.

Or you can donate with CashApp at:  #HakuzoSionnach.