Guidus Pixel Roguelike RPG

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

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Delve into the deep dungeons with: Guidus

Today's game doesn't have a title screen and throws you straight into the main camp. As you progress through the game, you save more people for your main camp. I do not know how many people there are to save but they each seem to have a specific function in the game.

You can click on the campfire you can change your class. You can unlock a random class by spending 1000 gold coins. You can also raise the initial level by paying coins as well. You also have a chance to watch a video to gain a free class or soul as the game calls them.

Across the bottom screen are buttons that lead to subscreens. The first one I will talk about late. The second one seems to be linked to a character you rescue later. I assume this NPC will catalog every enemy that you fight like pokemon. 

The third button is your active inventory. This is where any keys and potions you find. Anything else you find in the dungeon will also go here as well.

When you click on the pause button you get to see all the options. This game comes in several languages out of the box which is surprising for a mobile game.

The second option screen allows you to manage push notifications and cloud saving.

The first button is a special list of equipment that gives you boosts when you defeat bosses. These are permanent boosts among all playthroughs.

If you manage to make it through an area and beat a boss, you get to see a victory screen and you return to the camp. Even if you lose you keep the gold you find. Along the way, you can find special artifacts that give you a major boost just for the current run like Binding of Issac.

To move around is simple with the cross button. you move around and everything happens on a step-by-step basis. Like a game from sega genesis called Fatal Labyrinth. You move around from stairs to stairs as you go deeper into the dungeons. You can hold the arrow button to do a charge attack or special move based on what creature you have.

After you beat the tutorial you unlock the princess. When you click on her you go to the shop. Here you can watch options ads to gain bonus coins or a time skip.

You unlock this screen when you visit the fox NPC. This screen shows you all of the artifacts you have found before and a description detailing what they do.

And just for fun, the Shaman fox NPC to show off the level of detail in the pixel art.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Overall, this game is a lot of fun and brings back memories of similar games to this. There is a lot to explore and find in this game as I haven't even scratched the surface of the game.

Story:

 5 of 5 cogs.

There is a lot of story in this game that you seem to learn as you continue on. I haven't even made it through the second area yet because this game is so vast.

Amount of ads:

 

 low

The game has a banner at the bottom of the screen that always displays while you are online. Beyond that, there are only optional ads for various bonuses.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I do not recall watching any ads for this game as I think I found this game just randomly on the play storefront page.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

This game has a lot of great pixel art and it's pretty easy to make out what creatures are. The hud assets and menus have a nice feel of older RPG games.

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The game is pretty basic and simple. Everything happens on a step by step, but unlike Fatal Labyrinth, the enemies still move around on their own.

Free play:

💯%

Yup, you can easily play everything you want on this game with no paywalls or energy limits.

Fun factor:

🔪 Rouge-like.

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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Summoners greed

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

I must sadly call the contest dead now. No one stepped up to claim the prize and now it is off the table. I have no future plans to do any more contests since this one flopped badly.

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Today the summoners of steam summon up: Summoners greed

Today we summon up a Tower Defense game with a gotcha game system. You get to summon a random creature from the basic list. It appears as you progress you can choose to summon premium creatures using the in-game premium currency. A last stage is locked that you must clear the first main story to open so I have no idea what that stage requires.

The first summon you get is a basic slime. It has decent attack speed but a very limited range. The slime is the most common trope and meme in the RPG world and this game sticks with it as there are different forms of slime you can summon, among other creatures as well.

This game has 3 basic currencies and a 4th one I will cover later that is much rarer. The Green orbs you obtain from completing levels for the first time. The purple stone is the main premium currency and this takes a bit more work to earn. You get the purple gem from daily logins and then from achievements. The last currency is gold coins which are used to upgrade a monster's level permently or buy upgrades that I will cover in the next screenshot.

On the main map screen, you get a button that brings up player skills. These upgrades are permanent throughout all the games and restarts. I seem to be missing a screenshot of the enemy page. On that page you can view all the enemies you have defeated and get information of the abilities each enemy has.

When you click on the monster tab, you can see all the monsters you have summoned and their rarity. As you get multiple copies of the same monster it can be powered up and gain more attack power and speed.

When you click on a monster you can see the stats and skills the monster has, and you can see how many cards you need to upgrade the monster. Some monsters can be evolved using a rainbow gem but it takes a lot of these to do so, and the only way to get these stones is to buy them or successfully knock out an enemy that is very difficult to beat for a chance to get only a couple of these gems.

There is an invite a friend system that you have to invite 20 friends to unlock a free legendary monster. I feel this is a very hard to stretch that you have you invite so many people just to get some decent rewards.

Here are the achievements. As far as I can tell every one of them are infintently reatainable. This is by far the best way to gain purple gems. This is one of the most generious games I've seen with the amount of premium currency you can earn.

Here is the option/settings screen. The odd part is to switch maps you have to come here. This is a hidden things that you have to find just to advance to a new map once you completed the firest one. I find this is an odd place to hide such a key feature to the game.

Here is the list of maps and special challenges. If you click on the locks they tell you what you have to do to unlock them. Same for the challenges. It seems the firest milestone is to reach wave 50 in the basic map. Each map has a small amount of story based on the enemies you face.

When you first start a map, you can move around the monsters as you see fit. Once you start the game you can not move them around anymore, but you can click on a monster to bring up the upgrade screen here. Each level up costs gold coins. Some of the statues seem to have a maximum level where-as some of the other monsters do not appear to have a max. 

If you fail to defeat an enemy and it reaches the bottom of the screen they steal away your chest of treasure. You can restart the same level but generally you have to watch a video to do so most times. The first time you can restart the same level for free. It is generally better to use timewarp to start from an earlier level to gain more gold coins to upgrade your monsters.

As this screen shows you also have the option to buy a retry on the same level using the purple gems. It seems once every 24 hours you are allowed a free retry as well.

Every so often you can summon special monsters using the rainbow gems. These gems are very hard to obtain and it doesn't feel fair that you have to try getting them in such a short amount of time just to gain a very rare monster. I do not know if these open on as that third summon option later on in the game.

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

This game has an interesting twist on the classic tower defense game style and makes it less stressful. This system is very generous and relaxed to other tower defense games I've played in the past. Though to really progress to the later levels does seem to require a whole team of special monsters. 

Story:

 3 of 5 cogs.

There is a little bit of story inbetween when you fight a new boss. There isn't a deep story to this game with a start and finish, it mostly has just small snippits and mostly that is infered by the type of enemes you face and the information you read about them later on.

Amount of ads:

 

Optional only.

The game has only optional ads and there are no forced pop-up video ads that slow down gameplay. This game allows you to play as much as you want without being bothered constalty to buy something.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I do not recall seeing any videos ads for this game. The screenshots in the google shop are accurate and shows you what to expect while you play.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are simple and for the most part are cohesive. The art does seem a bit on the cartoony side and has a bit of humorous look to it. I feel the art adds a bit of comedy into the actual game.

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The game handels the T.D. aspect in a unique way. The creatures you summon are completely immune to any kind of damage even though some bosses can temporairly freeze them. The only things that can be damaged is the rocks on the field and those can be upgraded much later in the game. The only way to restore the rocks is to use purple gems to reset them. I did not have time to discover what the other maps are like sadly before I had to write this blog.

Free play:

💯%

This game is very generious for purple gems as you need a lot of them to upgrade various things in the game. Though it seems to be extremely hard to earn the rainbow gems in a timely manner.

Fun factor:

🌌 Magical.

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.

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Slime Evolutionary Path

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Since I became sick, I haven't been able to sort out a new winner yet. The prize is still unclaimed, and thus this week I will pick a new winner from this week's Comments. Paypal only as Cashapp is temporarily off the table. To enter you MUST put a contact method in a comment on this blog post so I can contact you if you win. This is your second chance to win before the chance is gone. The prize is still $10. 

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The steam troops have spotted: Slime Evolutionary Path

The slime is the classic RPG monster that everyone knows. A recent meme in Anime and other places is this concept that a slime can evolve and become the strongest enemy there is. This game takes on that same meme where you take a small blue slime and grow it into a killing machine.

There are two different kind of currencies. Gold coins and the premium currency that is red diamonds. If you click on the Red Diamond button you can watch an optional ad to gain a few of these diamonds. It takes a lot of these to buy permanent upgrades or other objects that will be covered later in this blog.

When you click on the skill button you come to this screen. Skill 1 is what I will go over next. Skill 2 are special skills you hav to buy with the red gems. 

Here is the skill 1 button; Every 20 levels you can select a new skill. Each button gives you a set of two different abilities that you will gain if you select it. These skills can stack and become stronger if you lean the same ones over again.

If you click on the button of the grey slime button you can see all the skills you have unlocked so far. Some abilities only open up one you reincarnate several times.

As you unlock skills you can see what all skills you have equipped during this incarnation. You can click on each skill to get a description of what it does.

You can see alll the boosts you have at a glance here. I can not remember the exact way to get to this screen because the menu system is conviluted and not clear. 

When you click on the button with the yellow and blue stones you come to a sceen. As you battle enemies you collect stones that can be equipped. There is only 3 slots total. When you click onto one you can choose from any you have collected already.

Each gem has it's own level and they can have upto 4 skills. Each of these skills can go up to level 10. You can temporairly lock these or you can use gems to buy special orbs so you can keep one of these stones through a reincarnation.

There is a shop menu that is buried a bit. You cah buy more red diamonds using real money. This game is a generious with gems so you do not need to buy any gems to make progress in this game.

When you click on the gear you get a menu for all the options. You can pay to remove ads from here or you can check on the various other setttings here. You can replay the tutoarial here or enable cloud saving.

You can gain additional gems for logging in everyday. The game seems to reset at midnight based on your device's local time.

If you purchance anything you get these one time bonuses that you keep. Some of these are very rare and possibly unique abilities. As you can see, you have to purchase quite a bit of gems to get these.

This is the main game screen you will see a lot of. As you gain levels, you earn AP which can be distributed between hp, attack and defense. I haven't figured out the best way to distribute points yet as the enemies scale up in strength very rapidly.

When you are in the battle field, you can navigate to the idle menu. Here you can increase how many gold coins you get per hour, or experience. This is the main idle mechanic in the game, but there is a limit so you must also spend these gold coins to increase the offline limit. These upgrades seem to be a constant through all reincanrnations.

Now we come into the Skill 2 button. Here are permanent upgrades that you can buy but there is a limit to how many you can have active starting off. 

Lastly some of these skills are temporary boosts as well. The first couple of options are consumable options that will just eat away your diamonds.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Overall, this game is mostly a meme. It has a couple of interesting skills but the menues are hard to navigate and to remember where everything is located. There isn't anything concrete here tha will keep you playing to too long.

Story:

 2 of 5 cogs.

There is a little bit of a story but I can't say it's original. It heavily borrows from anime and other memes with slimes in them. I leave it up to you how much you buy into the story.

Amount of ads:

 

 low

There is a lot of optional videos you can watch to gain premium gems. If I remember, you get a video every time you reincarnate to start all over again.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I do not recall seeing any ads for this game. The screenshots on gooogle play are accurate but they are partially covered over by a charachter that blocks most of the images, which in turn is kind of misleading.

Graphics:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The graphics have a loose anime based style to them. The monsters does help boost the raiting a bit as they are highly detailed but beyond that I don't feel it was enough to raise the bar any.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Game play is middle of the road. There is a few small things you can do but the game mostly plays its self. You have the option of changing what stones are equipped but other than that, you are just watching this game.

Free play:

💯%

You can earn premium currency while you play by logging in daily or watching videos. You do not have to pay anything into this game to advance through the game.

Fun factor:

😐 average and middle of the road.

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.