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Saturday, February 19, 2022

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.

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