Case Hunter

 

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Dig up your steam-powered case files with: Case Hunter: Brain Funny Cases

Today I bring to you a simple point and click game where you play a detective. You have many scenes you play through and have to solve a few msyeries. A lot of these are very easy to play. This game is gender inclusive and features very rare gender fluidity. You have 2 main currencies and an energy bar that refills rapidly. I've nearly beat all the case files in just a couple of days. I will go over what currency is used where later in the blog.

You get a 7 day log-in bonus. You can watch ads to get double the currency. You can unlock at least 2 skins from the daily log-ins. 

Moving on you can use the ever common blue diamonds as way to unlock more skins. Each one of these skins appear to give a permanent buff to different categories in the game. I do not know if the effects stack but these effects only seem to work for the Tycoon style mini-game.

A very simple option screen. I won't spend too much time here as there is nothing special here at all.

Clicking on the shop menu brings you up to this menu. You can buy a few things here. Further down in this menu you can also buy special furniture themes for the hotel mini-game.

Each level gives you a breifing of what your goals for the level is. Each level generally only takes up only one screen, but sometimes you can move to other locations as well depending on the task. You literally must check everything to collect any items you need. Sometimes you can find blue gems in a level but there's a catch. A strange cat collects them in a kind of bank. Which you can only collect by paying real money.

When you complete a level you get a collection of coins. You can double these with a video if you wish. When you fill up the bar you can get a chance to collect a chest with bonus items. Sometimes you can earn blue gems this way. If you get a chance to collect a chest, you can also watch a video to claim all 3 boxes instead of just one random one.

After you play along the main case files, you will unlock the ability to run a hotel. All your coins go into buy a new room and filling it with various equipment. As you progress you unlock special rooms as well for your guests. Over time guests will have requests for you and you must give them different items. You get these items, at random from a timed delivery system. This often leaves you with a problem of sometimes not having any items. In that instance you can buy the item with blue gems or you can watch a video to get a small chance of the item you need being given to you. Lastly on the left you will get the ability to hire staff members that will also help provide for your guests. You can hire them for a short time using diamond or by watching a video. When you give enough diamonds or watch enough videos they become perment staff memebers.

You can click on the paint brush to enterinto design mode. Each item can be switched to a new theme. You can buy individual items yourself with diamonds, or watch a video to permently unlock the style for each room. Each style adds to your hotel's stars which are needed to progress more in the mini-game.

Finally when you clear enough files, you unlock special case files. Here it uses the same kind of mechanics but you have to collect clues and solve the mysteries. Most of these are easy and you could potentially solve them all in one sitting.

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Overall, this game has some promise but it seems to be in early development still. The concept is fun but there is not much content at all. This is a very middle of the road game, and very incomplete. There are many easter eggs in this game as well.

Story:

 3 of 5 cogs.

This game has some story as your slowly uncover clues about the drive the whole story. Sadly the story is incomplete so I can not score this any higher.

Amount of ads:

 Optinal only

This game has no random ads that pop in your face but there are many different optional ads you can watch to unlock stuff. This game handles ads pretty well when they load. Sometimes I have to fully close the game and restart it to get ads to properly load in the background.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I downloaded this game from watching a video but I think there are similar games like this on the market. I can not say for sure if I got the same one in the video as none of the evens are in this game. Lastly, the screen shots in goggle play are accurate.

Graphics:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The graphics remind me heavily of Gravity Falls or Rick and Morty. Not really much else I can add to that for this blog.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The gameplay is straight forward but very lacking. The game has a good base to start with but there isn't enough content to keep anyone playing unless it updares frequently.

Free play:

💯%

You can unlock everything if you are very careful and watch enough bonus videso in the shop to earn the blue gems. This game won't take you long to complete so I hope this game gets more updates soon.

Fun factor:

🌈 colorful.

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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Sliding Sea

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

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Load up the steamboats with refugees from: Sliding Seas

In this game, you are a survivor of a cruise ship that sinks. You become the mayor of this island and it is your job to build up the island and rescue other survivors. As you rescue others, the island slowly builds and grows. You can have survivors build other buildings to help everyone survive. Some levels allow you to retrieve lost items from the sunk ship and these allow you to change the scenery of the island. There is only 1 currency in this game and it is a premium currency. You can sometimes gain these blue diamonds from bonus crates that float in the water.

The Options menu gives you the ability to could save and find some hints. You can view other important information here if you choose to.

In the shop, you can watch a video every day to earn some free diamonds. Here you can buy a few different packs that give you power-ups and diamonds. You can spend diamonds to buy more powerups or retry a level. The last use is to refill your hearts as well.

You can click on one of the buildings you have to pay diamonds to change it to another type and you can see which VIP runs the building. VIPs will be recovered later in the blog. If you max out the level of the VIP that runs the shop, you get some kind of reward. I have yet to accomplish this so I do not know what the rewards are.

This game features 3 puzzle types I've run into. This one is the lost item mission where you must match water tiles to increase how rough they get. You make a match by a crate to start breaking it open. You can use one of the 3 different power-ups to progress in the level. The game does a good job of describing what they do so I will skip over them. The other two types of modes involve rescuing survivors. You can match tiles under the survivor to start forming solid land instead of ice like in the above screenshot.

The result screen gives you diamonds on each completed level. If you rescue more than the minimum amount listed you gain bonus diamonds. You can also watch an ad to double the diamonds you gain.

Rarely a survivor is a VIP and you need to prioritize getting these survivors to safety. I did not notice any increase in diamonds for rescuing them though.

on this screen, you can choose the skin for your VIP. Some of these VIPs have multiples you can save to gain a different look/person. As you do so, each VIP seems to be tied to a single building.

Over time you are given random quests to complete within a time limit. These can be for power-ups or sometimes diamonds. You tend to have 2 physical days to complete these tasks. 

Lastly, you can play some events that are limited time. These ones seem to have an independent energy system and you have to watch videos to gain bonus tries. These events give diamonds and other decorations.

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Overall, this is a unique match 3 game that does things a bit differently. The game feels repetitive but as I have progressed, I've unlocked a couple of different game modes, but there could be more that open as you complete levels. There seems to be a finite end to this game and there is some content to keep someone going for a while but I feel it would run a bit thin after a long time.

Story:

 3 of 5 cogs.

There is only a little bit of story I've run across in this game so far. It isn't the best setup but it gives a loose reason why you are doing things. As you unlock new buildings you get small clips of story as well.

Amount of ads:

 low

There are options for ads to gain various bonus gems but I can not remember if there are any ads in between levels. 

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I've only seen the video ad for this game maybe 3 or 4 times. The ads did not run very long from what I remember. As for the screenshots in the play store, everything is forward and transparent about gameplay.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are simple and bright, though they do not really stand out as unique. The art style is very similar to many other mobile games.

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

As I have transcribed so far, this game has a few more interesting mechanics than the standard match 3 game. It is a nice change of pace from many games I've played in the past. I do not know how long a shelf-life this game will have but it is a relaxing game.

Free play:

💯%

Yeah, there are no paywalls that prevent you from progressing in this game other than a limited number of hearts that prevent you from eventually playing as much as you want. Though this game is pretty easy and you won't lose too many hearts.

Fun factor:

⛵ Full of water.

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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Or you can donate with CashApp at #HakuzoSionnach.

Idle Raids of Dice Heroes

 

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Today we will raid for more resources in: Idle Raids of Dice Heroes

Today I bring you an idle game that uses dice in a kind of D&D game. This game isn't bogged down with all the ads you play on this app. This game does not have an arbitrary energy system and you can play as much as you want. You can only collect 6 hours of offline time and you can watch an optional ad to double your income. 

You start off the game with a basic unit. It isn't the strongest unit there is but it is balanced and had a very low critical win or fail chance. You can click on the raid button to start a raid a little faster if you are actively watching the game but other than leveling up characters, there are no interactive features to this game.

As far as I can tell there is no upper limit to the level you can reach for a character but every 100 levels the unit gains a star and seemingly a multiplayer boost to the amount of gold they can find.

Here we take a quick spin to the options menu by clicking on the gear. The Achievements are hidden behind this menu for some reason and as far as I can tell you do not gain any in-game bonuses for completing them.

Even though this is an endless idle game, there is in fact a finite number of missions you unlock. This acts as a control that directs what you unlock as you play on. In the end, you gain 5 or 6 different quest givers. I feel this is an interesting way to give you visual progress of your adventure.

There is a finite amount of units you can buy. There are 9 per biome and 3 biomes. Each warrior gets a boost depending on the area you are in. Depending on what quest you are working on, you can have all 9 characters on the scene getting you the maximum amount of gold per area. The problem is the initial unlocking of the units is through quests but the last 3 in each group require the premium diamonds to buy. These diamonds are rarely given on login with an ad or from completing quests. The rare warriors give you the highest chance to gain lucky raids and multiply your gold.

Sometimes when you raid, you can collect rare items. You will save these to complete quests but once all of those quests are completed, you can then sell all the items for diamonds. This is by far the best way to farm diamonds for free.

The map of the game offers a finite area with increasing danger. Each area has a chance that raises the rate your raids will fail. You can mitigate that with the upgrades in the next screenshot, but only to a point. Each area of the map has different items you gain for quests.

As you level up units, you can unlock upgrades per playthrough. These give you boosts based on better raids or even opening up slots for more units. You can see all the upgrades you have by clicking on the See all button. 

You can access the shop by the trophy on the bottom of the screen Here you can pay to buy things with real money or you can click on the heroes tab to bring up the next screenshot. This game seems to have very affordable prices on permanent buffs. I do not know why the achievements are not in this tab.

Here is a sample of some of the legendary heroes you can buy with diamonds. The Driade (should be spelled as Dryad,) is one of the best units you can buy with the highest luck. I would recommend buying the Driade and the most expensive ones first. 

Lastly, on the bonus screen, you have an option to prestige. This resets your game to a point. All levels reset to 1 and you keep all the other progress. You have to rehire each hero again but it doesn't take long to get through this game. 

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Overall this game is a nice time waster. There isn't much in the way of interactivity but there is a lot to unlock as the game plays itself. There isn't much going on that keeps you coming to this game, like events or such.

Story:

  0 of 5 cogs.

There is no story in this game. I feel if this game had some story added to it, it would make this a richer game to play.

Amount of ads:

 

   optional only

This game has only optional ads. This is nice as id doesn't eat your data or bog you down with annoying ads.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I do not recall seeing any video ads for this game but the screenshots in the App store seem to be accurate as well. Certified clickbait free.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are crisp and simple. The portraits for the heroes are highly detailed and give depth to the game. The rest of the graphics give a clear and concise view of everything and make it easy to navigate the game.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

At this moment, this is an infinite game with a finite goal. You can easily play through and do everything in I estimate a month at max. I don't see anything that will keep you playing beyond that.

Free play:

💯%

Fun factor:

📉 rapid falloff.

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.