Merge Gardens

 

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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.

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World Flipper

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

SWINDLER ALERT!: There has been a large number of mobile video ads on android devices. Each one of these videos shows what appear to be Asian-origin people with very bad voice-to-text voice-overs. These videos not only tell you the exact way they scam you, but they also claim they don't do it. Any apps that claim you can make hundreds of dollars a day are fake.

I have checked out some of these games. Each one of them follows the same pattern and all offer you nothing. A couple makes you think they are legit but they want you to pay them 5 dollars to collect 1000. These apps have you watch an infinite amount of ads and give you some wait time excuse or say that all claims are filled. Then you have to watch 20 videos to get your winnings. These apps are just gaining as much from ad views as possible before disappearing soon. I can not believe how much they spend on ads just to scam people into money. I will show a couple of screenshots of the games to avoid. As there are literally a hundred new games that dropped, and are in 'early access', that I can not post every possible one.

The Greedy Cave

 

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The caves are filled with greed! The Greedy Cave

Today's game you think you are playing Don't Starve, but it is a mobile game about trying to survive a dungeon filled with monsters. This game is very difficult and remind me of Fatal Labynth for Sega Genesis. There is a hidden easteregg if you press and hold on the screen for a couple seconds.

Unlike Dont Starve, you can create a character. There isn't too many options to choose from, and I do not know if you can unlock more as you play.

You get plunked into a world that scrolls around like you are moving on a very tiny planet. You have the dungeon viewed here and on the sides are different shops or forgers to help you along. This game is odd as you can only keep golden equipment from the dungeons. There are ways to upgrade some common pieces up to gold but they are very rare.

So the first shop item holds these coupons you buy with real money. These items are then used to buy crystals which are used for various purchases of items. I find this a very strange system to use as it adds extra steps instead of letting us just by the gems.

Here are the second tab. As you see you the lowest set costs a single dollar USD. I do not know how much of a value this is as I did not have time to progress very far in this game. I hope to revisit this game sometime later once I get through my review pile.

There is a very complex inventory screen. You start the game with 2 pieces of gold equipment that has poor stats. As you progress you can use gold to unlock more inventory slots. I do not know if these are permanent upgrades or temporary ones. I also seem to have lost my screenshot for the Skill tab. Here you get a skill tree that use must use points you collect from leveling up. These give you abilities that can help you along in battle with a new attack or a healing ability.

The third tab has a list of temporary buffs you can pick up through the dungeons. These runes give you large boosts to stats that appear to also be temporary. Here you also see all the loot you will keep once you leave the dungeon. 

Here is one of the merchants that provide special potions for you to use in the dungeon. I never got a chance to really try these out yet.

As you progress on, you can unlock a cosmetic blacksmith that can make your gold items look different. These cost tickets as well. The difference is these cosmetics actually give you bonus stats.

This is a screenshot of some of the missions you can do to earm special crafting materials needed to upgrade you equipment. You can pie up some of these things as well from defeating enemies in the dungeon.

Now onto the main game screen. Here you get a reminder of your quests and you can see your stats in the top left. In the top right is a minimap that you can click on to see more details around you. The pack on the bottom of the screen is where you can set up your quick-use things like health or mana potions. This game has all the standard RPG elements you expect from games since the 80s. 

Lastly to wrap up the overview of the game is the map. This is a very beautifully rendered map. That concludes all the screenshots I have for you today and I will not move on to the scores section.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

This game has a lot to explore and it's impossible to do so in one sitting. Though There seems to be a glitch where if you do not finish a dungeon and return to town, you have a chance of loosing all progress. I do not know if this is due to losing signal or some other bug.

Story:

 4 of 5 cogs.

There is a bit of story you find hidden throughout the dungeons. The story seems to be locked behind maybe certain levels of the dungeon and is very random when you will find any of it.

Amount of ads:

 none

As far as I remember there are no ads ever shown in this game. It is nice to play though a game without getting hit by an ad every second.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I recall only ever seeing an ad for this game maybe once. The screenshots on Google Play show the real gameplay and doesn't have any click-bait.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are great in this game. They appear to be higher quality than that of Dont Starve. I feel the graphics are high-quality for the kind of game this is.

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The game play works as you expect it to. you clock on a square to move to it or interact with any other menu without issues. This game has all the basics of older RPGs and it's a great nostalgic trip.

Free play:

💯%

As far as I know you can gain tickets from completing quests. I have not played long enough to verify this so as it stands it appears to be fully F2P with microtransactions.

Fun factor:

👿 must survive at all costs.

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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EZPZ Saga

 

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The mechanical troops march up with: EZPZ Saga

The game that I will be reviewing today is a semi-clone of AFK Arena. This game suffers from the exact same problems as AFK Areana and that you have random gotcha pulls for troops and you get a flood of unusable commmon troops that drain away your storage space. I had high hopes for this game but I was instantly put off by the burnout I sufferred from these kind of games.

When you you start up the game, you are given several troops as a start.You must then let them fight idly to level or you click on the attack to take on the level's boss. You have to do this every time to progress as I did not see any form of auto-advanced for this part of the game.

The game also features a season pass that has one set of free rewards and then paid rewards. Not only do you have this paid content, you also have several more microtransactions you can pay to progress more. This game is very much pay to win and just has many systems to drain money from you.

Back on the main screen when you click on the scroll in the top right of the screen you get this menu with several places to go and collect diffrent things including the previous screenshot with the season pass. Some of these screens I cover in the following screen shots, but there is a lot of hidden little rewards you have to find and scout for. These screenshots will be a bit all over the place as this game is very chaotic and it is very complicated to figure out what to do.

Another set of daily to weekly quests can be completed to earn varius rewards. These appear to be temporary quests for new players to do as a kind of catchup mechanic.

Another random timed even can be done to unlock a rare unit to help power up your team. These missions are very difficult as it requires many gotcha spins to complete them. I feel this is another poor attempt to force players to pay money just to get a possibly useful troop, but by the time you finish getting the required gotcha pulls you may have better troops anyways, making this quest feel quite useless.

Next Is the daily tasks that you can do to get the premium currency of these blue diamonds. I have not played long enough to see what these premium currencies can be used for beyond buying more spaces for troops.

We finally make it to the main screen. You can see a constant chat window that can not be closed off. In the middle of the screen you can watch the idle battle going on while you sit back and do nothing but wait. Right now the textbox in the top middle is covering up the button you have to click on to advance to a new area after taking on the area boss.

You click on the the player picture in the top left and you can see various options in the game. You can also change the music that is playing during the idle screen. This is the most unique thing I've seen done in any of the games.

Moving along when you click on the Line-up button on the bottom of the screen you can choose which troops to use and change thier battle positions. The problem with this game is every once in a while the enemies force you to change the positions as they can sometimes attack the back row first.

You can then click over to the charachter button you can focus on upgrading several aspects of your troops. Now the first troop you get is the main 'hero' and has additional buffs that you can train as you slowly level up the main account. There is many things you can power up here as well as attacks or stats.

Here is the list of the talents you can unlock. as you can see there there are several tabs at the bottom of this box that you can put points into. There is a lot here to decide and plan on as you progress through the game.

Here you can see each skill takes a certian number of skill points to unlock, I feel that an initial skill costing 2 points to unlock is very steep and in order to unlock skills further down the board you have to buy skills above it. I do not know if it is possible to unlock all the talents if you play enough or if you can even reset the skill tree.

Other units have a level of trust with the main hero. As you play along you can interact with the units to unlock stronger permanent bonuses for that character. Each one of these seem to take a unique resource to open up thes bonuses.

The ever growing need to find all the rarest equipment you can cram on a unit and then having to upgrade all of those pieces for even more stats. This game has several set bonuses from armors that all fall into that same set. This makes it even more complicated to find the right equipment for each unit to use.

Lastly, there is a special gotcha that you can roll to try to get rarer units easier but it takes a lot of a harder to obtain resource. These seem to be weekly events that change up and I do not know if these have improved rates or not.

Overall:

 1 of 5 cogs.

Overall, I am not happy with how this kind of game is contstructed. There are no ads but there are so many paywalls where you have to pay just to even catch up with other players. It is only possible to catch up with a lot of grinding and hoping all the top players become inactive long enough for you to close gap. There are many flawed things with this style of game that just leads to toxicity. I've had many bad experiences with this kind of game, that is more akin to gambling disguised as a game.

Story:

 3 of 5 cogs.

There's a fair bit of story as you progress through the story. There is an attempt at some comedy but it just doesn't rub well with me.

Amount of ads:

 

 None, there are no Ads because of the heavy paywalls.

Accurate Advertising?:

75%

I've seen several ads for this game and none of them were accurate enough to show this game is just a clone of AFK Arena. The ads made me think this game would be a different kind of idle game but no it was severely disappointing.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Arguably the best part of the game. All the art is HD and packs quite the punch to the storage of your phone.

Gameplay:

 1 of 5 cogs.

What else can I say? I was highly disappointed by this game. I was expecting something different and instead it was a carbon-copy of other types of games just like it that have many flawed systems designed to steal money from your wallet. The odds of getting decent troops would equate to lot of money to keep rolling gotchas. 

Free play:

10%

Just, no. This game is not very kind to f2p gamers. This game has many traps to make you spend large amounts of money with little to no actual value in return.

Fun factor:

😔 Disappointed.

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.