Idle Inn Tycoon

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Rest your steam-powered horses in the stables of: Idle Inn Tycoon

I am reducing the overall number of screenshots in my blog due to many issues with my connection that are out of my control to fix. As a result, the blogs will be shorter from now on.

Today I bring you back to the past, where steam power was more essential and magic ruled the lands. Here you become a manager of a run-down Inn in the middle of nowhere. The king of the lands thinks you will fail but still wants a cut all the same. The game is simple. You idly make money from every single thing in the game and you have to wait to gain enough money to buy the next upgrade. Clicking on the exclamation will give you all your current goals to complete. Eventually, your Inn becomes 5 stars and you move on. From what I can tell, the money you make at a maxed Inn becomes useless as money does not transfer between Inns.

Each room in the Inn has several upgrades that affect how much income you get a day. All the upgrades use standard gold except for 1 item you can buy with premium currency to get a very small buff to income. These optional items are not really worth the gems. As you progress, some items require having available magic and you must upgrade your mage room to get more before you can continue to upgrade stuff.

Here's a quick example of the missions you can do. You can click on the arrow and the game will take you directly to the item or room you need to upgrade. No need to search for it. Once you clear out all these missions you normally get a very small premium currency reward and you get more missions to do. Each mission helps you gain stars faster.

Be sure to grab your daily rewards from the shop stall icon in the bottom left of the screen.

Another small thing that drains premium currency is the card system. You can obtain these cards by buying them or unlocking them via the daily spin wheel or by completing some tasks. Rarely even video ads will give you a chance to get these.

When you click on the clipboard you can come to this management screen that tells you how far along something is upgraded or not. This screen will give will also tell you how much you pay your workers a day in the third tab. Other The second tab is for landmarks.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Overall, this game is a good 'start' but there isn't much going on in it. There are some events that crop up that can give you extra bonuses but you have very little time to complete them.

Story:

 2 of 5 cogs.

This game has a story but I dislike the characters in this game. They are parodies of real-world actors or famous people and bad renditions at that. The personalities are rude and flat.

Amount of ads:

 

 optional only

None, only optional ads to get rewards.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I have not seen any ads for this game so I can only go on what is shown on google play. As far as I can tell there are no click-bait or misleading screenshots.

Graphics:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are simple polygonal and very rough 3d models. The characters lack depth or originality.  The rest of the assets are non-shaded graphics. Normally I don't have an issue with this style of art but it feels incomplete.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

This game is one that I feel could possibly be completed in less than a month of playing everyday. This game feels so incomplete and doesn't have much going for it. Once you clear an Inn there is no need to ever go back there. 

Free play:

💯%

You can do everything in this game for free and never pay. You don't even need to watch the optional videos to progress any. Overall this game doesn't feel very sustainable for long-term play.

Fun factor:

👶 Far too easy and not much depth.

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. Please leave a comment with feedback if something needs fixing or improvement.

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Merge Gardens

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

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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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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.

Throw a cog(tip using PayPal) to your blogger.

Or you can donate with CashApp at #HakuzoSionnach.