Merge Mayor

 

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Today we drive our steam-powered cars into town to become: Merge Mayor

Today I bring you a nice merge 2 game where you only have to focus on matching 2 of the same item and not 3 or more to form massive chains of clutter. This game is very simple compared to other merge games and is a lot more chill. You become mayor of a town that is broken and needs to be repaired from the ground up.

The main screen is the city map. It is a 3D voxel world even though the buildings have a lot more detail. You can move around the map to find each quest yourself or you can click the bottom-left of the screen to bring up all the current quests there are. You can click on the green play button to reach the main merge field like most other merge games. This game has 2 different currencies. Coins are used to buy landmark upgrades and Premium gems are used to buy extra items or used to unlock various things. I recommend saving all of these as you need them to open storage space, another part I will cover later in this blog.

Let us get the boring stuff out of the way. This is the basic options page. Not much to see here.

If you click on the button on the far top right of the screen on the building, brings you to the shop menu. Here you want to grab your daily pack of batteries. You can save up these batteries and merge them into better ones to restore energy for free. Other useful things show up here as well as the token shop to buy those rarer items you need to complete a mission.

Clicking on the hat will show you areas with landmarks. From what I can tell, these landmarks affect how much your production items can create before running out of resources. These landmarks require specific items to upgrade and lots of coins. After that, it also takes time to upgrade these buildings as well. 

As you gain more hats, you unlock more passive rewards that will help you progress in the game. The one displayed here ties into the next screenshot.

The third tab has a daily reward. You want to grab this as this item must be dragged onto the board and clicked to collect everything you need to progress in the game. This is the ONLY way you can collect more parts of the production buildings, which are the most important thing needed to progress.

The last tab is a special vault. As you use energy and spend gems, a percentage of them gets stored in the vault. You 'can' buy it to open it anytime or you can save up these keys you find and merge them to open this vault for free.

Here is a quick preview of what a landmark takes to upgrade. You can click on an item to see what producer makes it. 

You click on the number with a circle around it to see your mayor level. This only seems to give you a bonus reward and doesn't seem to affect anything else in this game as far as I've noticed.

Here is the main merge field. The objects with a yellow highlight are the buildings that produce all the different products. There is quite a bit of space in this game to work with compared to other games I've played and blogged about. The cardboard box will bring us to the last screenshot of this game.

This is the warehouse where you will store a lot of stuff to make space for merging rarer items. You have to clear away a lock and open a space to see what the next adjacent objective is. As you can see here there are a lot of locks that require gems to open.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

 

Overall, this game has kept me playing for a long time after trying it. This is one of my current top favorite merge games to play at this time.

Story:

 4 of 5 cogs.

There is surprisingly a lot of story as you rebuild up the city. The story is simple but there are some random special missions that pop-up that give you some small behind the scenes building of the game from the devs.

Amount of ads:

 

    Optional Only

This game only has optional ads. You only have to watch an ad to gain free energy, up to 3 times a day or to upgrade the daily reward to gain more items.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I only recall seeing the ad for this game maybe once or twice and this game doesn't use any click-bait tactics to get people to play.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are simple but they all match the theme of this game pretty well. The only odd thing is the people are 3d Voxel while the rest of the graphics are not voxel-based.

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Simple, Easy, and relaxing to play. This game has a lot to discover to keep you going for a while.

Free play:

💯%

This game is very generous to you. You can eventually unlock anything you need as you just play the game.

Fun factor:

🏬 Not so Sim City, but easier.

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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Atlas Empires

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

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Use your dirigibles to take over the planet with: Atlas Empires

I bring you a blog about a geolocation game that plays like Pokemon go but with a collection of random stuff nearby and as far as I can tell there is no need to travel to places for resources as everything spawns around you. It seems some locations will give you small bonuses if you visit them but this game is very safe to play during the current times.

You pic a basic avatar for your character. There appear to be a few avatars you can unlock later using avatar coins but I never made it that far. You can not change how the avatar looks at all and it is displayed as part of your profile.

When you choose an initial place to build your base you get a screen here that shows your location. This game seems to uses the Open Streets API based on other games I've seen like this one. 

When you click on the base button you are presented with a large square area where you can start building different kinds of RTS-like buildings. You have a tower defense style area where you have to build up defenses to block other players from attacking and taking your resources. Some buildings will produce one of the 3 main currencies, gold, wood, or stone. This game has some microtransactions to buy runes that allow you to purchase rarer items. Be sure to protect your center base well because if this building is destroyed the enemy attack wins.

Each building can be upgraded using a large number of resources. Each upgrade adds hp to the building and makes it harder for your enemies to damage them. You have to be mindful of how you build up because you will unlock storage buildings for each resource, if you fill them up you can not upgrade other buildings until you get enough space for the materials needed. 

When you click on the picture of your character you will find all the hidden quests that give you runes. I have only found a few things requiring these and its stuff from the shop. You can also get a free stuff from the shop by watching optional videos.

You can click on the leaderboard button and see where you ranked. Each battle will give you more crowns and allow you to climb the leaderboard.

Here is the main game field. You build a base and as you can see I live in the middle of nowhere and stuff will randomly spawn around me all day long. This game is easy for anyone to play from home and stay safe. One last thing I need to go over and I do not have a screenshot of is the main battle troops you must find. There is a cardshop you can find or summon which allows you then to get 1 free card every 12 hours then you pay a progressing amount of gold to roll another gotcha for a new troop. If you have enough cards of a troop you can then level them up at the training grounds. 

It cost 10 gold to scout an enemy to attack. This is done globally and you do not have to leave your home at all to engage in PVP. I do not have any screenshots of the battle system. If you can clear all buildings you get 3 stars and better rewards.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Normally I avoid PVP based games because most of them are pay to win. This game has some small elements as you can pay to instantly build everything or pay a monthly subscription to have two buildings going at the same time. Other than that, this game seems to be a bit more chill compared to other heavy PVP strategy building games.

Story:

 0 of 5 cogs.

There are some events it looks like but, nope, no really story here.

Amount of ads:

 

Optional Only

This game only has optional ads you can watch to earn a few things along the way. The game is very light in the way of ads.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I only recall seeing an ad for this game once. The ad did not show much in the gameplay department, but the screenshots on google play shown enough that it uses the same kind of system as Pokemon go and similar AR games.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The graphics remind me a lot of Torchlight. There is a subtle steampunk atmosphere to the game but no story beyond that. The graphics have a cartoony aspect to them and the design of the avatars can not really be taken too seriously. I will note here, the game claims to have Augmented Reality but there is nothing in this game that uses AR. 

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The gameplay is a bit slow. You can explore around a lot and build up your base easily enough. As long as I've played this game I have yet to be attacked by a random player. There does not seem to be a revenge mechanic at all so it seems like it's easy to build up an army to take on the world. Eventually the ability to join a clan opens up as you level and I feel the game may get more complicated after that point.

Free play:

💯%

This is a surprising game that doesn't feel like it's pay to win. There seems to be generous amounts of items that spawn in the world and as long as you can walk around your neighborhood, you can easily play this game for free.

Fun factor:

😺 Surprisingly f2p.

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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Idle Miners Settlement

 

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Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Grab your Steam-powered shove and dig up: Idle Miners Settlement

Today I bring you a fantasy-based game that has a very unique way of how idle elements are incorporated into the level design and how your progress. The basic story is you arrive in an abandoned village and meet the village elder that refused to leave. Your job is to rebuild the village and draw in others to return.

This is an idle game loaded with a lot of story. This is an idle game that has a clear goal of 'defeat the necromancer.' The game uses a progressive system where you must really focus on unlocking all of the mines first before you can build up the village. You have to gain dollars to train and upgrade the pets to mine for you. 

You are given quests that guide you along to what you have to do to progress the story and upgrade buidlings. When you get to a point and you have all your mines, Then the game turns into a RPG where you must forge equipment and then kill many evil monsters. Leveling up does not seem to give you any stat increases and everything is dependent on equipemnt. As you level, you do unlock Rune slots to use magic totems to buff your stats.

The first thing you fix up is a home of your relatives. This is the only building that does nothing at all for you. You can't sleep to regenerate health or anything. You do get a chest beside the house to store stuff you pick up along the way.

As your build up the village, you unlock the pet trainer. It takes a LOT of money to start improving the later pets you open up when you find a new mine. These animals will do all the mining for you and even pick it up for you!

You can unlock the forge later on in the game. Once you do you must then find schematics for severy other items. It takes a long time to gain these from story or from randon drops from the airship. Some enemeies also drop them as well. For a very long time you do not have the ability to many many items. There seems to be many pics and axes but I dont know what effects they offer.

The forge, pet trainer and airship has a special shop that uses purple gems to buy shematics as well. The best way to gain them is by completing Achievements. Sometimes optional videos as well. It takes a long time to gain enough gems to buy shematics.

You personal inventory. You can use the purple gems to expand out your inventory. As you reach to the bottom it takes 150 gems per slots. I did not get to buy all of the slots during my playthough. All your tools are stored her along with any schematics you find.

You can also find persona pet shards as well. Equipping a pet allows you to sell materials from anywhere and you get 5 extra inventory slots for free as we..

Here is where you can have runewords active. As you gain levels you gain more slots to cast potent spells to give you boosts to stats or add protections.

Here is an example of one of the mines. The deeper down you go the longer it takes you to mine the stones yourself. You must manually mine stones as well to gain special colored stones used in various things. Sadly any manual mining you do does not continue on with idle mechanics as you are away. So no idle leveling or getting certian materails while away.

Here has a list of achievements for you achieve. This is the easiest way to gain purple gems for buying inventory slots or schematics.

Lastly is the shop menu. Here you can gain 10 free purple gems by watching optional videos. These packs seem to give you a decent value for what you pay.

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

This game offers a lot of unique mechanichs wiht how an idle game works. At points you are forced to wait a very long time just to progress. Because of this you can only play a couple minutes a day before you can't progress any more. This really slows down the game more than it needs to be.

Story:

 4 of 5 cogs.

For an idle game, there's a decent amount of story. That was one of the most surprising things that greeted men when I started to play this game. 

Amount of ads:

 none beyond optional ads

There are a lot of optional ads that pop up for you to get dollars and purple gems. You really have to watch a lot of videos to speed up the game without paying for anything.

Accurate Advertising?:

80%

The video Ads for this game are ever so slightly misguiding. They only show a portion of the gameplay and 

Graphics:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The art is a lot of drawn pixel art but with a very odd zoomed in scale. Something about this art feels od to be and it's not the best I've seen.

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The gameplay is fairly repeititve and it takes times to progress and discover new things. When you do there's a lot of things to discover and figure out.

Free play:

💯%

You can play this game fairly well without paying anything into it but it takes a lot of time to progress.

Fun factor:

💎idle mining for you money.

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