My Little Universe

 

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Airships have crashlanded in: My Little Universe

Today I will be posting a much shorter blog. This game is one you may have seen many times on ads across the netverse, and I got around to being able to review it. This is a simple game from a mechanical standpoint but the main focus on this game is to explore worlds that you create one hexagon at a time. Since this game focuses so heavy on exploring and adventuring I have only a limited number of screenshots to keep spoilers to a minimum.

The main point of the game is you have to figure out how to survive and gain more resources. You start off with some very weak tools that slowly get upgraded as you explore along. As you progress you will get 1 or 2 new paths you can build. I didn't notice that the amount got cut off in this screenshot, but the white square will list a couple of materials with numbers. You must gather those materials and fill in that hex of land. As your progress you find more complex materials or new forms of the same resource with better output. You can clear out a spot of resources and it grows back in just a few seconds. This leaves to an interesting mechanic as you can idle in the middle of this resource and it will auto-collect for you as long as no enmy is nearby to attack you.

As you progess along you will find a few upgrade facilities. Some allow you to process materials into new ones which are then used at these forges to upgrade your tools or make a couple of new ones down the line. You can watch ads to gains some of the missing materials if you don't want to stand around and collect them yourself.

The HUD can only show about 5 different materials at a time so you click on your backpack you can get the full list of everything you've collected. There is a lot to explore and it seems there are many planets you can visit. I still am on the first planet as there is a lot to do.

Overall:

 4 of 5 cogs.

This is a chill and relaxed game for the most part. The enemies can be a bit wiely at times but when you die, you just respawn at your crashed ship. I still have a lot more to explore in this game and I hope that there is still plenty to find. From what I can tell, each planet has a set level design and there is no procedually generated content here.

Story:

 1 of 5 cogs.

There is a small amount of implied story but there is no direct dialog or any other real hints of story behind just stetting. You seem to be traveling planet to planet for some reason, but beyond that I do not personally know.

Amount of ads:

 

Too many!

This game is chucked full with ads. Every time you build a piece of land you are forced to watch a video. You can circumvent this by playing in airplane mode as this game does run perfectly offline. There are some points around the map where you can collect resources by watching optional videos.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

The advertisement is one for one here. The videos and screenshots are straightforward and no scam or clickbait here.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are very generic ans simple polygonal designs. Everything is flatcolored and there are no shaders used in this game. The art for the materials appear to be pixel art.

Gameplay:

4 of 5 cogs.

The game is easy to play. You have a virtual joystic that appears when you touch the screen and slide around. There are many resources to unlock and find. As you find one material you will eventually run into a new one that you need to collect. After a time, some materials are no longer needed and you can sell them at various vendors around the map for gold.

Free play:

💯%

This game is free to play and loaded with many videos. You can pay to remove the ads from the game but I do not know how this affects the optional ads. You can easily play this game without paying anything into it if you don't want to.

Fun factor:

👽 Extraterresial.

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.

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Survival RPG 2: The lost temple

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Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Today the castles of brass guard: Survival RPG 2: The lost temple

First and foremost, if you enjoy the blog, please let others know about these reviews. Also consider leaving a donation through paypal at the bottom of the page, to help me along as I develop these posts.

Welcome to the second in the line of Survival RPG games. Already this game has a more refined feel to it and gets a slightly bit more indepth as you continue on this line of games. This game has made several improvements to the main engine, even though the gameplay is mostly unchanged. 

You are greeted with this screen. When you continue a game, the new button changes to show the percentages of the game you have completed. The graphics of the tiles have been improved but the U has not changed any.

Again you can choose between one of the charachters in this game. When you start this game, it continues off from where you left off in the first game with a small recap. You once again start over with nothing. There is no continuation over from the first game like Mass Effect.

The first major change is that you will find yourself faced with a new Quests engine. Here it gives you a place that keeps track of what you need to find. So far these are a lot of fetch quests for you to do because like every RPG, you have to do everything yourself. You have to complete these manditory quests to unlock componets you need to start crafting things. In this game you can not make anything until you do some of these quests. Once you get along the quest line you are allowed to finally expore around outside of the village. When you complete a quest, it turns green, letting you know that you have to turn it in. If you click on the I, you get details of what the quest wants you to gather or do.

Here is a quick over-view of the main village you start with and the unchanged hud. In the top left the notecard holds all the quests you have active. The green check mark shows that you completed a quest in the list.

The crafting system has not changed other than you have to rely on villagers for a bit before you can craft anything of your own. I forgot to mention on the last blog, but when you craft an item and no longer need to make anymore the item is tagged as Maxed and moves to the bottom of the list. This is a nice feature to let you know you no longer need that item ever again. The game is very linerar and there isn't much room to deviate from this almost on rail games.

All your tools are here. They never break and you always have them. This game adds in a lot of new items to explore and find. 

Same old equipment screen. Once again everything autoequips to the best item and you get stuck with many outdated pieces of equipment as you advance through the game.

You get access to some of the same foods and you will see a lot of new ones on here. You can change your equipped food by long-pressing the button above the hand button to change your food. 

The last tab is the items tab. The same old mix of new and old items. You seem to have an infinte amount of storage space here. I have yet to reach any caps on the common collectable materials like vines or rocks.

Lastly is the map. This map is slightly bigger and the way this area is set up, I think there are multiple maps to this game. There's a lot more to explore but everything is a lot more clear in what kind of direction to go in. This game also uses terrain sprites to block your path in various places until you can got around them later.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The second part of this game has a lot of improvements over the first. There is a little more to do in this game as there is a lot of new items to find and use. The game still feels very short as 

Story:

 3 of 5 cogs.

This game has a lot more story to it compared to the first one which wasn't much at all. This game has proper chapter breaks and feels like a fuller game now.

Amount of ads:

 lots.

There is still a lot of forced videos ads along with the optional ads for premium currency. They pop up a lot more often every time you move into a doorway or cave opeing.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯% 

As far as I can tell everything is accurate. The game is still as straight forward as the first and the shreenshots that are posted on Google play and the game's Facebook page are all true screenshots.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are a little better in this game except the GUI needs something to make it less plain.

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Similar gameplay as the first. You can clear these games in just a couple of sittings or less if you devote time to the small grind to collect all those parts for the expanding recipe list you unlock.The knowledge you gain from the first game allows you to progress even faster through this second part.

Free play:

💯%

You can play this game for free without the need to spend money. There is another shop tab with microtransations like the first game. I just ignored the shopping cart button this whole game so far.

Fun factor:

😎 fun tropical retreat.

Over all, fast and simple game. Doesn't offer much replay value though, other than 3 different parts you play through, and reset every time to nothing.

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Blackout Age

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Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Today, Duck away from aliens with: Blackout Age

Today, I bring you a post-apocalyptic game that is not about zombies but instead about aliens. Take Pokemon Go, Add in the ability to move anywhere on the map you want, and then go scavenge for food and weapons.

This game is very unique as you have to build up a shelter and recruit survivors to help you scavenge. There is a lot to discover and you can use the geolocation function to physically raid things or you can walk there along the map. A recent update allows you to teleport/fast travel around the map as well which takes up a lot of actions. Currently, it seems to be a very short range as only a portion of the map shows around you at once.

The game assigns your 'group' a randomly generated name. You can reroll it a few times if you wish. The big currency is Food, Water, and Bandages. These are the main things you seek out to survive. Each "day" takes 1 food and water per survivor. Along the top bar are your overall prestige level and the amount of "credits" and "batteries" you have. These are special currencies that are used to buy extra food or build things around your shelter. Now you have an option to watch videos and take surveys to get batteries. These are your lifeblood to surviving in this game.

You start off with 1 survivor and have the ability to pick up a second one immediately on the map. These survivors rotate out and there are about 20 to choose from. Your starting survivor has all skills revealed starting off. When you recruit someone, you have to take Physical time to wait for them to reveal their skill. An hour per, you can spend batteries or watch a video to make it instant.

Just an example of the wait timer for a skill.

You can click on each skill to get an overview of how the skill affects the survivor. You want to ultimately train in strength and stamina to gain more carrying capacity. This is a very important stat you need to keep in mind when out in the world of aliens. You earn experience from either training or killing monsters for the day. Staying home and training is safe but takes food. You use direct exp to raise up one skill a point and it seems it takes a lot of points to see any noticeable changes in something. I do not know if there is a stat cap or exp cap.

Clicking on the mission tab pulls up this menu that allows you to choose either daily missions or story progress.

Daily missions allow you to get bonus items in physical time, about once every 24 hours. The missions generally require you to collect very random items to help others with.

Story missions have your progress along a track. Each point takes only 1 mission to complete to advance. When you land on a space, you gain some form of reward. You hold 3 missions at a time and the nice thing about this is when you're on a map, you get a pop-up showing you a mission is close by. There are some translation errors as this is a Russian designed game.

Prestige is used to unlock more rooms in your shelter and you have to bring back materials to upgrade the rooms. You eventually get things that produce food and water for you. It takes a lot of random materials and as I said earlier, you have limited supply slots per run.

There is a menu here that displays a few things. Including my flock which is the clan system in this game. As long as I've played there have never been any active flocks available and I had to make my own. That allows you to start at another base, giving you even new areas to explore.

Each alien has several hundred facts about them you unlock as you fight them. Sometimes they drop interesting items as well. There is a lot to learn about this game and this blog only scratches the surface.

Here is the screen you are shown once you set out on a scavenge. You can choose at your home base, which is default at the closest big city near you. Or you can choose to start at your GPS location. If you live in a rural area like I do, you have a lot of walking you have to do. I hope they add functions to start at other close by towns as well. The question marks are survivors in your main start town. You can only recruit them once you upgrade a slot for them. I recommend not to until your base can support the food and water needs.

The map is covered with purple fog. Inside these gasses that move hide monsters. When you make contact with the fog, the bar on the bottom fills up and you are attacked by a random enemy.

Each survivor has a set of two weapons. You can equip a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. Ranged weapons use ammo and melee weapons lose durability and can break. Combat is odd as you see a pattern on the screen and a red crosshair. You have to tape the attack button again on one of the green marks to damage the creature with a critical hit.

When you defeat an enemy, you sometimes get a card detailing information about the enemy you slain. There's a lot to learn in this game.

All that random stuff goes into upgrading your settlement. You have to grab everything not nailed down but at that, you have very limited spaces. You fill up very quickly when you start off. Like items can stack as well. You can only do 5 raids until they refill by waiting an hour or watching a video.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

This game is so much fun if you live in a big city. If you have time you can travel the hard way around the world and it helps if you have an understanding of where you are going. You can do just one scavenge run or 20. There is really no limit to how fast you progress.

Story:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Wait, there's a story in a geolocation game? There's a lot in this game to learn but some translations are a bit off but still readable.

Amount of ads:

 

 None.

There are no in-game ads but there are optional ones for rewards.

Accurate Advertising?:

100%

Everything I've seen in the play store matches the game. I do not recall ever seeing a video add for this game.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The graphical style is very somber and monochrome minus the few bits of color for emphasis. Its simple and easy to see on a cellphone screen.

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

It's simple and fun. It takes a lot of work starting off and careful planning. As long as you take time to heal in between fights and keep your supplies up.

Free play:

100%

You can play this game and not pay anything. It is easy to gain anything you need with no paywalls. You may have to watch ads but other than that, it is very friendly on your wallet.

Fun factor:

Out of this world!

Thank You for reading my blog. Please consider donating to the tip jar as these are tough times and every bit helps. You can follow by email or via follow on desktop websites. f you enjoy these reviews please show others this blog by retweeting or liking my posts on social media.

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