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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C.U.E. Cards, Universe & Everything

 

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

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Today we sit down at the card table to play: Cards, Universe & Everything

Today I bring you a game that I was initially excited for but kind of turned into a bit of a disappointment. The ads for this game hype up this game so much and it has a very bad and costly system to try to gain new cards. 

There are a lot of things on this screen. Most of it won't really be used starting out. There are 2 forms of currency, magenta gems, and coins. The gems are the premium currency needed to get a 'chance' to collect the better cards in the game. Coins are used to buy some card packs as well as a few different late game tasks.

When you click on the avatar icon in the top left of the screen you get a statistic of all the things you have done in the game. You can even toggle if you show online or not. 

The next tab is all the available avatars you can choose from. You may be able to possibly unlock new ones but I did not find anything as to unlocking them.

Lastly is the backgrounds that display on the main screen. These are high-detailed images of real-world places and this is the nice part about the app is spreading history.

The main part of the shop shows some deals that help you grab a specific theme of cards that could potentially give you hidden combos.

The next section has a set of packs that rotate out. There is a mix of premium currency or very expensive packs. This gives this game a very high pay to win feel and makes it seem rather unfair to the plays that can not pay into the game. Futher down are basic cards you can buy with the coins or gems.

The third section is the premium currency tab. It has a standard rate that I have seen among many online games.

The last page is the coins option. These are fairly inexpensive compared to the premium currency, but yet does use the premium currency to purchase.

As you level up you can gain coins, gems and free packs. These packs contain a small number of cards but nothing that will really get you too far because there is a large pool of cards that could possibly be obtained, and this makes it very hard to get any good combo cards to battle with.

Sometimes, you will get very strong and powerful rare cards. These cards normally require other rare cards to combo with or a matching set. There is a counter on the bottom left of the screen that shows you the remaining number of items in a pack.

Here is a quick example of the daily spin wheel. You have a chance of winning some rare cards or packs from them.

When you look at your collection, you can read all the information o a card here. I won't go over how the rules of the game work as there is an extensive tutorial that explains all of it. You can click on the card to learn about the history of the object, person or creature.

You can create several decks of 15 cards. These card have many different effects and affect your score differently. Some cards seem good initially but then end up actually harming your over-all score in the long run. Some of these cards really need better explanations on them.

There appears to be a way to craft random cards in this game but I did not make it far enough to figure out how to do these things.

There appears to be a system in this game if you have a set of a specific card you can transform all of them into very a single rarer card. This requires you to buy a LOT of random card packs and just hope you get what you need. This is unfair and reminds me of bad loot crates.

Here is a quick example of what it takes to fuse cards into stronger cards.

This is the crafting screen. You have to get rid of a LOT of copies of cards to get anything useful from this menu. It gives you a slight comfort as all those commons are not going to waste but it takes so much of them it's not worth it.

For the most part you can only play in causal mode until you get to a certain level. Here you could run into any cards or opponents. There are specific rules as listed here that affect how the game is played. Other battle modes have different rules that constantly rotate out and makes the whole game confusing to master.

And at last, the main battle screen you will see a lot of. The game explains everything here in a tutorial.

Overall:

 2 of 5 cogs.

This game had so much potential but... it is so hard to gain any strong cards to use against opponents and because of that, it makes it impossible to be competitive without spending a lot of money in this game.

Story:

 5 of 5 cogs.

I only mark this as 5 cogs because this game is based on real historical facts. As far as I can tell it appears to be accurate but there are thousands of cards in this game and fact-checking them all is impossible.

Amount of ads:

 

 optional only

This game has optional ads only and very limited amount of them.

Accurate Advertising?:

80%

Now, the ads for this game are very much click-baity. The mention you could learn a lot of information and just by playing this game you become smarter. They also mention specific things found in cards in this game that simply does not exist at all. The ads are over-hyped and is misleading as the information you learn about each card is nothing more than just small amount of flavor text.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The game uses HD images of real-worl places, items, people, objects or animals. 

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Asside from the fact that the game is pay to win, the main combat initially feels balanced in as you start off but at some point there is a significant amount of fall-off when you start to face higher level opponents that have better cards.

Free play:

50%

You can unlock some things slowly as you play but if you want to get access to the strong and powerful cards you have to spend premium currency, which isn't the easiest to get in this game without paying. The game is uses loot crate methods to get money out of people.

Fun factor:

😩 disappointment.

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.

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

Or you can donate with CashApp at:  #HakuzoSionnach.