Uno

Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

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Time to play an old-fashioned game of: Uno

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The blog is back. I have been graced with the ability to once again create blogs breaking down all the value of random games found on Google Play. I will be trying a slightly bigger font to allow mobile users to read the text easier.

After a long break I return with yet another classic game. Don't let the colors fool you, this game is one step away from gambling and has very shady practices to get people to spend money.

When you start up the game, you get a small tutorial of sorts that leads you into a game. As your progress further in the game and gain more levels, you unlock different kinds of game modes with different rules that really trips up the game. Each play takes a 'wager' of 30 coins. As you play games you can win or lose coins based on what position you land in. To get more coins you can buy them or watch video ads to earn a very small amount of the coins.

When you click on your avatar you can view the game pass. Here it shows you how many trophies you have to earn to unlock other modes or cosmetics. This game really limits what you can start with until you play the game more. 

There is a lot of cosmetic options that take a lot of work to unlock. Some of the options are locked behind season events and as far as I know you can not get them until the season event comes back around.

Here is a quick shot of the emoji/reaction menu. These will automatically play during conditions that trigger them.

A sample shot of the options. Basic things here and nothing too exciting.

Next is the a sample of frame options for your avatar.

You can also add random friends to play with. If you know the person's ID you can add it yourself and connect with your friends.

The shop menu uses these M coins as a premium currency. You can not earn these and can only buy them with real money. There is a Gotcha machine in the option menu that you can watch videos to get some free coins and possible boosts.

Here we can see the different modes. As you progress through the game you can unlock even higher levels of wages on coins. This feels like it teaches kids to gamble. If you have a child I would highly recommend you not allow them to play this game.

This is the match-making screen. You get pitted with 3 other strangers. You can also use power-ups here to get a boost of coins or to automatically call uno.

Here is one of the the powerups. New players get a small discount on buying these power-ups but in the end they are ultimately eating your coins for very little return.

Here is the main game screen. All the cards autosort for you so you can focus on the game. This is important because you have only 2 minutes to play a full round. If you do not act fast enough your turn is auto skipped. It is very hard to successfully win the game by dropping all of your cards.

Here is a quick preview of a different game mode. This one introduces wild cards that really change the game play.

Here is the over-view of the easter event menu. As you play games in the main mode you can collect eggs that allow you to play a minigame to earn some bonuses. This event is very random and not very fair.

Here is the trophy. You collect these by landing on a space with an egg and getting a very random egg from the board.

Lastly here is the board. You collect dice every day or you can buy more. Sometimes you can watch a video to get more or earn special ones.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Overall, this game is classic Uno but with a lot more gambling. This game is designed to eat away money if you wish to play this game for an extended time.

Story:

 0 of 5 cogs.

Funny, There is no story for Uno.

Amount of ads:

  Optional

In addition to many microtransactions you can watch some optional ads to continue playing for just a little longer.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

As far as I can tell, the screenshots are accurate but they do not tell you that this is still gambling for no real prizes.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are HD and colorfor. I feel this game is a bit misleading to children and could be viewed as a very shady practice.

Gameplay:

 2 of 5 cogs.

It's not a very fun experience because you have such a limited time to play or act. The practices of this game really put me off from playing it at all.

Free play:

40%

You 'can' play for free, at least for a short span of time. This game will eat away your wallet if your plan to play it seriously. In theory if you win first place every single game it may be possible to play this game infinitely. 

Fun factor:

😐 Mediocre.

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.

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Idle On MMO

 

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Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

The robots are idling like: Idle On MMO

Welcome to Idle On, a different kind of MMO. There are many AFK elements  You can make several "slave" characters that idle and collect crafting materials while you sleep. Each character has to complete all the quests on their own as several of them help you to increase carry capacity. You could potentially leave a character farming creatures for exp for a month and return with several levels.

This is the main town. You get basic quests here that get you started. Then you must explore around the world very slowly as each portal tends to have a requirement to open to progress. Enemies become massively stronger every time you cross a portal. 

You can click on the yellow exclamation point to start a quest. The exclamation point will turn green if you completed the quest. Every quest gives great rewards that help you advance faster. There could be thousands of quest to discover in this game.

The hint tab has a lot of things you will discover as you play. If you forget how a mechanic works you can always come back here to refresh yourself.

This whick ref tab gives you a visual link to some of the important items you will use in the game. This is just reference and not really used much.

The card's tab is where you collect random card drops that can be used to upgrade a large number of skills for bonuses once you get more you can upgrdae the cards for better bonuses.

I never got to figure out what the family tab is about. I think it may be either a friends list that may give you bonuses.

This is your friends list. Not much to see here.

Guilds are also in the game but I never got a chance to find one during my time in this game.

Here is the massive map. It appears to be divided into chapater. You can walk along the hardway to get to a new location or you can teleport a limited number of times a day. There's a lot to explore and I hope to return to this game one day when I am not reviewing other games.

Starting off you have only a limited number of stats available. All of these stats stop at lv 100. As you level up or raise skills from resource collecting. There are hundreds of skills you can unlock as you progress further in the game.

You can also learn very secret skills as well. As you can see, I could not find any during the time I played the game.

The last thing I will go over is the menu. You can adjust the volumes here but they seem to reset on a relog. You can click on AFK info to see how many items or experience you will get per hour if you AFK while doing a task.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

This game is surprising. This is a blend of two games that works fairly well. Though it's an MMO, you can not interact with others that I know of. It may be possible you can group with friends to take on stronger enemies.

Story:

 4 of 5 cogs.

There is a lot of random story in this game. So many NPCs have a lot of things to say to you. Many inside jokes and comedy.

Amount of ads:

 

 None!

Zero ads. No optional ads.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

I've seen many video ads for this game and so far each one has been accurate. There are no shady or silly click bait things to get you to play this game.

Graphics:

 3 of 5 cogs.

The graphis are reminesent of the stick fighter games. Most of the art starts off simple pixel art until you really get into discovering things.

Gameplay:

5 of 5 cogs.

The game play is very limited. You spend a lot of time idling and waiting to collect stuff. You have to manually pick up the items. Even if you return you have to pick up everything from the ground as well.

Free play:

💯%

There are some microtransactions but you can gain everything from playing the game a lot. The game is very generious with the items they give you. Luck also improves your chances of gaining better items.

Fun factor:

💞 Endless Idling.

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Agar.io

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Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

The steam vents reveal: Agar.io

Today I decided to download and play an old IO game. Agar.io has been around for some time and has very simple gameplay. Not much has changed since the last play but that being said, nothing has been improved either. When I restarted, my achievements are there but my status has been reset.

You now have a set of free rewards. I do not if these are recurrent or change monthly. There are a few currencies that I will cover later.

There is a shop menu loaded with a lot of micro-transactions. All of these require real money except for the skin shop. This menu gives you access to powerups that are temporary and only last an hour.

The Skins button allows you to use coins to buy skins. There is a lot to unlock here. Eac h skin increases in price and gets very expensive and requires a lot of gameplay to unlock them all. Some skins only unlock as you level up. You can make a custom skin for using 90 DNA, which is the premium currency and harder to obtain without paying.

Every 24 hours a new Daily Quest is given to you. From what I remember, they are very simple things you can do in a single game. 

The third way to unlock skins is from shards you gain from mystery potions. They take time to open but you can open them faster with DNA. You can only hold 3 at a time and you have to wait it out.

The main game is very simple. You move around by touching the screen and sliding around. The main object of the game is to go around and eat pellets just like Pacman. A recent addition adds mushrooms that seem to give you a big size boost. As you get bigger you have two options. You can split yourself to become smaller and take over smaller and faster players or you can fire pellets to make an opponent bigger and slower as your speed increases slightly. As time goes on your mass slowly starts to drop.

The has also been a new party feature added. It seems that you can join with others and be put into a private game.

Lastly is a very new game mode that takes a page from PubG. You have an area that slowly shrinks. I have not survived long enough to see the timer click down and the initial game seems to be safe to run outside the circle for about 2 minutes.

Overall:

 3 of 5 cogs.

I would have ranked this higher but this game suffers from a lot of the same issues it always has. The servers are very laggy and at times it's not easy to play. Or there is a lot of teams that play and feed each other to take out anyone that plays

Story:

 0 of 5 cogs.

No story.

Amount of ads:

 

 Many in-game ads. 

The game will post an ad at you to buy something in-game every time you return to the main screen.

Accurate Advertising?:

💯%

The screenshots on google play match the gameplay and are accurate.

Graphics:

 2 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are very simple and do not have much effort put into it even after all of these years.

Gameplay:

 3 of 5 cogs.

Simple gameplay but many laggy servers and unfair gameplay.

Free play:

💯%

You can easily play this game for free but it gets very boring fast.

Fun factor:

😐 Average.

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