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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Minesweeper Collection

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Greetings mechanics and tinkerers!

Avoid the depth charges by playing: Minesweeper Collector

I should have started with this game first but the other one was a much smaller game as it was just a tiny portion of this game. I wish the developer would just merge both games into one but I can see them keeping it for the extra Ad revenue.

First off, we have the ever classic mode. This is the same minesweeper game you find installed on any Windows-based computer. You choose your hardness level and try to beat your fastest time.

The next game mode is the heart of this game. I will go into more detail about each mode individually once I reach them. For now, I'm giving you a brief overview of everything.

Pets are a fun mechanic to this game. Hidden in the 'free' spaces of the maps are coins and pets. When you rescue a pet, they will give you a choice of free powerups to use. If you level up the pet to rank 3 you get stronger help. The pets make it a lot easier to clear some of the harder puzzles.

Here you will see a familiar mode. The puzzle mode was originally a paid DLC for this game. Eventually, it became a free version, which I covered last week. You get access to only the first puzzle here for free. If you wish to play this mode just download the other one from the play store.

The last mode is a newer mini-game that was added just last year I believe. It is a kind of endless tower that is tied to a leaderboard. This is an extra mode just to play around once you clear out all the other puzzles. There isn't much difference other than you face a boss after every 10 levels.

Standard classic mode. You start out with one patch of free area open and you have to find and mark the mines. Beginner level is easy and you can speedrun it once you learn the patterns of how mines spawn.

Here I show the example of the premium upgrade. It allows you to change skins and animation types. I purchased the premium because this is a very well-constructed game but note, the puzzle DLC is NOT included in that premium upgrade. 

The main game gives you a variety of odd-shaped trinkets you must solve. This helps a lot to break up the normal game of Minesweeper. Each object has a lot of new challenges and once you complete the object, you collect it. More on this later.

Once you click on the crown you get access to the leader board and achievements. You can explore these to see how you stack up against other players.

The scroll gives you challenges that give you bonus gold to buy powerups to use during these levels. Complete one and you unlock a new random challenge. These are endless and give you so many free coins along with the ones you find in the puzzles. 

Click on the book to see your collection. When you collect a full set of 9 items, you earn a key. It takes many keys to open up new puzzles. 

When you click on the chalice, you are presenting with different types of level puzzles. You have to complete several varieties of varying shapes and difficulty levels.

One of the examples of the many puzzles you will find. You can find all kinds of goodies as you uncover the area. You can also find free powerups too.

If you click on the 3 coins, you bring up the big list of powerups. clicking on each one gives a description of what the powerup does. Images of the scrolls mean you have to use that powerup to complete one of the quests.

As you first collect the pet you gain access to them. You must solve a puzzle for each of them to power them up. You gain more from finding them in random puzzles until you see this list here.

The last mode greets you with a home with an old man. Clicking on him makes the tower grow. 

Each room has a unique shaped puzzle and either square or hex shaped spaces. You can gain powerups after completing a puzzle.

The bag holds all the items you acquire and can only be used in this mode. This is a rogue-like mini-game and you have to go through it all with one go.

Now on to the most interesting mode in the game. The online mode gives you a set amount of hearts that refill over time. Clicking on a mine and you lose a heart. 

In online mode, you must collect gems of various points and upgrade them using gold. You can find higher-level gems as you do and replace what you have. You can then sell off older gems or lower-level gems when you find them for gold. These gems accumulate points that affect your rank. When you get enough points you can take on harder online maps with better rewards. You can sometimes find keys that allow you to unlock chests. The silver and gold locks require special keys to unlock only available at rank 3.

You also use your gold to research different buffs. Lower the time it takes to regen hearts or increase the sell value of gems. You unlock more buffs as you rank up. This mode is the most fun in this game and requires an internet connection.

Sometimes you find golden teeth as you explore the big online map. These teeth are used in the shop on the next screenshot.

You have a variety of things you can buy but I recommend saving all the teeth you find to buy the keys needed to unlock more gem slots.

You can then watch videos to earn gold teeth if you need to gain extra gold to buy those upgrades.

There is a premium subscription for the online mode. It gives you some boosts that don't seem worth the extra cost.

There are several different maps. You choose the gem color you will be searching for. I would say look for a map with a low percent. You have a higher chance of finding gems or loot. Once a certain percent is reached the map is cleared and reset.

Clicking on the paper shows you all the remaining things left to find in the currently selected map.

This mood is so fun as there are many different mines hidden along the map. Standard square layout makes it difficult to complete but you can see if others click on blocks near your current location. 

Lastly, a map shows you the area you have loaded and explored. Each area loads in a square map that uses stream loading and unloading.

Overall:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Overall this is the best minesweeper clone I've ever played. There's a lot here to keep you busy for a long time. It is a lot of fun and so much to do.

Story:

No story.

Amount of ads:

 Very low.

Only option ads for bonuses.

Accurate Advertising?:

100% 

I do not recall any Ads for this game but the screenshots are very accurate. A straightforward game.

Graphics:

 5 of 5 cogs.

Many skins to choose from or you can go for the old-school feel of classic Minesweeper. A lot is going for this game and a lot of pixel art. 

Gameplay:

 5 of 5 cogs.

What can I say? There's a lot of fun here and I don't fault anything with this game except for the puzzle DLC issue.

Free play:

100%

You can play for free but I did buy the premium for skins. This is one of the rare games that I have made in-app purchases in.

Fun factor:

A blast! 

The fun doesn't end. I would recommend this game to everyone.

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