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.

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Galactic Colonies

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Today I bring you Galactic Colonies.

You can download it here: Galactic Colonies on Google Play

In this game, you explore the galaxy. You are giving a colony ship and you must travel around and building structures to gain wealth and rank. This game is hard to classify, there is only a minor idle game aspect that doesn't count for much. The only idle rewards are credits on your active colony. The simplest way to classify this game is to call it a casual space simulator.

This is your map. It is divided into sectors. Each one has a handful of planets, sometimes a space station or even an asteroid field. You must complete a certain number of planets to open up a wormhole that takes you to a new sector.

You also have a player level that offers perks as you progress. More on that later. In the top left are "time capsules." These are a kind of premium currency that you use to buy a better ship or use various buffs.

When you choose a planet, you get this screen that shows you your objectives. So far all the objectives are fairly easy and you can complete a planet normally in one sitting.

Welcome to the planet's surface. Here you get a rundown of stuff. The in-game tutorial will explain what everything is so I will skip that.

Each colony starts with the same basic needs. You build a farm. Connect it to a warehouse, and then connect that warehouse to the residential building. Each resident requires food. You then grow colonists over time. I found that each warehouse can have four input connections and four output connections.

You then must explore the hexagons using credits to gain more places to build. Overall, there are only about 20 buildings and you only use them about half of the time.

When you level up, after level 5, you unlock skill points. Each skill gives you a permanent boost in some way. I recommend rushing the upgrade that looks like waves. This allows you to uncover whole oceans with one exploration.

If you click on one of the grey hexagons on the HUD, you get to choose temporary buffs. You watch a short video to get these bonuses for 15 minutes. All ads are optional and are not needed to complete the game.

Next is research. Taking time, you can research upgrades or new buildings. The highest research takes 20 hours and that can be knocked down using boosters. Each one will remove 4 hours from research. This will idle along and requires no resources. There are 3 categories, each relating to the same build categories you find planetside.

Space stations allow you to buy a new ship. Each stage gives you more speed and more colonies. This is supposed to allow you to have 2 or more active colonies but this is worthless as you can only interact with a planet your ship orbits, so just complete planets one at a time.

Lastly... The cosmetic upgrades. These cost real money and can not be purchased with collected currencies.

Overall:

 

4 of 5 cogs.

This is a fun game. It's fast and simple to play but can get repetitive. I feel noncompletionists will get more with the repetitive gameplay. Other than that, anyone can pick this game up and play for just a few minutes a day.

Story:

 

1 of 5 cogs.

There is no story beyond the tutorial. This game seems open-ended and has no real endgame.

Amount of ads:

No pop-up ads. All ads are 100% optional and you can do everything without money unless you want the paints.

Advertised as seen:

💯%

Every screenshot and ad I've seen matches the game. No hidden agendas and everything is straightforward.

Graphics:

 4 of 5 cogs.

The graphics are 3d and simplistic. Everything is visually appealing and adds to the feeling of the game.

Audio:

 

3 of 5 cogs.

The music is nice and peaceful but loops very quickly. It has a general sci-fi feel. The sound effects are very similar and will get repetitive very quickly. There isn't anything that stands out about sounds.

Gameplay:

 4 of 5 cogs.

Easy, fast, and simple. Each planet takes a short time to complete. The strategies are easy to master but it does get boring after doing the same thing all the time.

Free play:

💯%

You can play and unlock everything except paint. If you play long enough, you are given everything you need. The only thing is you may have to watch videos to get enough time capsules to upgrade your ship. There are microtransactions to speed up gameplay but you don't need them.

Fun factor:

👽 out of this world.

It is great fun for your whole space family.

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