Tap Smiths is just boring; It's a game where you make items by tapping alternatively left and right on your screen and then after a while your day is over and you go sell these items and make some money with which you buy upgrades for your hammer, anvil and other tools. Then you rinse and repeat, with no apparent changes in the things you are making, how much you are making, and how much money you get at the end. That's why I've found Tap Smiths boring, there's no challenge, no progression and no real goal.
voi is a pure little puzzle game on iOS where you move black shapes in order to create a target image. Overlapping black creates white and layering these shapes on top of each other will finally result in your goal. It's a real neat little game even if I just pretty much described it in its entirety. I went through all it's puzzles and I wholeheartedly recommend it to puzzle fans.
Wizard Swipe is an iOS game where you have to 'swipe' the screen to throw spells at waves of advancing enemies to protect your castle, using more powerful spells on cooldowns and upgrades to survive better. It started pretty okay, but the difficulty curve quickly ramped up to a point where I would have needed to grind too much in order to get further. It's too bad, since the game has a nice blend of challenges and upgrades so I wish I could've stomached to play some more.
I have not much to say about LOUD on Planet X, it wasn't a game I enjoyed at all, so I didn't play it more than what I felt was necessary to get a grasp on it. It is a music-based tower-defense game where you tap to the beat of the music to attack aliens, using special items and more powerful moves when appropriate. The main issue I had with it is that I disliked every single track of music they had, which is really bad for a music-based game. So that really soured me to the whole thing. I also was a bit confused about the timing of taps, sometimes it followed beats, sometimes I felt like I was just tapping willy-nilly, still hitting the mark. Maybe this game will be more suited to your musical tastes, but it sure wasn't to mine.
Egg Inc. is an incremental clicker-like game where you press a button to hatch chickens that lay eggs that you then sell for money to buy upgrades to hatch more chickens and lay better eggs faster, to get more money so you can upgrade your eggs and then prestige to get even better eggs. It's a really neat idle game - even if it's idle component isn't free by default - and I sunk a ton of hours into it, and even a few bucks! It's a cool game.
Reigns is one of these weird choose your own adventure type of game mixed with some kingdom management on iOS with a little of a rogue-like flair where you make decisions by swiping a card left or right, affecting your kingdom in four categories, with the immediate goal of not having any meter go too high or too low. There is an overarching story that expends as you find new cards and unlock more characters, and while I haven't got there, I presume that there is an ending to reach at some point. I had some good time with it, but ultimately grew bored.
Human Resource Machine is a great puzzler on iOS from the World of Goo and Little Inferno people. In theory, it's a game where you put commands in a box to take inputs and produce outputs defined by the game in order to solve puzzles. In practice, I find that it's more or less a game where you code in assembly language and while that might not be the cup of tea of everyone, I really enjoyed it!
Unmatch is a puzzler on iOS where you need to move hexagons around so there are no matches between them. These matches occur when sides of the same colors are adjacent, so you swap them around until no hexagon is matched with any other. The game adds a few more mechanics over its long level list, but the core idea always remain the same. I've completed it - although not perfecting every level - and I really enjoyed it!
Gem Hunters is one of those games. It's a puzzle RPG where you need to match tiles in order to damage enemies, which after a few turns will attack you. This one brings the subtle twist on the genre that enemies have elemental weaknesses and resistances and that you get random gear that you can upgrade from chests. Inevitably, after a while you hit a wall where you can't defeat the enemy without paying some premium currency or grinding a whole bunch, needless to say, I wasn't impressed.
The Firm is one of these very simple but tightly created game where the number of actions you're expected to do is very low, but the pressure builds up and you make mistakes and complexity ramps up progressively until you ultimately lose. I had a good deal of fun trying to unlock the various power-ups you could get, but getting the last one was a bit too much grinding, so I stopped. I'd still recommend it, tho! It's a neat timewaster. Sorry for the lack of screenshots, my work process ate them.
Space Marshall is a neat action RPG on iOS where you play a space cowboy that goes after various criminals using guns and explosives. It's not entirely perfect, but I had a good time with it, especially since the mix of twin stick controls and touch screens doesn't always work. I could see this game work on other platforms as well, but it doesn't detract from the experience; A nice shooter with unlockable gear and replayability - perhaps a bit too much.
A Firelit Room is a graphical overhaul on A Dark Room, a game I've reviewed earlier, it improves a bit on the gameplay as well and makes it a bit more bearable. While it improves on some systems, I feel that it worsens the experience in other ways. I enjoyed the idle aspect a bit more, but world exploration and overall upgrades were even slower this time around; Worse, some of the new UI changes made the game even less playable.
_PRISM is a really neat little puzzle game that reminded me of The Witness in some ways; you start in a puzzle 'zone' and do some easy puzzles to learn the rules and everything, then move on to more difficult ones, rotating giant things around, trying to get to their core. It ran kinda badly on my iPad 3, but that's starting to be the norm these days; Maybe I should upgrade at some point?
Looty Dungeon is a glorified Crossy Road where you move forward and try to complete quests to get coins in order to buy more characters and keep doing that forever. At least in this version, the different characters have different abilities, but the game doesn't control well, the progression curve isn't fun and I don't have much positive to add about it; Needless to say, I haven't played it much.
Maybe Doomsday Clicker is a neat game, but it ran like butts on my gen 3 iPad. It's a bit boring to review a game poorly because of performance, but if I'm allowed to buy it on my decide and if it's 'supported', it should at least run well. Doubly so for an idle game, moving the menus around shouldn't be a time-consuming effort, with each clicks taking a few seconds to register properly. It's kinda of a shame, because at the same time, some systems in DC were interesting.
I Keep Having This Dream is a delightful little game that I would keep playing to completion if my plate wasn't already full as-is with other games to look at. It's a roguelike puzzle game where you place tiles in order to get to the exit of a series of increasingly difficult levels while followed by an entity called The Nemesis. You level up and find new gear, you unlock new enemies and new events to hinder and help you and you try to get as far as you can. It's great!
Miitomo is as good as the amount you care about your online friends and what they think about things. There's not much in it otherwise besides some light Mii customization and the only mini-game included is pretty terrible. It's more of a social app than a game, but I enjoy using it almost daily because, like I said opening this review, it's only entertaining and relevant if you care about that kind of stuff, and I do!
Besides being a grab at people's desire for more Kingdom Hearts, KHXU isn't much in terms of a game. It's full of free to play mechanics that I dislike - mainly fusing stuff and getting random items in exchange for the premium currency - but I've gotta say that the kingdom hearts feel is there. With some retooling this could've been a 'real' game that I would've cared about as an entry in the KH franchise, but besides being a grab for fan attention, it's a bit disappointing.
Tap Tycoon has some trappings from Venture Capitalist - upgrading your revenue generating items will improve their speed and percentage-wise value - and being allowed to buy helpers that automatically collect stuff for you, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did VC. The idea of old-school tapping a bunch on the screen to collect trace amounts of cash isn't that fun and in the grand scheme of things, you're better off generating passive revenue in these kind of games. There's some 'war' aspect where you send soldiers to fight for your country and some card system, but both were obtuse and confusing in their own ways.
SquareSpace ate my Frontier Defense review.
It's a neat tower defense cross idle iOS game, the premium currency is fast to get and there's plenty of stuff to do, heroes and shooting units to upgrade and buttons to tap in order to attack and unleash special abilities. I had a fun time with it.
