Monopoly GO! review: look at the Monopoly guy big eyes trying to steal all your money…

Monopoly Go! is a recently released mobile game available on iOS and Android, but before you dive in, think twice. This game seems to be primarily designed as a money-making scheme, relentlessly pushing in-app purchases and utilizing slot machine mechanics to enhance its addictive nature.

Monopoly GO! a review

While it carries the Monopoly name and features a familiar game board, that’s where the resemblance ends. In Monopoly Go!, the traditional gameplay mechanics are completely altered. Instead of paying for properties, you actually earn money when you land on them. Additionally, certain actions, such as shutting down your friends’ properties or engaging in bank heists, can be executed when you land on train stations.

The game introduces time-limited themes lasting around two days, offering rewards and requiring you to collect tokens when you reach specific spots on the board. Furthermore, there’s a 24-hour friendly competition where players compete against each other to accumulate the most tokens from train stations.

Beyond its surface, Monopoly Go! is riddled with dark patterns, embodying all the sins of free-to-play games and more.

1- Energy, or dice in the case of Monopoly Go, serves as a limiting factor in gameplay. You can only play with the number of dice you have, and while you might earn more through reward or other gimmicks, once you run out, you’re left with two options: pay for more or pester your friends to join.

2- Lost aversion is at play, as friends and strangers alike can wreck your game board and pilfer your hard-earned money. Repairing the board incurs costs, and if you’re not vigilant, they can snatch away all your funds (it happened to me with a staggering 24 million). When you run out of money, the game, you guess it, entices you to purchase Monopoly money with real cash.

3- Some daily rewards are hidden or hard to reach. Accessing them involves navigating through four pages of purchase temptations. The game even moved the reward from the first page to the last, leading people like myself to mindlessly click, inadvertently ending up on the google play page, where a purchase confirmation awaits.

4- Upon loading the game, you’re bombarded with approximately 4-5 pop-ups soliciting money. Themes of the day, limited-time offers, one-time deals, board reports, and at the end yet another reminder of the theme of the day—it’s an endless barrage.

5- The game employs time-based boards event, such as an event where landing on taxes earns you money or death instead of losing funds. However, to recover those gains, you must land on free parking. Which is annoying when you keep landing everywhere else but the free parking.

6- Stickers, a seemingly pointless feature, took me a while to comprehend. Finally, after assembling a set, I received a handful of dice. Yet, they remain bothersome since opening a single pack take an eternity because of the animation—a precursor to the next point.

7- Monopoly Go! inundates you with meaningless rewards, accompanied by drawn-out animations. Each action, whether it’s a shutdown or a bank heist, prompts an animation featuring the Monopoly guy donning a hard hat and riding a train. Even if the reward is a measly 10 dice, each item receives its own animation, carefully designed to elicit that dopamine rush and keep you hooked.

If you’ve managed to endure my rambling, let me confess that I wasted a staggering 17 hours on this game this week, according to my phone’s records. The dopamine rushes, the fear of not having enough shields to protect my board until the next game—all of it compels you to keep playing. That 400-dice reward when you believed you were finished? You tell yourself, ‘Guess I must play all these dice now.’. Fortunately, I didn’t spend a dime on this game.

My final verdict, considering the heavy emphasis on microtransactions and the departure from the classic Monopoly experience, it might be best to approach Monopoly Go! with caution.

I’m raking up the hour played on Slay the spire and still having fun.

The fact that this is an old game and it’s being copied all over the place (so many clones on steam and on mobile), but only a few managed to be good has Slay the spire. 

I’m trying to get my head around what makes it so addictive, is it the deck building ? the rogue-like feature ? the careful tuned balance ? the fact that you know what the enemy will do? All of the above ?

Here what I think made Slay the spire so special (for me anyway)

Generated maps with a clear objective, that you can plan the path and tell you the boss at the end. 

Rarely do you already know what is coming at you in a RPG or a game unless you already played it. That is why I think showing the whole path and the boss at the end of the map gives you time to prepare for what is coming. Oh it’s the Hexaghost, better have some block for turn two, it’s the Slime boss, I need an area of effect to take out the slime when he splits.

You know everything the enemy will do and plan accordingly

Knowing what is going to happen gives you a sense of control. Initially the only way to know what the enemies were doing was through a relic, but the beta tester liked it so much that they decided it to be a core feature.

There is no hidden information in fight. Everything can be understood by hovering over it and your deck can be accessed at all times, what you’ve played, what you haven’t and what was removed from your deck.

If you want to ‘abuse’ the randomness since the game lets you restart the fight from the beginning with the same rng. You will draw the same card, the enemy will do the same attack and you can plan differently if you’ve made a mistake.

Characters have multiple way of scaling

Each character is an archetype of the basics of the game, ironclad attacks and strength, silent skill and agility, defect power and energy and watcher is about dancing. However, even then there are many ways to build a deck depending on your card and relic and that make each run fun and unique. You can win a run with Ironclad going with a way to scale strength with demon form (gain 2 or 3 strength per turn) or a combo of Rupture (gain 1(2) strength when you lose hp from a card) with Brutality (lose 1 hp draw a card at the start of your turn) or combust (lose 1 hp deal 5 (7) damage to all enemies at the end of your turn). Maybe you prefer to abuse the exhaust mechanic with Corruption and Dark Embrace (draw 1(2) cards) and Feel No Pain (gain 3(4) blocks when a card exhausts), or focus on blocking with Barricades, Entrench and body slam.

Closing though

The game is hard and harsh if you make the wrong decision. You can pick up a card thinking it will be good, but somehow it’s a screw you draw in a crucial fight and then you’re dead.

I originally wrote this in 2020 when I bought the game during covid and I’m still playing (now on my phone). The roguelike aspect, with the deck building, knowing what the enemies combine with the fact the game is well polished and feel very balance is what really got me into it.

Happy new year everyone !

happy new year 2014!

This year have been great for the site we basically triple our readership, had our first day over 4$ and first year that the site made more than it cost, note that partly because I switched hosting.

Show me the money!

Every new year post make us look at the past year and seem what was good so here are the TOP 5 most viewed articles of 2013 on OGT.

  1. ’16-bit’ Plants vs. Zombies 2 finally Infinity blade 3 Breath of Street Fire
  2. Project Tank Online 3D Battle with 30 Tanks on Your Browser
  3. Hide and Seek Zelda II in 3d with some Dark Interval if you strip’Em all of the Duelists
  4. Lord of Ultima Guide – Building a city
  5. Weekly Browser game update: Ripple Dot Zero penguin get a Second chance with the lucky peach for the King ascent

Note out our 10 most viewed all time articles, 7 are from 2013.

Other notable event :

Show me the money!

I’ve dropped of Clash of Kingdoms, sometime I login but I basically don’t play anymore. Gold heroes, particularly Pang tong is way to strong and has a non-gold player you become a canon fodder to protect your allies Pang Tong and other gold heroes from the enemies. In S2 I used to be able to have an impact in some battle, event having one of my heroes being name in the battle report.

Happy new years everyone and here a Sexy happy new year for you has a gift 🙂

The folk at On Game Creative  sent me a press release for the new game Bubblis  this is not my writing, if they gave me access to there game you will probably have review (and screenshot) in the following week.

  • It is a videogame of words and puzzles for mobile devices with a massive target audience.
  • It is available in 44 languages distributed among 154 countries and is intended for players of all types ages 3 and up.
  • Among the languages available are Catalan, Euskera, and Galician.
  • Bubblis is available for iOS and Android, in corresponding stores, for 1’59 euros.

The objective is to construct words suggested by the game using letter-filled bubbles that fall from the top of the screen. Each of them begins with a word that a player must build horizontally. As the player places letters, new words to be completed on higher lines appear. Completing a word on a higher line is more difficult but if the player is successful he/she will receive more points.

The characters Bleeb and Bloob also form part of the game. Bleeb is an ally who at the beginning indicates with luminous circles where letters can be placed. Bleeb also provides wings to slow down falling letters, allowing for more time to finish the rounds.

On the other hand, the evil Bloob stalls game progress using bubbles filled with: vapor, smoke, ink, bombs, mines, or resonance. These obstacles are overcome with special features currently existent in some consoles, but still being innovation in mobile games.

For example, to remove the smoke from the screen, it is necessary to physically blow into the device microphone.

Each screen has a different background design. These have been elaborated one by one in artisan fashion with devices that simulate drawing on paper, and for their creators they are like small works of art. Each background represents a different part of the world, easily identifiable. There are 15 designs in total, each one with animations, aesthetics, and music characteristic of the country or region represented.

There are beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, each consisting of 15 screens that can last between 5 and 45 minutes.

The game is available in 44 languages covering 154 countries throughout the world, for which it has been necessary to engage the participation of 44 specialized translators. The language can be changed at any time by accessing the game´s configuration menu. The languages in which the game is available, ordered according to their predominance, are:

English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Korean, Italian, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, Turkish, Polish, Malay, Thai, Swedish, Indonesian, Norwegian, Greek, Tagalog, Catalan, Czech, Hebrew, Danish, Finnish, Romanian, Hungarian, Vietnamese, Slovak, Hindi, Bulgarian, Afrikaans, Croatian, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Latvian, Estonian, Macedonian, Maltese, Armenian, Euskera and Galician.

About the Creators

On Game Creative is a young Spanish company, recently established. Bubblis is its first project. The company is headquartered in Badajoz and operates through its Barcelona delegation. It is currently working on new projects and is finalizing the PC and MAC versions of Bubblis that should be launched before the the end of the year.

Baldur’s gate

A week ago I wrote that Bladur’s gate will be soon available on Ipad and We got more news that it will support multiplayer and should cost less than 10$.

More on touch arcade

Rotten tangerine (iOS & android)

I came across a really nice indie mobile game, it’s called Rotten tangerine, it’s available on android and iphone.

The goal is to prevent your tangerine to go bad, by tapping on the rotten one good tangerine will appear. However, sometime monsters appear and they will attack you tangerine to make them rot.

120328_tangerine

Check out the review at Indiegames.com: http://indiegames.com/2012/03/mobile_game_pick_rotten_tanger.html

Worm is back

I usually don’t review pc game but I was surprise that they’re a new worm game coming, on pc & console. It’s call worm revolution, here the video footage :

It’s look good, they used a new graphic engine and added 3d. This one will definitely go on my wish list.

Epic sax game

I don’t know what to say about this game, it almost could go in a bad game review but it’s too original to do so. From indie game :

“In Epic Sax Game, players attempt to replicate Epic Sax Guy’s solo using six keyboard keys. After practicing, you can record a studio version and join a jam session before attempting the toughest challenge of all: a ten-hour YouTube video, performed live.”

Well I tried it and let say it music is not my strength but it’s definitely fun to try but I won’t take my chance on the 10 hours jam … 

You can play it here : http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/epicsaxgame/EpicSaxGame.html

Call of Gods review

I recently added a press release for the game call of gods.  Since I wanted to know more about the game, I played for 3 week now and wrote a Review on hub page.

If you are interested on reading the review you can check it at this url :

http://jackofspade.hubpages.com/hub/Online-web-game-Review-Call-of-god

wildAttk

YooGame sent me a press release for the new Call of the god server, I just got started at this game so I’ll write a formal review in the next following week

Yoogames will release its 7th server “Wonderland” of COG (Call of Gods) on PST 7:00 Mar 1st. Get ready to conquer the new land and enjoy the new adventure.

select-characer

Call of Gods is a free-to-play browser game of MMORPG & SLG genre with a
background story of wars among the Gods. In this game, players will play a warrior of human, elf or undead and develop their armies to fight against each other.

Particular and detailed Game Guide will help you master playing quickly.

With particular and detailed guide of quests in game and prompt of daily quests in Call of Gods (COG), players who have never played any game will be familiar with this game. Players will know what quests they should complete per day with the particular prompt which includes many kinds
of unique systems in COG. With the help of this Game Guide, players not only will upgrade their characters’ level, but also know very well about all these systems as soon as possible.

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Strategy System with various options

In Call of Gods, player will recruit hero in Tavern, choose series of advanced equipments and obtain your legendary heroes with highest attributes by leveling up your hero and study kinds of skills.

 

Then choose the best formation of hero arranging to assign different units. With special hero
formation, you will even defeat more powerful enemy than troops of yours.

heroes

Breathtaking alliance war will give you intensive PVP with passion

Different from other web-game, COG will provide a powerful alliance to help your explore the new world. After creating or joining an alliance, you will build your alliance to be a powerful one with your mates and create the sovereign supremacy on the fantastic land. Strategies will be adopted when you fight against your enemies with your friends in the alliance war. The order of your alliance member, your choice of defences or attack will influence the result of the alliance war which is composed of benefits and glory.

fight

Powerful castle will be your solid backing of your exploration

In the castle, player will build various buildings which have different functions of providing abundant resources, supporting enough troops, increasing fighting capacity with leveling up tech, etc.

castle

Hurry up to experience these awesome features and enjoy the amazing COG on here.

COG on Yoogames: http://www.yoogames.com/cog/

I’ve been suggested to look at a new game call DDTank. I seem pretty recent since most review date from the end of 2011.

DDTank is  kind of Worms like game with mmo element to, where to aim you give the angle you throw and how much power you put behind it. I might not have the nifty weaponry of worm but have a lot of element to it. They’re a weird thing with the name, there no tank in the game which is misleading.

When you start the game, you much first create a character and then you start with a basic weapon, a Hammer.
ddtank-create
After a quick tutorial where they explain how to shoot, equip weapon, do mission and how to play vs other player you get a good sense of the game.
personal

You can fight up with 3 others player, bigger fight would probably be a lot of fun too but it currently only support 4 player fight.
From what I played getting the physic right is really hard. In my first fight it took about 10 shoot before me or my opponent to hit each other.  That probably due to the only 10 second to aim which is not a lot. Another things that weird it’s it can by your turn twice or your opponent cans go twice before you, it prevents some kind of abuse like oh no he’s next so better hide but it remove at the same time the sense of what should you really be doing. Oh and once you shoot it seems you can move, maybe that only me but I would like to use my whole 10 seconds.

fight

Balance
One thing I found from the few game I played the fact that there leveling and pay for advantage might be a great idea but in the game sense it feel unfair. On my first game my opponent was using a better weapon and boost and did 2-3 time the damage I did. Lucky for me he seems to have no clue how to aim when we are close so I was able to win anyway. In even if you both have the same weapon and number of worm, the map and who started the turn could do the whole difference between victory and defeat, with DDTank you have the same element but other can have a weapon advantages which increase the feeling of unfairness.
What to do
If you’re not playing the city provide you with a lot of stuff to do, from training to mission and shopping for new gear. You can even have a wedding with your other DDTank friend.

city
Overall
The idea behind DDTank are great but not exploited to its fullest. Since it’s new, they probably have a lot of good stuff coming so let keep a good eye on the game.

I’ve been looking around for some good hockey simulator game and SHL was one of them because I used to play in 2004 when it was a is prime.
SHL is humorous ice hockey game where you choose tactics, formations, aggression levels, transfer in new players and win great prizes.

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The game kind of lost is shine since they didn’t really improved it since there initial release and with all those FB game and html5 game it kind of seem outdated.

What the game is about ?

You’ve been hired has a coach for a Senior hockey team and you must train them, set-up there line, recruit new player and prepare the game plan for each game.

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Your goal has to go to the top of the conference to be in the top team and win various tourney to show you team domination.

How your team rank ?

Your team is ranked based on a pyramid system

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Each conference have 3 leagues these leagues are separated by section and division. When you’re in the top 4 you go up a division and if you in the bottom 4 you go down a division. They are some exception (like when switching league).

There a manager standing too, so you can see how you rank compare to other managers, your number of victory, goal and against who you won influence that standing.

How to play

First thing you should do when you start playing is to set up your line to have your best player for line 1 & 2 and to remove missing player from the line up. We will talk about the specific in another post.

combo box instead of dragging the player in the right line, very old school.

combo box instead of dragging the player in the right line, very old school.

Once your line are ready update you need to update your tactic, there 3 tactic to update and keep in mind your opponent can see them, however you can change them in game with the advance tactic and the other players don’t have access to that.

Playing style
The playing style depend mostly on the ice quality, some say its depend on your team strength too.

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The math is simple :
Fast Ice – european style
Normal ice – possession
surface water : Dump and chase
Slush:Dump and chase
Poor Ice: possession

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Instruction
The other tactic is the the instruction, is kind of a rock paper scissor vs. the other team where attack beat defence, defence beat counter attack and counter attack beat attack.

Aggression
And the last not the least the aggression level depend on the referee, basically I use normal all game except when Stan Dupcomic is the referee, for him I use Psycho.
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There other nice feature for the time that other hockey simulator have picked up, like training and making friendly game with your friend or challenging other player to a game.

SHL is a old school simulator it was nice when I played it but now it kind of old, the interface feel like 1999 and there not much to do except setting up your team and checking the other team game to prepare your tactic.

More on SHL :
Beginner guide
Training guide
Cash guide

Webpage : seniorleaguehockey.com

Disclaimer: I’m not gonna do another review that describes everything about the game if you want one go here or there. It’s a simple impression about the game, what I liked, what different from other similar game (in this case Clash of Kingdom).

 

First impression

Before going in the detail, it want to give my first feelings while trying the game.
While the game might look like a Clash of Kingdoms clones they tried harder to make some dynamic different, Koram did a better job that they did with mythopolis and some features in the game are different from Clash of Kingdoms.

world

The basic

You get to chose between 4 tribes, this might change in the future, there seem to be some other city that might be used like London (the angles or Saxon perhaps) , Constantinople (former roman empire),  Barcelona (for the arab maybe even though it’s historically later that they took Spain) or maybe even Athene (Greeks)
You can read about the barbarian invasion on wikipedia, it’s actually very interesting to see how they come up with all those tribes.

 

 

Features

Instead of going through all the feature I’ve decided simply to point out what make the game fun and what new compare to a really similar game CoK.
While at a first glace, it may seem that Idomitus is a Clash of kingdom clone, when you play it you realised that while the fondamental of clash of kingdom, they changed a some feature that changes a bit the game and the outcome of it.

city

First there no premier elected
Instead of having to run for a premier, the premier (rank X) have to be in the tops player and have a lot of development point.
While there seem to be no apparent for of leadership, leadership is somewhat acquired to meritocracy since you can only increase rank when you achieve a certain level of development. Like in the time of barbarian the strongest will lead the tribes.

I wonder how this will play out, I’ve been a premiers and some player already tend to ignore PO and do crazy stuff, I think well organized guilds will tend to influence more the direction of the kingdom.

guild

Guilds may seem like legion but they can actually have power over city changing rank and taking care of city boost.

The other thing that strokes me is in the beta (or alpha not sure) they were no way to form alliance, I wonder if they will lead it like this. Will I think alliance and peace treaties are a good way to prevent unfortunate attack in the game, removing it in a barbarian invasion setting actually make sense. I these time of darkness the tribes often plot and betray each other in other to get more land and riches.

blackmarket

In the new black market you can buy scrolls and exchange items.

There some change in city management too.
Now instead of city governor, a guild must invest in a city in other to gain control of it and get the privilege to issues city boost and post message.
There are many other notable change, like the way your heroes gain xp, the arena fight (for last man standing and Historical campaign now have an entrance) and the black market has some cool new feature like you can trade you older weapon.

hc 

In the Historical campaign and Last man standing you now have to choose which entrance your hero take determining who they will fight.

I actually liked the game and the fact they gave us free gold to play with for the beta testing. You can tried it here and here some link if you want to check some review:

http://www.thirteen1.com/2011/06/13/review-indomitus/
http://games.bbgsite.com/content/indomitus/index.shtml