What Have I Been Wasting My Time With?
Currently, all I have is time and, apart from working on a couple of new, secret projects, I have been downloading and playing some games on my BlueStacks (PC client). I thought I would share these with you guys, as I found them to be entertaining, albeit distracting!
It is important to note that most games now are free-to-play, but contain in-app purchases, which could include the dreaded “loot boxes” (See this Wikipedia Article for definition). We here at Loxtech Gaming want to stress that, although making purchases within these games has been made so easy, it is vital you stop and think about whether you really need these extra items, or if you can realistically afford to do so. Another useful Wikipedia Article covers “Gacha” games, which is the umbrella term that includes loot boxes.
If anyone wants me to try a game out and review it, mail me.
Evony: The King’s Return
Developer: TopGames Inc. (Visit Home)
Platform: Mobile and PC (PC link)
Price: Free-to Play
In-App Purchases: Yes
Social: Multiplayer Only
Lox’s Ranking: Good / Very Enjoyable / Awesome!
My Take?
This is an insanely addictive game that is so broad in its complexity that I got hooked a few years ago and still play it on a daily basis. Once you start gaining power and get involved with alliances, it is almost impossible to stop. This is a hard one to describe in a few paragraphs, but I’ll give it a go.
You are a Monarch. You have your own city (Keep). You are one of a few hundred people in a server, on one big map. There are thousands of other servers around you. You build up your city, you train troops, recruit generals, battle, against monsters, barbarian keeps, other players’ keeps, or the main city in the centre. You become more and more powerful over time, until – if you are good enough – you can become the server’s ruler. Okay, so not too complicated, right?
You obviously start off small, with a tiny keep with a few buildings inside. You have to build up your strength by building new structures and then training troops. Farms inside your city automatically collect resources for your endeavours and troop training facilities can work non-stop pumping out units for you to use as defence, offence or gathering resources from resource spots in the world (known as “tiles” or “RSS spots” to many.
As you gather resources and items from gathering, or attacking NPC mobs (or players if you’re brave enough at this point), you can upgrade your buildings to unlock higher tier troops and equipment. Your main city administrative building is your Keep. This needs to be levelled up to open up more building types and upgrade options. Building, training, research technologies, crafting eqipment and healing et cetera, all costs resources and time.
The game does provide you with a few basic generals (troop leaders) to play with at the start, but you can recruit new, more powerful, or better suited generals, from various sources as the game progresses. Generals are fully cutomisable in terms of the equipment (armour) they wear, and the additional refinements placed on them. This is a fairly easy principle to pick up at the start, but as you get more experienced, you will see how much more focus you need to spend on this aspect to maximise your power and abilities later on.
I’ve mentioned researching technologies, which is done through the Academy building. Each technology researched grants additional percentages on various things in the game, from power, defence, time reductions, and lots of other aspects in the game. Research starts off fairly quick but later on, you could have to wait for weeks, or even months to research 1 technology. Don’t panic though…
This game provides so much in the way of collectible resources… not just your basic building or training materials, but also “speedups”, which can help reduce build/research/training timers, so once you get to a technology which may take 2 days to finish, for example, you will likely have items such as 48 x 1 hour speedups to use. I’m crap at explaining so check it out for yourself.
I could go on, but I’ve just scratched the surface of what’s in this game. You really can play it all day and still have things to do somewhere. It is likely that in the beginning you may not be able to go as far as you want before having to leave the game to idle a bit, but you will see that the developers have thought about this and provided many different activities to do.
This game is what I would call pay-to-win BUT it isn’t oppressive with it… what I mean is, with time, anyone can build their power and skill to the same level. There are so many packages you can buy and it can be tempting when you need just a little bit more, so be careful with that. Recently, the rewards for general gameplay have increased with the new level cap of 45, so if you are new, join an alliance and reap the massive rewards for others killing the big stuff!
I gave this my top ranking of Awesome! for this game as I’ve been playing it for a few years and am not bored. I do go through periods of burnout, and then login to do my dailies and not much else, but this always subsides – especially if you’re in a good alliance, with amazing people around you.
Get this game and give it a good go. You will need to get past an introduction period before the real game starts… don’t be put off by it, just follow it and eventually you can play normally.
Side note: I am on server 1191 if anyone comes looking!
Gold & Goblins: Idle Games
Developer: AppQuantum (Visit Home)
Platform: Google Play (Direct link)
Price: Free-to Play
In-App Purchases: Yes
Social: Single Player (Though there is a leaderboard in events)
Lox’s Ranking: Good / Very Enjoyable / Awesome!
My Take?
I don’t know quite why I like this game. I think it’s because I have a thing for mining. Whether it’s EVE Online, World of Warcraft, MineCraft, or any other game where you have to actively mine to get resources, I just get right into them. This is a little different though, as you don’t really collect anything, but coins, gems, Elixir bottles, chests, upgrade cards and keys (in events) – well that is a few things lol.
You mission is simple: enter a mine, buy low-level goblins and start mining out the rocks. As you progress you get money from unearthing and repairing sub-mines along the way, which you use to buy new goblins. Merging goblins raises their level and making them better miners (quicker). The rocks themselves have levels too, making it harder, or longer, to mine, unless you develop goblins to match or surpass their level. The sub-mines themselves can be upgraded and automated, depending on whether you have collected enough cards and Elixir bottles, and this money is used solely to buy more goblins to mine.
Once you finish a mine, you move on to the next. Between each level there is now a mini-game where you drive a massive truck through rocks to collect extra goodies, which is very fun but only lasts 30 seconds or so. All your goblins and mine development resets to zero with each mine, but you keep all the cards and their upgrades for the next mine
Gems are the valuable resource in this game and they are hard to collect, so use them very wisely. They are used to buy extra Elixir bottles, missing upgrade cards and time bonuses. Of course this means that if you run out, the game will want real-life money to buy more. I have avoided this so far. It is not a problem – you just need more patience.
Every few days there are themed events. When I wrote this, there was a Halloween-themed event. These are just extra mines that are separate from your main mines, where you can mine out rocks for keys. These are used to unlock bonus items for your main game. With events, all the cards, upgrades and bottles are event specific and will all disappear when it ends, but the event rewards go to your main mine.
This is an idle game, meaning that you can play whenever you want and if you go make a cup of tea or close the app, the goblins will still keep mining (they don’t get a break!).
Overall this is a bit of fun as a side game. I rated it “Good” as it is fairly simple and you don’t really play along with anyone else so purely a distraction when bored. Worth checking it out. I think you will either like it or not!
Other Games
I will be writing another post soon with a few more games… I play a lot!