Promiscuous Gamer

Toy Rush-es off and on, but League of War, Wartune and Age of Wind 3 bloom

This guy will play anything as long as it's free

Toy Rush-es off and on, but League of War, Wartune and Age of Wind 3 bloom

As game executive Bing Gordon famously put it (about) in 2010, "This is the most promiscuous app audience in the history of mankind".

This is the weekly diary of a promiscuous gamer....

But, it's not been weekly. Actually it's been more than a month since my latest entry. Blame Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki and a five-month-old baby.

Nevertheless, onwards dear friends. So much has (or hasn't) changed in a month.

1. Heroes of Honor (Nonstop Games)
I'm still stuck in a resource-poor situation that will only be resolved by playing a lot more, spending money or uninstalling.

2. Dungeon Keeper (EA)
Sadly developer Mythic has been shut down, which seems to have coincided with even worst server problems than before. Yet I will continue to play this until I have build my ring road defensive system Master Plan

3. Royal Revolt 2 (flaregames)
Just when I was getting bored, there's been a great update which provides the ability to buy items to customise and hence improve your playable character.

New things to buy in Royal Revolt 2

Still, you do have to collect a lot of soft currency to be able to afford any of it. Yet, for me, thanks to its combination of gameplay, presentation and monetisation, Royal Revolt 2 is shaping up to be one of my games of the year. And someone else agrees, as developer flaregames has just raised $12 million.

4. Boom Beach (Supercell)
Is it heretical to say I'm getting bored of Boom Beach?

5. Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff (TinyCo)
A very nice update to the game has landed, which added a pyramid full of partying zombie mummies and a new secondary gameplay currency - golden winged bums.

Peter goes all Indiana Jones

Sure, Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff monetises very hard in terms of the gap between grinding items and encouraging high value real money purchases, but that's what brands allow you to do.

6. Trials Frontier (RedLynx/Ubisoft)
I'm still not very good at Trials Frontier, but I still think it looks lovely.

7. FarmVille 2: Country Escape (Zynga)
Haven't played recently.

8. Hearthstone (Blizzard)
Started playing this again and then realised I'd forgot how to play it. Will have to add it to the daily folder, and replay the tutorial. Sign...

9. SlingShot Braves (Colopl)
Haven't played recently.

10. PAC-MAN (GREE/Bandai Namco)
Haven't played recently.

11. Soul Calibur: Unbreakable Soul (Bandai Namco)
Haven't played recently.

Installed #1: Toy Rush (Uber)
An interesting but ultimately strange hybrid of tower defence/attack, which has you building your defences and your army of attacking units via the cards you collect.

Toy Rush - an odd game

The art style is also a strange mixture of cute and abstract, but the biggest issue is you have no idea what any of the very surreal units actually do. There are some neat touches, like a mini-game for collecting more in-game currency, and the UI is nice, but in general it's much too clever for me to understand.

Installed #2 Dragons: Rise of Berk (Ludia/Dreamworks)
A tie-in with the new How To Train Your Dragon film, it appears that I am the berk, because this city-building and dragon raising game has me totally confused.

I've got 2 dragons - one of which catches fish, one of which collects wood, -these being the game's basic resources. I need more vikings to get more dragons, but I'm not sure how to do that. In fact, everything I want to do seems highly dependent on access to large amounts of the Runes hard currency. Hmmm....

Installed #3 League of War (MunkyFun/GREE)
GREE in a good game shocker? Is it so. Developed by SF studio MunkyFun (which made My Horse  for NaturalMotion), League of War mixes head-to-head castle defence with card collection mechanics and the usual array of daily bonus, events, and random drops to combine a rewarding metagame with simple but effective 'paper-scissors-stone within a resource management' gameplay.

League of War - Making things go bang

I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying this.

Installed #4 Wartune: Hall of Heroes (Kabam/Hoolai)
This very popular Chinese MMORPG comes to mobile. As might be expected, it's a little rough around the edges, but what it lacks in subtlety in terms of the city-building part of the game, seems to be balanced in the squad-based action. But, at the moment, I'm really only scratching the surface.

Installed #5 Outernauts (Insomniac)
I was looking forward to Insomniac (Ratchet & Clank, Resistance) doing a mobile F2P game, but first impressions are that Outernauts feels a bit version 0.1. Much like Wartune: Hall of Heroes, the base-building element feels weak and under developed, while the combat element is much more exciting.

Installed #6 Age of Wind 3 (Deemedya)
Generally, I think I'll like tank games but don't, and think I won't like ship games, but do. So far, that's my take on Age of Wind 3, which is a really well put together pirate action game. Really enjoying it.

Installed #7 Metal Slug Defense (SNK)
A F2P side-scrolling heavily pixelated castle defence game based on the famous all-action Metal Gear Slug franchise. It's almost mad enough an idea to work. But I don't quite think it does.

An interesting hybrid - Metal Slug Defense

Uninstalled #1: Adventure Town (Supersolid)
Everyone must eventually churn and so must I with Adventure Town. It's a great little game. One that loads fairly quickly, so you can pop in to harvest some crops, collect some gold and refill some shops. Fundamentally, though, there is no midrange. You just keep doing the same things, which nice as the overall environment is, eventually - even to me - becomes pointless.

Goodbye Adventure Town

Perhaps related, this is a game that's really ungenerous in terms of rewarding you with hard currency, and I never did get around to spending any money either.

Uninstalled #2: Game of Thrones: Ascent (Kongregate)
If I was the fan of Game of Thrones and it was the only game I was playing, I would be in hog heaven, but the text-based adventure just proved too time consuming and complex for me.

Uninstalled #3: Lionheart Tactics (Emerald City/Kongregate)
Although nicely presented, I found the tactics-style gamepay a little slow and involved.

Uninstalled #4: Little Alchemist (Kongregate)
I enjoyed this simple kid-focused card collection game, if only to see how the various base cards combined into new characters. But fundamentally, there wasn't enough interesting stuff going on to keep my attention.

Uninstalled #5: Isolani (DeNA)
What a disappointment. Despite being a massive 470MB, this space shooter from Scattered Entertainment lacks character and interest as you fight your way through generic levels of generic, spawning enemies in the fastest time possible.

The only interesting conclusion for me was the decision to reinstall The Drowning - a game I'm actually now considering finishing (in as much as it can be finished).

Uninstalled #6: HonorBound (Juicebox)

I decided to give HonorBound another chance and even spent $4.99 to fill my coin vault and hence level up some characters. Yet despite trying, I couldn't really get into it again, especially as it's not a game that easily enables you to swap new characters in and out of your squad.

My other big issue is that despite being listed as 62MB on the App Store, my iPad says the game's size is 1.3GB and I need the space.

Uninstalled #7: Toy Rush (Uber)
See Installed #1

Weekly recap
Installed: 7
Uninstalled: 7

In Play: 18
To Be Played: 0

Spending: $4.99
To-date 2014 'Life Time' Value: $33.93

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.