I couldn’t get very far in Diablo Immortal because I don’t have any mobile devices with sufficient storage space to download all the required stuff, and that’s all right. While a mobile version of a popular action RPG franchise is certainly something that could be fine and not something I would be opposed to in principle, I still am staunchly opposed to free to play games that blur the design line between playing for fun, playing as a replacement to paying money and playing as a vehicle to extract money from players. You’ll understand that Diablo Immortal is one of these games.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Square Valley is a solid puzzler for iOS where you place tiles around a map, draw roads and rivers and try to maximize your score to hit a certain target with the constraints of the level you are in. I had a lot of fun with it, even tho I feel like the game could’ve worded some stuff a bit better and surfaced more data overall. It was still a pretty inventive and interesting game!

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Cmd C is an okay idle game themed around programming and computer science tasks. While I enjoyed the concept it has of tiered mechanics, challenges and upgrades, the act structure really took me out of it because I rarely play idle games for their story. It’s not completely a bust, but I didn’t stick with it too long.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier
CategoriesiOS, Idle, 3/5

Knotwords is a little crossword puzzle-like game on iOS where instead of finding words using hints for lines and rows, you have to ‘untangle’ weirdly shaped ‘knots’ of words on a big grid, which ultimately leads to words appearing on lines and rows. For a free game with a premium unlock, I had a ton of fun, but only when I finally activated a feature that helped me know if my words were correct - the game was a bundle of knots before that! Aha.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Kaiju Attack is a fairly simple match-3 game where you fight off various Kaijus using tanks, planes and other tiles with various effects. Based on your success, you get money after battles, which you can use to upgrade your special weapons and other stats. There isn’t much else to say about it! I enjoy premium games without ads and there seems to be a good chunk on content in this one, but it got fairly repetitive and stale for me kinda quickly. Pretty neat game, still! Love the monster design.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories3.5/5, iOS, RPG

State Connect: Traffic Control, a game that looked like it was about connecting cities, collecting money and buying upgrades and more connections, just served me ads non-stop. I wasn’t going to pay 14 dollars for a game that couldn’t even have -some- gameplay before bombarding me with randomly popping videos. No thank you!

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AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories1/5, Idle, iOS

Technopoly has an interesting idea - building around structures on an island, improving resource production until you have enough to build bridges to different islands, rinse and repeat, with a fine art style and some interesting flavor. Sadly, you need to pay real money or watch ads to do pretty much everything. The most egregious offender is about the bridges you build between islands, which get doled out at a glacial pace if you don’t want to pay premium currencies. That’s all.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Micro RPG is a neat core idea bogged down by the banal horrors of mobile game development. A simple main mechanic about your character spinning around using different weapons and you needing to tap to attack enemies moving in and out of your range in order to defeat them, but encased in a pile of premium currencies, timers and lootboxes filled with cards used to level up things. Needless to say, I wasn’t a huge fan past the core concept.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories2.5/5, iOS, RPG

Tetris on iOS, it’s not that great. The controls are fine, but it’s just another free to play game filled with everything you’d expect that really does detract from the fun of playing Tetris. I would’ve gladly paid 5 dollars to play some Tetris in peace. Maybe I should just dig up Tetris DS again!

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Tiny Island Survival has an interesting idea - what if a little incremental/exploration game took place on a single screen representing a single island? What could you do then, how much stuff would there be to do? I ultimately do not know, because it’s also a game that has ads so invasive I would rather shut it down and load it back up whenever they popped during gameplay, until it ultimately wore me down and I stopped playing. An interesting core idea, for sure, tho!

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Dawncaster is an amazing deckbuilding roguelike where you fight monsters and build your character using a ton of different cards, powers and strategies. It’s the kind of game that really sucked me in and I would still be playing it right now if I didn’t feel like I had to try other games constantly. I had a great time with it and the sheer amount of content to unlock and ideas to test out makes the purchase completely worth it. Being a premium title, there are no ads or annoying microtransactions as well, another great plus in my book!

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Idle Acorns is a cute, but way too simple idle game with very little in lieu of interactions, instead offsetting most of its progress on long timers that leave very little to do while you are waiting. The potential was certainly there, with the various game screens - waiting for acorns, fishing, races and cooking - but ultimately systems feed into each other insomuch as they are all gated by a wait for diamonds.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Idle Industries is not that bad if you know exactly what you are getting into - a free idle game loosely based around collecting resources, crafting items and selling them to make money. I had a fine time with it, even if it ultimately was a bit like junk food and if the layers upon layers of free to play mechanics slathered over the whole thing made it a bit of a mess.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Melvor Idle is an idle game on multiple platforms that I will revisit in the future because I do happen to have bought the PC version on steam. Contrary to that one, the iOS version is free and comes with a bunch of restrictions and in-app purchases that certainly soured my experience a whole lot. Ultimately it is because of confusing UX and progression that I dropped it. It is fine to have a ton of systems in your games - or a ton of different skills that do mostly the same thing, but affecting different stats - but making it all come together is really important, and - for now - Melvor Idle didn’t do that at all for me.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories2/5, iOS

Time Idle RPG seemed like a neat idle game with a lot of ideas based around literally using time to do actions such as gathering resources, crafting and fighting enemies. Sadly with too many numbers and too many mechanics surfaced immediately so I was quickly overwhelmed and stopped.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories2/5, iOS, Idle

Universal Paperclips is the iOS version of a classic browser based game where you start manually making some paperclips and idle your way into transforming the whole universe into paperclips; A few systems are added on top of each other, like the stock market, quantum computing and game simulations, all to feed into your paperclip making. Ultimately, the balance on mobile didn’t work well for me, and at some point progress became excruciatingly slow, so I stopped.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
CategoriesiOS, Idle, 3/5

Million Onion Hotel is a stylish Match-3 like game where you tap on onions, fruits and a bunch of other weird things to get a combo multiplier going and progress through some levels. I couldn’t understand how to play it and lost interest pretty quickly after a few boss fights where my time was just drained constantly. Quirky story segments, collectibles and a bunch of different mechanics layered on top of each other couldn’t get me to put more time into it, sadly.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories3/5, iOS

I was a bit surprised to see a sequel to Infinitode already - since I had discovered the original only a small while ago - but this tower defense game is chuck-full of content with not too much of the usual free-to-play friction that appears in any game supported by that economical model. With tons of missions on each level, an addictive daily quest system, a bunch of upgrades, cool towers and a good difficulty progression, I had a good time with it still and played it a bunch.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

SNKRX is a neat game where you control a snake made of different heroes that automatically attack enemies in multiple waves of increasing difficulty and complexity. The only mechanics you have during gameplay is to make your snake turn left or right, but otherwise the complexity lies in the hiring of heroes to compose your party, upgrading them and choosing power-ups after you’ve completed a few rounds. I had a good time with this game even if the difficulty felt a bit random at times, so I recommend it!

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier

Bleentoro is a strange, yet interesting puzzle game inspired by Factorio playable on iOS. In each level you need to create factories in order to meet specific objectives, usually related to creating a certain number of a specific resource under a certain time. Starting simple enough with a bunch of new mechanics getting added as you progress through the levels, poor controls and confusing inconsistencies prevented me to fully wrap my head around the game, even if I did have a good time with it.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier