=== Mobile Game Review -- Bricky / Blocky Farm - Farming Progression - 7/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?

Hello everyone, welcome today to a review of... Bricky Farm? Blocky Farm? I'm not EXACTLY sure which one is the truth at this point as the game name on the app store says Bricky Farm, but when the game is loading it says Blocky Farm. The game at this point appears to have a little over 70,000 downloads on the app store as a free game.

Gameplay:
Farming. Farming games are quite popular these days. It's an easy concept to understand where you plant a seed and it takes time to grow dependent upon what kind of seed it is which determines how long it takes to grow, what it's worth, and potentially what it can grow into. What a fun style of gameplay!

There's even options for customizing the look of your animals including chickens, cows, and pigs with sunglasses and hats and things. Animals are quite important as the crops which are grown can be made into food which is fed to the animals who then produce resources which are used along with other crops to bake cookies and make cream and all sorts of other options which all takes more and more time as things get more and more complicated.

What I don't really get is that there's a pet dog in the game which you're given to take care of and some quests are given every once in a while to take care of the dog as well... I haven't really found much use in this though other than it spends money and gains experience in the process.

Speaking of quests and things... a lot of the gameplay revolves around completing orders from people who visit the farm and ask for things or by a nearby board of orders to be delivered by your own truck. There appears to be more which can be unlocked including a train, a fishing boat and possibly even more!

Graphics:
If you've played anything like Crossy Road or other voxel-designed game, then that's the art you're looking at. Definitely a cute design which has been done well in the past and is still done well to this day. Personally I prefer anything which has a painted look to it, but I don't mind the bright colours coming at me in Blocky Farm.

Replayability:
This game... is... alright. I would actually say it's one of the better mobile games out there, but it still tends to lose my interest. Not because the game is bad or poorly designed, but because of the time limits on everything. When I play a game, I want to be able to lose myself in it without having to take pauses all the time... which is exactly what free-to-play games tend to do. ESPECIALLY when they rely on advertisements to make money which all requires people coming back over time when new ads are available to watch. So yeah... I get it. I would come back to this game and play it more if there weren't other games I'm interested in playing.

SUMMARY:
It's an alright game that I would again say is something I'd come back to much more if I didn't have other games on my radar. I'm happily giving Bricky Farm or Blocky Farm (whatever you wanna call it) 7/10 because I think it's well-made, but seemingly unfinished and unfortunately it may never finish based on the research I've done. I guess we won't know until we wait on it for a little while.

~ DaemonVirus

=== Mobile Game Review -- Hooked Inc: Fisher Tycoon - Idle Progression - 8/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?

Today I have another Idle Progression-type game for you called Hooked Inc: Fisher Tycoon. Now it's hard to get around the mass of Idle Progression games that exist on mobile devices, sure they're mostly all free so you could try them on your own... or you can take a a look at my experience to see whether or not your interest is great enough to skip the time cost altogether.

Gameplay:
As with all idle games there is an active and an idle portion of the game. The active part involves swiping across the screen to catch fish. Catching fish means you make money which can be used to buy upgrades which make fish worth more which means more money and so on and so forth.

Every so often you'll receive chests which may have money or.... emeralds in them (which is the second type of currency in the game), or there are of course quests which give rewards for performing tasks such as the above which is to acquire 40 upgrades which then gives 3 emeralds.

What are emeralds used for you ask? Emeralds are used for hiring employees which increase productivity both online and offline. How great is that? These employees can even be upgraded to be better by spending emeralds on them.

There is a fun little spinner in this game which gives you a free spin to get bonuses including increased income for a period of time which can be spun additionally by watching advertisements for even more bonuses.

What is the point of all of this? Well to earn experience of course which can be claimed by taking the action of going back to the start of the game from step one only earning 1% more income per point of experience and 100% more income per star... which is again gained by completing quests and things.

So at this point we've hit all the usual points of an idle game where you have regular income, alternate income, and a prestige-type thing which resets your progress so that you can get further into the game faster. Pretty straightforward.

There's a fun little difference in this game compared to others where there are boxes which float down every once in a while that have items within them. These items have different abilities including increasing fish value and even the ability to catch birds!


Graphics:
The artwork is nice on the eyes, very thematic showing wood, wind, water, and fish. It all makes sense when it comes to fish and fishing with nothing sorely out of place. My only "complaint" would be that there isn't much incentive to watch the screen because most of the time you're carelessly swiping back and forth or putting the phone down because it's another advertisement.

I will however take a quick moment to note that I LOVE that this game gives REAL incentive to watching advertisements. Normally an advertisement would be something you start and put the phone down for a minute just to get an x2 multiplier on your earnings which is... sort of a whatever kind of thing to do when it comes to money, but in Hooked Inc: Fisher Tycoon you get 10 Crowns every time you watch an ad which eventually levels up to get more upgrades. Finally a game that REALLY rewards you for watching advertisements!

Sound:
I've always enjoyed the sound of the ocean and birds (in this case seagulls), which is one of the reasons I really want to go back to Hawaii one day. On the other hand, the music got really old really fast. REALLY fast.


Replayability:
This is always the biggest point of a game is how long can you continue playing a game for? I did find Hooked Inc: Fisher Tycoon very fun, but as with all idle games, it tends to fall off after a while once you get over the honeymoon phase. Idle games will unfortunately never been in the hall of fame on my list of games because the gameplay never changes; it's a very short look of getting the game upgrades and performing the same actions, restarting for a higher multiplier, then doing it all again.


SUMMARY:
There are a few points which set this game apart from other idle-games I've played before:

1) If you enjoy fish, you'll enjoy this game.

2) It's not all about passive income, there's a lot of progress to be made when actively playing and the mechanic to doing so is all about swiping (which is much easier on the hands than tapping).

3) Advertisements that play into the future of the game.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, idle-games are not my favourite; they get old very fast. HOWEVER, in terms of what an idle-game is looking to do... Hooked Inc: Fisher Tycoon is a really good one with differences that make it interesting.

I have to knock off a couple points when an idle game stops progressing so quickly or runs out of things to do, so I will be giving Hooked Inc: Fisher Tycoon 8/10. It really is one of the better idle-games out there, but I still have a problem with a game that relies on watching advertisements to progress further into the game.

~ DaemonVirus

I Survived Camping With Friends =17=

I have great news, I survived camping with friends! Surprisingly, I had a fantastic time out in the "wild" with our friends. I managed to stay off of my phone nearly the entire time except for a short time while boating when I was hanging out and watching the fishing going on; Carley caught her first fish by the way. :D It's a bit of a personal accomplishment for me to be able to spend nearly a whole four days without being all over my phone the entire time, so I have to say I'm quite proud of myself.

Considering how Carley likes to plan things ahead of time and I like to make lists... you'd think we'd be more prepared for things. As it turns out... we didn't bring our pillows for the second camping time. I'm hoping to be much more prepared the next time we go camping. I'm pretty sure we had everything we needed for Isabelle, which is great and all... but we totally forgot to be prepared for ourselves. We forgot to bring our own bug spray!

Unfortunately during the second day we were out there the zipper on our tent split so we weren't able to close our tent. For the most part this wasn't an issue, but eventually it got a little more wet out and the mosquitoes started coming out in large numbers. This wasn't too much of an issue while we had bug spray... though eventually we ran out on the last day and that's when things got really bad. Thankfully we were able to buy a tarp at the store which we were able to bungee to the front of the tent with the help of our fantastic friends.

The great news is that Isabelle had a great time (I think). She played a bunch with Ella and complained a ton that we wouldn't let her go near the fire pit, but she seemed to enjoy being outside a ton; she wouldn't go to bed when she was supposed to. I think the only night she went to bed on time was the last night only because she was so tired from the day before that she couldn't keep herself awake. Canada day in particular she only got about half an hour of sleep before getting up to go see the fireworks at 10:00 pm... which she enjoyed so much with Carley's hands over her ears that she started to fall asleep while watching them.

All in all, camping was great. Super tiring to get up so early and do so many things throughout the day including long hikes with the baby on my chest, but totally worth it. I'm confident we'll be camping again soonish.

~ Kyle Welykholowa