=== PC Game Review -- Mall Empire - Indie / Casual - 1/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?

Today I bring you a review of the PC game Mall Empire. Now... the first thing I want to say is that by no means am I PURPOSELY looking for awful games to review. I'm just looking to pay some games and give my thoughts on them. Honestly I really want to like games I play and do give them the best chance possible to show me everything they have. I really REALLY tried to give Mall Empire a chance, but it just... isn't... good.

This game was released February 16th, 2017 on Steam. It is currently not in early access, and I'm sure that I must have gotten this game on sale, because there's no way this is worth $4.49 CAD. As you can see by the art-style, Mall Empire is not a premium game, it's definitely a casual / indie designed game from a small team.

Gameplay:

The goal of Mall Empire is to design a mall in which many customer want to visit and spend their money, allowing the player to make money, buy more things, make a bigger mall, and make more money.

The first thing you'll need to start your "empire" is to spend hearts to unlock shops. Hearts are earned by having an open mall and having customers visit the mall. Every once in a while you get a heart just by having customers coming and going throughout the day.

After you've unlocked shops by spending hearts, you have to spend money to build those shops in your mall. Each shop has a different starting amount of stock and makes a different amount of money for their product. As each shop sells product, it gains experience and eventually levels up which allows the player to put points into either more stock which allows you to sell more during each day, or more quality which allows each stock item to sell for more money.

There is a day/night cycle in this game which really doesn't serve too much of a purpose other than to reset the stock levels of the shops and give a break in the customers coming to the mall.

Other things the player is able to do with their money includes investing in advertising (which brings more customers to the mall), residential (which brings more customers to the mall), or Office (Which can affect some maintenance costs... or bring more customers to the mall).

If you reach some set requirements such as making so much money or having so many customer visit, the player can then level up their mall to gain access to more shops, more investments and more combinations of shops to make more money with when arranged in set patterns.

Graphics:

The graphics of this game are, well... it's a functioning game. Graphics aren't the most important thing on my list of stuff to care about when playing a game, though it is nice to have something pretty too look at from time to time. Considering the price tag of this game, I wasn't expecting much and I was probably able to get Mall Empire on sale for somewhere between $1-$2 if memory serves me right. So I didn't take the design of the graphics too harshly when deciding how I felt about the game.

Now I did find that there are quite a few spelling errors and issues with translation. English was not the first language of the design of Mall Empire and that's okay. In fact, even though there were many spelling errors and issues with translation, I still had a little bit of fun with it right up until the end.

Sound:

For the game sounds there isn't much to talk about. It's not that the game sounds aren't great... there just aren't any. Not even basic sounds for building or clicking on buttons or collecting income. Nothing.

Though there aren't any game sounds, the designers were at least nice enough to put in some music. The music is actually quite nice to listen to and in my opinion doesn't get annoying at all. The issue I have with the music is that it doesn't really seem to fit the gameplay. The way I would describe the music is some sort of endless arcade kind of thing... but more like something I would expect from an endless arcade shooter or a bullet hell, not a management game.

Replayability:

I really don't think Mall Empire is very replayable at all. I mean, I played it one time and quickly found that the gameplay formula got very old VERY quickly. Maybe it's just because I'm a strategy gamer, but I didn't find purchasing shops, building shops, and annoyingly clicking on each shop and then another following button just to collect income to be a very fun thing to do without any change other than what is available to construct for little pixel guys to walk past.

Even with that in mind, I still managed to keep myself playing all because the music was enjoyable enough to give it ago... right up until this:

Now you may wonder... what? If you look at the top-most construction in each picture, you'll see what I'm talking about. I was pretty alright with Mall Empire until I ran into this issue where I couldn't build an elevator on that second-level space. No matter how hard I tried, I could build anything BUT an elevator.

Well sure (you might say), why not just build it somewhere else? Simple: I don't want to; that wasn't part of my design. I didn't PLAN to not be able to build something because of a glitch in the system. Most times glitches exist in games I don't care; they're usually rather funny, but when a glitch seriously demolishes the entire point to the same so badly that what is supposed to be done CANNOT be done... it's a problem.

SUMMARY:

Though I was able to endure the many issues in the game from translation to lack of sounds, the gameplay just was not engaging enough at all. I could have put up with it all if not for the terrible glitches which make the game unplayable in the way it was meant to be played.

It's at that point that I realize the gameplay itself is just terrible. If it was at least playable, it wouldn't be on the bottom of the lists. Unfortunately I cannot even recommend this game while it is on sale. I'm giving Mall Empire 1/10 because of all of this.

As a sidenote: this really seems like a game for people who are obsessed with getting achievements. Because this game was so terrible, I didn't spend much time playing it... and still somehow managed to get 122/400 achievements.


~ DaemonVirus

=== PC Game Review -- Hero of the Kingdom - Point and Click Puzzle - 10/10 ===

     Hero of the Kingdom is a casual point and click indie game for $7 on Steam. For a dollar per hour value, it lasted a little over seven hours which is right where I think a game should be priced. I don't play a lot of point and click games, so I took a chance on this one and was pleasantly surprised.

     This is one of my favourite types of art-styles to look at, so I thought this game was absolutely beautiful the whole way through. The music was enjoyable to listen to all throughout. The gameplay was simple and crisp. You get energy by resting, then use that energy as a resource to complete other tasks.

     One of my favourite parts of this game was as it introduced new things to you through tasks, you would be able to go back through previous areas and find things such as mushrooms or boxes hidden in the scenes. It was really quite fun to look through everything and complete the achievements, read the story, and play through this sweet little game.

     To anybody who enjoys a nice casual game, or a rest from their competitive games for a while, I definitely recommend this game. As usual, if you can get this on sale, it's even more worth the price.

     For me, this point and click game is a 10/10.

~ Kyle

Banished - Game Review - 7/10

     This game, I have put so many hours into. Partly because I'm a perfectionist and I don't like to leave a game without 100% of the achievements finished, but also because this game is a nice city-builder.

     My first instinct is to call it "casual". I'm not actually sure if that's accurate or not. I mean, you aren't really playing against anything besides the elements, and basic human survival. The goal of the game is to make a settlement/village/town/city/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. You don't have to worry about being attacked by anything besides tornadoes and fires. It's just you and your people. As long as you make sure they have enough food and supplies, they're good to go.

     So in terms of a city-builder, this is a really fun game. Even though you don't have to play "against" anything, and don't have any specific goal besides making a city and keeping your people alive... this game captures enough attention to keep me playing it even when there's only one achievement left to get... that takes FOREVER I might add.

     The only thing about this game I can REALLY harp on is the fact that it slows down a ton as your population increases. I assume it's a problem with having to render/calculate every one of the sprites in the game. Figuring out what each and every one of them have to do, because they all have their own lives. I would imagine the more powerful your computer, the better the game would run at higher populations. Now, I have a pretty beefy machine... and my game starts to crap out around 200 population. I've searched for fixes for this kind of thing and unfortunately haven't really come across anything. I'm pretty sure it's just the way the game is made/encoded.

     Now, saying that. I do highly recommend this game. I have found it very interesting to learn how to take care of my people. If you're into tackling achievements, then that's what really makes this game worth it's money is the time you have to take to figure out how to get those elusive achievements.



     I'm going to give this game 7/10 for a city-builder. I haven't played many of them, but this one caught my eye. It could be better, but it's not bad at all.

~ Kyle

Aeon Command - Game Review - 8/10

     This post is going to be pretty short compared to the usual. Nice and short, just like Aeon Command.

     If you've ever played one of those flash games where you make units and they move across the map and attack your enemy, then you've played Aeon Command. I wouldn't call this a bad game. It's definitely not my favourite, nor does it have the strategic complexity that I prefer, but for only $3.29 on Steam, it did provide me more than 3 hours of entertainment. Granted, once I figured out how to beat the game... most of the rest of the time was spent farming wins until I could get the last research only because I wanted the last achievement.

     This game is simple, and that's not a bad thing. It's meant to be a simple "tug 'o war"-type game and it's done really well. If you're looking for something more hardcore and intense, then this game won't be for you. However, if you're looking for a cheap casual way to spend a little bit of time, then I would give this game a recommendation, especially if you can get it on sale.



     I'll give this game 8/10 for this type of game.

~ Kyle