=== 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

=== Mobile Game Review -- Business Inc - Business Management - 1/10 ===

Here's an interesting game idea I came across a little while ago called Business Inc. The goal of this game is to start as a small company with just one employee making games and to grow into a larger company making profits.

So in the beginning, the player needs to hire an employee with little skills and start designing games which grows their skills into making a better quality product and being able to make these products faster. I started this game over and over and over trying to be profitable and continue to be profitable as the game went on, but I could never really make it very far into the game.

I don't know if I was playing the game wrong... I like to think I'm quite good at coming up with strategies and figuring out how to win at games, but it just seemed like everything I tried to do was... useless. As you can see, the game sort of lulls you into a false sense of security where you believe you're making money but as soon as you start hiring more people who are untrained or trying to take longer projects the money starts to fall off really quickly.

See, Business Inc isn't just about making a game and being happy with it; You have to be able to make the game faster than your competitors and at a good enough quality that you still make some profits once your competitor comes out with their version of it. At first I figured out it's not so bad to just focus on the simple projects and having those come out as quickly as possible... but then once the bigger and longer projects started coming out requiring more employees with higher skill levels, all the profits began to fall apart until I went bankrupt EVERY time.

So unfortunately this game didn't last very long as there wasn't very far I could get to keep my interest very long. If this game has progressed since I played it or if someone has found a winning strategy to this game, I would be more than happy to hear your explanation. Until then, for me, this game isn't a very good game.

Summary

Gameplay: Very interesting concept. I love business-type games and I'm still on the hunt for a truly awesome business sort of game. This game just doesn't have very far to go as the gameplay falls off very quickly without any progression or ability to make choices which really impact the end-result of the game. Business Inc is really more like a game-loss simulator rather than any sort of game-play.

Sound: The music is nice, though repetitive. As the game isn't very long and there isn't much to the gameplay, there really isn't much to be said about the sound.

Replayability: As I've already mentioned, the gameplay is severely lacking. As a result, there's ZERO want to play this game again unless there are some huge changes to the game.

SCORE: I really wanted to like this game and really tried to make it work, but with what I've seen from this has been rather disappointing. Business Inc gets my first ever 1/10 rating because it is seriously so bad I wouldn't even recommend bothering to try it; It just doesn't go anywhere and give absolutely no hope of ever being successful. Even if the player did manage to find a way to keep from going bankrupt, the gameplay wouldn't be any fun because because it would consist of doing the exact same thing over and over with no change or progression.

~ DaemonVirus