=== 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

=== Mobile Game Review -- Hustle Castle - Management - 7.5/10 ===

I started playing Hustle Castle some time ago and couldn't have been happier at the time when I first started because everything was so similar to Fallout Shelter. Hustle Castle really had a similar vibe right off the bat, but I did enjoy the different style of combat which gave me more of a "tactical" feeling about the game that I didn't get from Fallout Shelter.

At first, I thought Hustle Castle had a better combat system... but as I've played more and more, I've slowly realized that it just doesn't hold up that well. The combat slowly turns into more and more of "who has the better items of the single best strategy" sort of thing. In a perfect world, without a way to outplay an opponent with skill, there needs to be a way to counter each strategy... but that just isn't the case with this game. Quite simply, if you try to do more fun things and change up your build, you'll just lose to whatever the strongest strategy is, which is usually some sort of silly continuously resurrecting some really powerful tanks. The only way I've found to reliably counter strategies is to just be stronger than your opponent and/or have better items.

There is a little bit more which can be done with the combat in Hustle Castle which MAY be able to sway thing in your favour by upgrading spells and bringing them into combat with you. There is a selection of spells including one to damage a random enemy, one to heal your most damaged character, and one to increase the damage of all your troops for a few seconds. These spells can be very powerful when used properly, though I still tend to find that the combat relies much more on how powerful your units are rather than any sort of strategy involved.

Of course any time you leave the game for a while and then come back to it you'll get a lovely update on any attacks which have been done against your castle and the result of them whether it was a win or a loss and you can even watch the combat replay if you want to see exactly how the fight went.

All of these combats are found through the world map which allows the player to continue along the "campaign" trail with each area unlocked having a selection of opponents who can be battled whenever you wish. Once you defeat another player on the map one time, their castle will disappear and be replaced some time later with a new one from another player. After some time, an option will appear which will allow an opponent to be "re-rolled" with another player who may be at a higher/lower/equal level.

Besides the campaign and battling other players there are a couple other options available to keep you busy in the game including a portal which opens up every once in a while which gives increasingly difficult levels of battles that can be done to gain more soul shards which can then be traded in for rewards such as epic items and resources. I have personally found the portal to be quite fun while it's open and then the game slows down a lot with not as much to do while it is closed.

If not busy doing portal fights there is an arena system which lets you put your best combinations of troops up against those of other players in a tournament-style system where you earn more points depending on who you choose to fight and win against. So far I have only managed to be in tournaments where I can perform reasonably average, but I've never been able to win because there's always another few players who have really powerful combinations of units or who are at a much higher level.

Winning one of these tournaments rewards the player with a chest which would have....... I'm not really sure, seeing as I've never won, but I assume there are some pretty good rewards in these things. However, competing in these tournaments does provide another type of resource which can be traded in for more epic and unique items.

Speaking of chests, there are a bunch of different chests which can be earned in Hustle Castle which have varying types of rewards inside of them including resources and items which can them be used to equip your characters whether that is for fighting or for making more resources faster.

Opening chests is also a very simple and kind of fun process of hitting the next open button which continues to open more chests as long as you have another chest to open. I don't know what it is about opening chests of random rewards that's so much fun even when 90% of them don't have anything useful in them.

Moving away from the combat system, there is some castle management which needs to be done while you're not out fighting monsters or other players. In this game, that comes down to building what rooms are available and upgrading them whenever possible. The castle rooms produce resources as time goes on which can be used to construct more rooms or upgrade existing ones depending on what is available at your current player level. One one hand, this is nice because there is a clear build path, but on the other hand I don't like it because there's no customization or learning curve to it besides "I better make this because it's available to me." Definitely ups and down on the castle management depending on how much customization and learning you like in your games.

My personal thoughts on Hustle Castle are quite mixed. I really like how well made the game is and how fluid the combat system is as well as the simplicity of the castle management. As far as a long-term game goes... this one falls flat just like all the other idle-simulation type games out there. Once you get far enough into the game you start having to save up so much resources that the player loses interest in waiting before being able to do things again. There's a great start to this game which really gets you into it, but with the usual idle-roadblocks I found myself losing interest. Granted, usually I lose interest because the wait is too long and there isn't really anything to progress to after a while... only this time my loss of interest wasn't because I didn't have anything to progress to; I lost interest because I hit a wall where the only solution was either to spend real money, or to wait days or weeks before being able to upgrade enough to make any real progress.


Summary

Gameplay: Being the most important part of a GAME, I thought the actual gameplay was quite fun right off the bat up until I wasn't able to progress any further without waiting for really long times due to needing resources and upgrades and training times before being strong enough to get past certain areas and boss fights.

Sound: There's not much of note to the sound design to this game. All the noises fit well without being annoying and the music is nice to listen to, but playing the game without any sound doesn't really make any difference to the enjoyability especially when only logging in momentarity to collect resources and then turn off the game.

Replayability: As the game went on, my interest in continuing to open the game went down and down with the increased upgrade and resource colletion times.

Bonus: If you enjoyed Fallout Shelter, this game has some similar aspects which will feel familiar and fun.

SCORE: I'm giving Hustle Castle 7.5/10. It's better than many other idle-type games out there with having more to do and being more interactive. The biggest downside for me is that it continues to suffer from the same problem as all the others where wait times get way too long without spending real money which I feel with this type of game would just go to waste.

=== Mobile Game Review - Tiny Tower - Idle Management - 7/10 =20=

Tiny Tower was one of the first idle management games I ever played on my phone. It seems like most of the mobile games tend to be somewhat idle games which makes sense as I imagine most people would play a game only temporarily while waiting for something on the go or between activities.

Tiny Tower is a game about building a tower of residences for people to live in and constructing shops for them to work in which earn money by selling merchandise which you can then use to construct more rooms.

There is a nice little tutorial sort of thing to start the game which directs you to construct certain rooms and stock shops and really gives you the idea of how to play the game. Completing his instructions gives you Bux which are used to buy upgrades and to stock shops faster.

As your tower builds up you'll see more and more different shops and people as you construct residences and your choice of room types. People move into the tower in one of a few different ways: They can appear in the elevator and want to be dropped off on a floor with a residence, you can pay for a new person to move in using Bux, or a special VIP can appear in the elevator who would cause a residence to completely fill up when dropped off on a floor with one.

The idle part of the game comes from stocking the shops and turning the game off for some time. While you are away, the game keeps selling the merchandise and gives you the profits once the game is turned back on. There is another idle income mechanic which is that once per day you'll earn rent from your residences.

In most games, earning the second type of resource income can be rather difficult or slow, but in Tiny Tower, you're able to earn it pretty easily just by logging in each day which causes fireworks to go off dropping Bux. The more days you log in, the more fireworks you get which means you get more Bux all the time. 

The Bitizens of the tower are the lifeblood of your operation; without them, you wouldn't have any rent, or anybody to work the constructed shops. They have different skills which affects the amount of discount you get for ordering merchandise to the shop they're working in. They also have a dream job which doubles the amount of stock for the shop while they're working there.

As a fun little side-thing to help keep people entertained, there's a Bitbook which is absolutely making fun of Facebook by having the Bitizens post updates and statuses and things which can be entertaining to read, but have no effect on the game at all.

Finally, as with all idle games, this game has a way to reset the game; this allows you to restart for the fun of having a new tower from square one, but keeping some of your progress and giving some sort of bonus for doing so which in this case is to give a golden ticket allowing you to super-charge one of your floors.

Is this a game worth playing? It's definitely well thought-out and if you put in the time to play the game, you can get quite into it. There are some times when the game can get a little slow which is something which does tend to happen when getting further into some of these idle games, but I do think this game is very worth it to play. The gameplay is engaging while it is running and gives you a reason to come back for rewards with each session. There are many mechanics and things going on which keep you having different things to do whether that's stocking shops or moving characters to their requested floors via the elevator.

I'm giving this game 7/10 for idle games because it is better than average, but the gameplay can get somewhat stale after a while, especially if you don't have enough time to actually spend a little bit checking up on the tower once in a while. Other than that, I do recommend this game to play.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Mobile Game Review - Fallout Shelter - City Builder / Base Management - 9/10 =7=

I can't believe I've held off on reviewing this game for so long. I've played Fallout Shelter before, uninstalled it out of frustration, and now here I am playing it once again. It constantly draws me back in no matter how much I try to resist.

Welcome to Fallout Shelter. You are the new overseer of vault *insert number here*. It is now your task to build a shelter and keep an community of people alive and well with everything out there in the wasteland trying to get inside and kill you in some way; or perhaps everything will go down in flames.

Fallout Shelter is a game where you begin with a few dwellers and you are tasked with putting them to work to gain resources and grow your population. To start, you must balance three resources which are power, food, and water. Power is the most important resource because all of your rooms require power to run and they will shut down if you don't have enough. Food is the next resource which is needed to keep your dwellers healthy and to naturally heal their wounds. Then you have water which is needed to keep your people from being irradiated which lowers their maximum health.

Once you have these under control, you can start thinking about expanding your population. For this you need money which is most easily gotten by completing quests and rushing rooms. The downside to rushing rooms is that there is a chance to fail which causes some sort of hazard such as fire or enemies to attack the room. Every time rushing a room succeeds, the chance to fail gets higher... but the rewards increase as well.

Now that you have money and a growing population, you'll need to think about keeping your people healthy and treating the radiation from the enemies that enter the shelter and the wasteland itself. Stim packs are used for healing injured people and are used to fight off radiation poisoning. These are very important as the enemies get stronger and radiation is more common as you explore further into the wasteland.

There's such a balance of resources and actions which must be managed to succeed at this game. And at any point it's so easy to completely forget about that high-level dweller you sent out into the wasteland hours ago and is now dead. You'll lose your most important things by sending out high-value items with a high-level character who'll die because you forgot to bring them back home before you went to sleep for the night. You'll run out of resources and lose your base from expanding too quickly or building your base in such a way that one catastrophe spreads throughout your whole base and kills all your people. This game will frustrate you so much, but for some reason you'll keep coming back to it because you just thought of a different way to do something which might work better than last time.

This game is absolutely addicting. I'm giving it 9/10 for how amazing it is. Sound design is good, art style is fantastic, and gameplay is top-notch. The only thing I'm taking a point away for is the controls. In a crisis situation, it can be VERY difficult to select the correct character and send them to the right spot... so you'll lose characters because you tapped the wrong person or didn't manage to select the right guy in time before he lost his last bit of health. Despite the occasionally frustrating controls, I absolutely recommend this game to everybody. I'm still playing it... again.

~ Kyle Welykholowa