=== 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

=== Adventure Town - Mobile Game Review, Idle City Builder - 10/10 ===

     Hey everybody, it's time for another game review. Recently I had my phone cut off; as a result, I haven't really been able to keep up with Idle Heroes because you need to have an active internet connection to be able to play. So I had to start searching for a game which would be lots of fun to play without getting bored of it, and which could be played without being connected to the internet at all times. After some searching, I came across Adventure Town.

     Adventure Town puts you in charge of a little town where you must build shops and houses to gain gold and direct your heroes to defeat monsters and complete quests to earn experience and progress further into the game. As you play, you have little heroes and townspeople who will go to each shop and "buy" items. As they visit the shops, they make gold for you until the shops run out of goods at which point you must restock the goods. As with many time-based games like this, an observant person will note that shorter timed tasks such as growing wheat over two minutes will make more goods if you're constantly playing the game, but will be less effective if you're only checking up on your game once every hour.

     Growing these plants makes goods which are given to the shops which then make you gold so you can buy more buildings to make more money faster. You can't go wrong with making more money. There's also the option of building houses which make money without needing goods. The downside of using houses is that they take quite a bit of time to make the same amount of money that could be made by growing plants and stocking shops... but they're quite useful if you're only able to check up on your game once or twice a day.

     Making all of this money doesn't just go towards building more buildings. In your spare time when you don't have room for more buildings and you're waiting for resources to upgrade these shops and houses, you have to do something to keep yourself busy. At these times you find yourself needing to use the heroes at your command to complete quests that you're given or to just plain kill creatures for either money, resources, or magical elixirs which are used to craft and upgrade things. These heroes can be defeated in battle and then must take a recovery period before they can be used again, but they can never die.

     As you gain levels, the monsters you face get stronger, have more health, and do more damage. This is one of the uses for all that money you're making; upgrading equipment to have more health, defense, or damage is incredibly important if you're going to get anywhere in a world like this. Some of the strongest items require crystals which you can earn over time by defeating monsters or completing bounties. The rest of the items cost simple gold which we already know can be earned easily enough. Upgrading items consists of buying new items and fusing weaker items with stronger ones to upgrade them once you've fused enough together. The new strength of these items can be used to fight creatures or to increase your chance to be successful at completing quests.

     I think the reason I like this game so much is because it reminds me of a game I played once upon a time. I can't seem to remember the name of the game, though if I saw it I would definitely recognize it. The whole premise of the game was that all you could do was build shops and buildings to help your heroes and you could influence their decisions, but ultimately it was up to them to decide what they wanted to do; similar to one of my favorite games called Majesty. Seriously, if any of you happen to know what game I'm talking about, feel free to let me know. I would love to find this game again and see if I could get it to work on a current computer.

     All of the monster-killing you do in this game goes toward the great purpose of upgrading your guardian statue. The purpose of which is to give you money once a day which increases each time the guardian levels up. More money means more buildings and better equipment for your heroes which means more monsters destroyed.

     As with most mobile games, this is a pretty simple game to play with not a lot of action and just enough going on to keep you busy if you kept the game open to kill some time. No consistent internet connection required, a good pace of progression to keep you interested, and reasonable tasks which aren't too difficult to complete. This all makes for a great mix of gameplay which would keep you coming back for more as often as you can.

     Adventure Town gets a 10/10 from me for being another great game which is likely to keep me busy for a few months without looking for something new.

~ Kyle Welykholowa ^_^

It's been so long!

     So I haven't updated my blog in like half a month now. I got so busy planning and taking care of Carley's birthday and searching for a new job that I just haven't really been able to do much of anything like this recently. I'm so sorry to anybody who enjoys reading about my thoughts and activities. I have missed doing this as of late.

     Carley's birthday was a huge success! She absolutely loved it! It makes me so happy to know that this most important birthday of hers went well. We stayed at a hotel and did all sorts of fun activities including somewhere around ten games of Laser Quest each. We're now members seeing as we find it so much fun that we would love to go quite a bit more often if possible.

     Following the success of the birthday, I spent the next little while figuring out and executing on a plan we made for myself to move back in with Carley. Seeing as we've been just a little bit short on funds recently, we figured it would be a good idea to move in together again. It'll be a great way to save money and a huge load of stress off of the both of us which can only help to move our relationship in the right direction.

     I've been learning a lot about Carley including how to handle her and help her when she's feeling stressed. We've also learned how to communicate much better than before. Things are looking pretty good. Obviously we're still a little bit stressed at the moment, but that should go away once the last of the moving is done. I have my little computer space all set up as evidenced by the fact that I'm sitting here using it. All we have left to do is get things into our storage space.

     Go out and be awesome everybody! ^_^

~ Kyle