=== 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 -- 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.

=== Idle Heroes - Mobile Game Review, Idle Progression - 10/10 ===

     Alright, so I've been wanting to do a review of Idle Heroes for quite some time now. Idle Heroes is an idle progression game which tends to be a great type of game for those on the go who sometimes need to kill a little bit of time on their phone between tasks and other events. There are good idle games and bad ones and usually they all have the same format, but different artwork and presentation. Idle Heroes brings something completely new to the table for me.

     Idles Heroes isn't just about getting to the next amount of money that buys an upgrade to get more money faster. This game has you upgrade your heroes using money you generate while offline so that you can do more while online. Having higher level heroes lets you progress through the game in multiple ways including the campaign where you get more money as you get further into it, the tower of oblivion where you fight challenges to earn rewards, and the brave trial where you fight up to 15 opponents for rewards based on how far you get.

     Combat in this game is very simple, you click battle and they attack and use their special abilities whenever they are able to. There really isn't much for me to say about it, but that's not a bad thing at all. This game is really straightforward and I'm giving it a perfect score because a good game doesn't need to be complicated. You get 10 tasks every day which you can complete for rewards which you can then use to upgrade your heroes or purchase items. There are at least 5 ways to earn different types of currency which can be used to purchase new heroes or upgrades for them.

     There really isn't anything bad I can think of about this game other than it can take a while to progress to the next stage at some points. Every once in a while you face up against a boss or a harder group of enemies which can sometimes take a while to level up enough to be able to defeat, but that doesn't take much away from the game because there's so much else which can still be done even when you're stuck on another part.

     So Idle Heroes gets a 10/10 from me for being a great game that I just cannot put down in my spare time.

Thanks everybody and have a wonderful day! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa