Joyful Friday, and welcome to a different spherical of cellular sport suggestions based mostly on probably the most fascinating video games I performed and that had been coated on MiniReview this week 🙂
Assist these posts (and YouTube content material + growth of MiniReview) on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NimbleThor <3
This episode features a enjoyable motion platformer a few cyberduck, a sci-fi RTS premium sport, an amazing point-and-click journey, a hilarious and weird choose-your-own-adventure sport, and a beloved simulation administration sport.
Disagree with my opinion? Let’s have a pleasant dialogue beneath.
New to those posts? Try the primary one from 130 weeks in the past right here.
Let’s get to the video games:
Particular Agent CyberDuck [Game Size: 27 MB] (Free)
Style: Platform / Motion / Indie – Offline
Orientation: Panorama
Required Consideration: Full
tl;dr evaluate by NimbleThor:
Particular Agent CyberDuck is a difficult motion platformer with a neat pixel art-style and 80 ranges filled with enemies, boss fights, and secret areas to find.
Our aim is to get to the exit of every stage with out dying, which incorporates capturing enemies, dodging bullets, and leaping platforms to keep away from traps and obstacles. Though merely attending to the exit lets us proceed to the subsequent stage, discovering every stage’s a number of secret areas to save lots of hostages is a part of what makes the sport enjoyable, including a slight journey really feel.
To take care of the various enemies, we hearth our weapon(s) that slowly overheat if we spray-and-pray for too lengthy. Apparently, the sport options extra development than most motion platformers, permitting us to unlock new weapons that we will swap between at any time, and purchase new characters with distinctive benefits.
Though we will tweak the issue, CyberDuck is inherently difficult, and with no checkpoints, you higher be ready to restart most ranges again and again. This makes the sport excellent for individuals who get pleasure from punishing platformers, however it’s, sadly, potential to get into conditions the place dying is seemingly unavoidable.
The controls work decently properly and are simple to get the grasp of, and the art-style and humorous duck-themed universe is a superb match for the gameplay. The one slight draw back is that the menu UI is a bit convoluted.
Particular Agent CyberDuck monetizes by means of very sparse incentivized adverts for further in-game forex, iAPs as much as $15 to assist the indie developer or immediately unlock all characters, weapons, and attributes. Every little thing can be comparatively simply unlocked by means of gameplay, nonetheless, and the sport isn’t grindy.
It’s an amazing match for anybody who enjoys hardcore platformers, and its speed-run mode ensures a excessive stage of replayability.
App Retailer: Right here
Crying Suns [Total Game Size: 568 MB] ($8.99)
Style: Technique / Roguelike / RTS / Sci-fi – Offline Playable
Orientation: Panorama
Required Consideration: Full
tl;dr evaluate by Pete McD:
Crying Suns is an epic tactical sci-fi roguelike with RTS fight and an in-depth story set in a grungy universe the place the OMNI machines humanity relied on have stopped working and society has collapsed. We play as a clone of a famend admiral who has been dropped at life to unravel the thriller of what went flawed and provides humanity a second probability.
The world-building in Crying Suns is unimaginable. The story is partaking, and we progressively study extra in regards to the world by encountering totally different characters and asking questions of our snarky robotic companion, Kaliban. Accompanying this can be a cyberpunk shade palette of darkish blues, greens, and black that completely presents a universe that’s nearing its finish and splendidly matches the eerie and evocative soundtrack.
The core gameplay has us navigate totally different star techniques to analyze native planets. Some, we will commerce at, whereas others function ‘anomalies’, that are occasions which have a 50/50 probability of offering a really constructive or very unfavourable consequence relying on the alternatives we make. These occasions actually do make a distinction, forcing us to fastidiously contemplate our choices.
Wherever we go, we’re prone to run into enemy ships, which takes us to a battle grid the place we play a fancy RTS match utilizing squads of fighters and drones to delay enemy ships and our principal weapon system to interrupt our opponent’s defenses. Throughout these frantic battles, we should stability our assets with precision, and though we will pause at any time to develop a brand new technique, the fights stay satisfyingly difficult.
Crying Suns is a $8.99 premium sport. Other than some info being exhausting to see on small screens, the sport’s immersive mix of ‘exhausting’ sci-fi storytelling and troublesome however well-balanced gameplay makes it among the best I’ve performed.
App Retailer: Right here
The Silent Age [Game Size: 262 MB] (Free Trial)
Style: Journey / Level-and-Click on – Offline Playable
Orientation: Panorama
Required Consideration: Some
tl;dr evaluate by AlexSem:
The Silent Age is a point-and-click journey sport set within the Seventies that options time touring and a brilliantly convoluted plot.
We play as a dimwitted janitor working at a big company constructing who finally ends up discovering a mysterious gadget that lets him journey backwards and forwards between the current and a selected second a number of many years into the longer term. As we quickly uncover, a worldwide apocalyptic occasion has occurred in some unspecified time in the future throughout this time interval, and we should now discover a approach to forestall it.
True to the style, we progress by exploring the surroundings, gathering varied objects, discovering the proper locations to make use of mentioned objects, and fixing different puzzles – most of which revolve round time-traveling. The truth is, actions we make within the current all have penalties for the longer term, which suggests areas that appear inaccessible at first may be reached with a little bit of temporal ingenuity.
The sport consists of a number of chapters and tells an excellent story that retains us invested and extremely engaged until the very finish. In the meantime, the visible type, the music, and the voice narration create an immersive environment that completely units the temper for the occasions unfolding earlier than our eyes.
The primary episode of the sport is free to play, with a single $4.99 iAP unlocking the second episode. The Silent Age is likely one of the most fascinating point-and-click adventures out there on cellular, so it’s extremely really helpful for any fan of the style.
App Retailer: Right here
Kyle is Well-known [Game Size: 364 MB] ($4.99)
Style: Journey / Textual content-Based mostly / Humorous – Offline Playable
Orientation: Panorama
Required Consideration: Some
tl;dr evaluate by Yousef:
Kyle is Well-known is a comically weird text-based choose-your-own-adventure sport the place issues can get actually out of hand and go horribly flawed within the span of simply 30 in-game hours.
We play as Kyle, a preferred discuss present host making ready for an interview with Rachel Might, an necessary and high-profile visitor. Beginning when Kyle wakes up on the morning of the interview, we make choices about every part he ought to do this day, and since one in-game hour progresses for every choice we make, getting by means of all 30 hours and reaching one of many 115 distinctive endings solely takes 2-3 minutes.
After all, this gameplay idea is utilized in probably the most ridiculous methods. As a result of relatively than writing down a set of questions so we will put together for knowledgeable interview, our choices shortly result in humorously voice-narrated different storylines. For instance, in a single playthrough, we could flip right into a ghost with amnesia, eat a complete fridge, use a time machine to realize again our 30 hours, and even remodel right into a lizard demon.
For each set of 10-30 endings reached, we unlock a brand new background and Kyle will get a brand new job. Sadly, every job drags out for too lengthy, which could incentivize some gamers to brute drive their means by means of the sport to keep away from the repetitiveness, ruining the attraction of the core gameplay mechanic.
Kyle is Well-known is a $4.99 premium with out adverts or iAPs. Should you get pleasure from random and absurdist humor, you’re more than likely going to like this sport.
App Retailer: Right here
Sport Dev Story (Sport Dimension: 81 MB] ($4.99)
Style: Simulation / Administration – Offline Playable
Orientation: Portrait + Panorama
Required Consideration: Some
tl;dr evaluate by CaptainQQ:
Sport Dev Story is a simulation sport the place we try and create the most effective online game growth firm in historical past by managing our crew, making choices about which video games to develop subsequent, and hiring new expertise.
We begin off with a crew of staff that cowl the fundamentals of sport growth, reminiscent of writing proposals for brand spanking new video games, creating graphics, and making music. As soon as accomplished, the sport will get launched and we sit again and hope for the most effective whereas the gross sales numbers are available.
As we progress, we rent extra crew members with totally different abilities, and earlier than we all know it, we’re making hall-of-fame video games, creating our personal consoles, and accepting million-dollar contracts.
As a administration sim, our main position is to make choices about who to fireplace or rent, what varieties of video games to make, and how one can promote it – all whereas staying inside our finances. The sport additionally roughly follows the timeline of real-life console releases and has us purchase licenses to develop video games for knockoffs of well-known consoles just like the NES and PlayStation.
That is Kairosoft’s first cellular sport, which could clarify why we in a short time attain the end-game. The truth is, after buying our third studio, the gameplay turns into purely about coaching and buying and selling employees for larger stats whereas pumping out assured hall-of-fame video games. There additionally isn’t lots of customization or depth, and only some songs.
This premium sport prices $4.99, though it typically goes on sale for $1-2.
Sport Dev Story is an addictive journey that takes you thru the timeline of video video games and an gratifying administration simulator, however it’s pretty brief, comparatively easy, and a bit expensive. Nonetheless, it’d be a deceive not name its gameplay entertaining.
App Retailer: Right here
Particular due to the Patreon Producers “marquisdan”, “Misplaced Vault”, “FarmRPG”, and “Mohaimen” who assist make these posts potential by means of their Patreon assist <3
Google Sheet of all video games I’ve performed up to now (searchable and filter-able): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bf0OxtVxrboZqyEh01AxJYUUqHm8tEfh-Lx-SugcrzY/edit?usp=sharing
TL;DR Video Abstract (with gameplay) of final week’s video games: https://youtu.be/gsnUgdXZ2fk
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