Alphabear - From the makers of Triple Town, this is a word-building game with elements of Scrabble and Boggle to it. You try to grow your bears by using the letters that surround them to form words, and get points for longer words and at the end for having very large bears. (Letters not used in a certain amount of time turn into immobile stones.) You have limited “honey” to play rounds of the game (which regenerates over time or if you watch video ads, and becomes unlimited if you pay the $4 unlock cost) and limited coins that are used for playing “treasure events” that offer rare bears as prizes. There are different stages available each day of the week, and clearing “boss” levels unlocks the later chapters and more power-up bears. I apparently caught this early, because there have been several updates just over the last few weeks that have made the game more fun—shorter cooldown time for most bears, and the ability to go back to previous chapters. Since then, they’ve been rebalancing and adding new features every week.
Puzzle Forge 2 - Also in the realm of “things you’ll like if you enjoy Triple Town”, this is a match-3 game where you’re upgrading “ore” items and connecting them to molds to make various pieces of medieval equipment, which you sell at your store. Customers have specific requests, and fulfilling them gets you XP and gold, which in turn unlocks power-ups. An interesting twist on this is that your game continues through various “days”, and the board doesn’t reset between them. So if you make it through Day 7 with a really clogged board, Day 8 might be a nightmare…or if you’re lucky and have the weapons people are requesting, you might be able to hand them off and clear your board very quickly. If you make it to Day 50 (which I eventually did), a god comes down and requests a weapon made of the top-level material. Beating that seems to be the closest the game comes to an “ending”, as you get a “congratulations, you’ll now continue on a high difficulty level” message afterwards.
Only One - Pixilated survival fighting game; the goal is to kill or knock a never-ending stream of enemies off a pillar without dying or falling off yourself. You gain new powers over time, but the controls are a little slippery and the repetitive gameplay didn’t really win me.
Tapventure - A “tap to make numbers go up” game that keeps running when you aren’t playing, similar to Cookie Breaker or Auto RPG. It’s a bit more colorful and smartly laid out, but basically the same thing. A cute little time-waster that requires basically no brainpower. When you reach a high level, you can opt to use the “time machine” to power-up one of your sidekicks in exchange for restarting from the beginning. There are also challenge dungeons (the only challenge is getting strong enough to take them) and a separate “adventure” mode you can pay for. Of special note are the Gold Trolls and Runic Trolls that randomly appear and force you to pay attention—unlike most non-boss enemies, they have a timer and will disappear if you don’t defeat them quickly.
10 Billion Wives - ANOTHER “tap to make numbers go up” game that keeps running when you aren’t playing, though this one is poorly translated engrish with a much less smooth curve and less to actually keep you engaged, while drowning you in ads. If you want this sort of game, play Tapventure.
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