Android Casual Games for Early 2020

[chuckro]

Spellspire - Climb the tower and spell words to cast attack spells. You’re given a bank of 10 letters each level, and longer words that you create cause more damage to foes. If you beat the full level, you’re rewarded with gold you can use to upgrade your attack power and health. Grinding becomes necessary very quickly, because even the best words aren’t enough if you don’t have upgraded equipment behind them. You lose lives by failing levels or by replaying earlier levels (so you can charge forward forever, but grinding is limited by real time). There are ads, but buying any IAP also removes them. This is one of those free-to-play games where the difficulty curve appears to be exponential, skyrocketing around level 20 to encourage you to buy their IAP rather than mindlessly grinding for months.

Pokemon Shuffle - A match-3 game with the gimmicks that all of the gems are Pokemon (and you choose which ones to bring to each level, to try to get the usual elemental rock-paper-scissors bonuses against whatever pokemon you’re facing) and that you can swap gems anywhere on the board. Your moves are limited, so setting up long combos really matters. Play is limited by hearts that recharge over time or can be purchased with real money; you can also buy power-ups to help catch fancier pokemon with either in-game gold or real money. Standard stuff, really.

Overall: Both of these fit into the category of “I’m bored so I’ll try a new thing,” but neither had any real staying power for me.