This game rocks. It's absolutely beautiful and you can see it has been made with a lot of love and care, something very rare on the mobile scene. Easily game of the week.
I view it differently - at any point in history, on any platform except current mobile, you simply could NOT get a game with the amount of work that went into this game for less than $10. So, sure, in a way, the game economy is intentionally broken, but then so is the *real* economy. Paying $2.99 is chump change, as is the $5.98 with the doubler, so you pick your price point, and by doing so you pick the amount of time it will take to unlock things, or you just dump $20 into a gold package and unlock half the stuff on day one. It's up the user and this constantly haranguing developers for trying to find any way to get games out there at price points that don't automatically ensure failure of their title is so counter productive. Those of you who actually care about this stuff couldn't collectively manage to buy the developers out there a Happy Meal at McDonalds with what you consider reasonable price points, give it up. Besides, only reason this launched at $2.99 is so they can have a $1.99 or $0.99 sale within the next week if need be to regain attention, with their only hope of making any significant money from that "evil" coin doubler, which is why I bought it at $2.99 and bought the coin doubler now, because, again, there is no conspiracy against us. It is an embarrassment of riches for gamers. ------------ On the real topic, I'm really pleased with the polish in this title. It's a game style we've seen a ton of but I can't say I've seen the genre executed this well. Graphically, it's gorgeous at times, controls work really well, and the pacing and mechanics all do seem to work just right. Game shipped with a ridiculous amount of levels already, an endless mode, and has the expected "coming soon" for more level packs. It would be really, really hard to not get your money's worth out of it unless you just dislike the genre, and if that's the case, why are you reading this?
Bought it and is just great and wonderfull as all adult Swim games! Love the detailed art style and gameplay, [as] games are just quality games with their original style Coin doublers are just not necessary and that a fact from previous games as "Castle Doombad"
Well, I normally don't debate on TA, but I will in this instance. The IAPs in this game are completely optional and not in the least a "have to" situation. Its unfortunate that to compete in the AppStore professional, talented developers such as these have to, in effect, whore their art out in a fashion to appease the current consumer culture. In this case, a game that's easily worth $15-$20, has to sell at $2.99 and many will consider this "too much, should be free". The game is beautiful and plays accordingly; whether you have bought the coin doubler or not. We consumers, by way of unfortunate circumstance to the devs, have paid a very low rate for their long hours coding, marketing etc. I have not bought the coin doubler, yet. But it's nice to know that I don't need it per se, but having a conscience as a human and not just being cut-throat in mindframe "get the most I can for as little as possible, screw everyone else", it's nice to know I have the option to give the dev a tip in appreciation for the great experience and their hard work and effort. Richard
All we know for sure is the devs thought a coin doubler could come in handy which suggests to me that there will be grinding without it. In any case it's fair to doubt whether it was designed around a coin doubler or not And yet there are devs who are capable of getting by with premium games with no IAPs which suggests you're skipping part of the story While i haven't played it i have watched the videos posted here and what i saw was run of the mill vector art, certainly not anything like say Banner Saga. I could be wrong though but that's my impression. In fact i'd say CastleStorm looks much better but again that's only based on the videos Until you've completed the game i'm not sure you're qualified to make that statement Completely uncalled for and also fallacious. Please consider your tone if we are to have a real debate on this There are numerous ways to achieve this without designing your game around coin doublers. Heck, the dev of Pixel Dungeon, the fantastic rogue like on Android, made a lot of money from a simple donate button in game that didn't do anything besides letting you tip him If i pay for a game, no matter the price and btw i'm not opposed to paying 10 or 20$ for a mobile game, then i expect the full experience. When IAPs like coin doublers exist, i can never really be sure if they designed their game around it or not
As I stated, I generally don't debate here on TA and for this purpose; your opinion is yours mine is mine, we both have already justified in our own minds that we are of the superior mentality, especially with regards to the "issue" at hand. However, while I can step away from the conversation, and dip back into playing this beautifully designed game and even buy some coins, or power-ups etc. You, my friend, seem to be struggling because if it were as cut and dried as you will not purchase this game due to the existence of IAP's then why are you still hanging out in the thread of said game that you do not intend to buy. Is this a protest or a demonstration?
Well, i've made all of....3 posts in this thread, 2 of them in the last 5 minutes so it's not like i'm a regular in this thread I read about this game on the front page, saw the forum thread and went to read impressions and noticed the coin doubler IAP That hardly qualifies as some big indicator that i'm torn does it? I'll dip back in and play a proper premium game like Banner Saga with no IAPs in sight because *gasp* they actually exist despite claims to the contrary
Fair enough. If I thought it were an issue of having the funds I'd offer to gift this game to you, but I think it's more just your take on IAPs in general which is fine, I feel there is a place for them in today's mobile gaming and I feel this games implementation is acceptable, whereas I've seen in other games gross, Mis-implementation.
Very kind of you but yea, it's definitely my take on IAPs in premium games in general so lets just agree to disagree and i promise i wont spread any more anti IAP negativity in the thread
There is nothing wrong with IAP in general, same for DLC. There just are a lot of bad ones out there. But also good ones. E.g. Kingdom Rush also allows you to buy diamands to buy items to help you with but 1. you get thousands/ten thousands of diamonds over time just by playing and 2. you don't even need them. I have ~40k diamonds just by playing in KR Frontiers, 18k = 9 if you buy them. They also allow you to buy more heroes besides a few standard free ones of which are fine for finishing the entire game. They also updated the game multiple times with free levels, 1 free hero and some more pay ones. A game that costs a only little to buy and you can spend many dozens, maybe even hunderds of hours without paying extra cause of IAP. Hitman Go for example allows you to unlock new chapters of the game right away but you can just unlock them buy getting more objectives/goals from previous chapters. And there are some more games with gold/diamonds/multiplier unlocks where it is just for the dumb/lazy people to buy. Ontopic part! That all said aside I was wondering about the difficulty of this game. I played Doombad but I was pretty much done with the entire game after 1.5 days. It just was way to easy. The extra levels they released later offered a bit more challenge but was still nothing to write home about. I had fun ofc but was a bit dissapointed for the price though. So does this game now have multiple difficulties to select?
No one said they don't exist. That said, they are usually in niche genres (turn based, text heavy strategy RPGs are not exactly in the same universe nor targeted to the same audience as anything AS publishes), and they rarely start out on mobile because savvy developers are sharper than your average anti-IAP poster. The so-called true premium experience is the exception to prove the rule. Name a mobile first title in that vein AND one that didn't lose money. Try putting as much work as went into Banner Saga into a casual aimed level based game like this (and I'd bet a similar amount of coding hours went into this title as went into Banner Saga) and release it for $10 up front without any IAP and see how quickly the studio folds.
Lots of interesting points made in this thread. I too bought Banner Saga. I too appreciate a premium game where you pay upfront for everything. I'm probably going to buy this tomorrow. I'm probably going to buy the doubler as well. I guess that I should get it through my head that the App Store has a very strange kind of ecosystem, and that sometimes I will have to pay twice for a game that I enjoy playing. It's just that deceptive marketing makes Baby Jesus cry.
Ok, absolutely loving this game. But, on that note I do have a concern. When I get to the screen where the "Select Boosters" option is in the center and the start button is in the bottom right corner, the screen randomly goes dim and a black circle with an x in it appears in the upper right corner. It's as if some ad is going to pop up Maybe this game was to be freemium then they decided last minute to go paid. Regardless of all the things I've argued in favor of this game, if it goes freemium, ad supported I will be upset. I already don't like that on said screen the game stalls out as its trying to process...whatever. Hopefully I'm wrong, but we've all had pop-up ads and that's exactly what it seems coded to do.
Bought it, played it a bit and generally like it. The coin doubler isn't the only IAP. There are also coin packs. For the same price as the doubler, you can get 40,000 coins. For $21.99 you can get 500,000 coins. The fact that's even offered in a "premium" game sets off alarms at the back of my mind. I guess we will just have to play and see. If it goes freemium, I will avoid updating, or delete. I have had two instances so far where my archers won't fire no matter how much I tap until the vikings are almost through the gate. So two out of probably 15 level runs. Has anyone else had this happen?
Not so far in my experience. I've had to replay each level, but only in my quest to acquire 3 stars. And quite frankly it's fun learning the enemies tactics on each level then replaying them to get all the quests completed for all stars. In effect, I've only failed one level one time and it was my own fault, I was busy with some farther off Vikings and one sneaked by and I didn't realize he was hammering my gate in. But honestly, as far as progression goes I haven't had any real difficulty. The game has been really balanced in that regard.
