Ha! That's something I've been trying to find out, too. first I suspected that the tile appears in the line where you either started or finished your chain, but I did not take a closer look yet.
Haha yea, I experimented with it but didn't find a conclusive result. It really irks me when the new pig spawns on the other side.
Game Impressions I too am weary of games powered by consumable IAPs but can confidently state, after playing the game for 4 hours straight last night and getting my town to the ninth level (not sure out of how many possible), I'll never NEED to purchase any sort of IAPs to continue in the game. This game, thankfully, is NOT Farmville with match 3 thrown in or even another attempt by a developer to cash in on the Minecraft craze, it actually shares a lot more in common with the likes of Settlers of Catan, Dungeon Raid, and, in an indirect way, Triple Town. This game is all about the continuous interaction between the farming (how one gathers all of the game's organic resources) and mining (how one digs up the game's inorganic resources) to then use said resources to build new facilities in town that, in turn, will allow you to both farm and mine more effectively. Farming: You have 24 turns to gather all of the resources you can. You're initially presented with a field of grass, wheat, chickens, and trees. During a single turn you simply try to chain a continuous path through one of these resources and, if you chain enough icons of a given item, you'll create a unit of that particular resource for use in the town. Simple stuff...but it gets trickier than this, of course. While grass wheat, chickens, and trees make up the default items, if you manage to make a long enough chain of one of these resources, when refilling the field with pieces, higher tiered items will be added into the mix (i.e. clear 8 wheat and a carrot will be dropped into the field). The tricky part then is trying to arrange things so that, while gathering the base resources, 3 or more matching units of these much rarer items can be strung together, which if in turn are gathered in large enough batches, can lead to even rarer drops (if it takes gathering over 8 wheat to make a carrot, and over 8 carrots to make an apple, how the heck are you going to ever get the needed minimum of 64 units of wheat to make this all happen within a mere 24 turns). At the end of 24 turns you'll be given the option to pay 200 coins to preserve the current field for your next farming session. If you have the money to spare this is REALLY helpful as it means you won't have to start from scratch on your next farming session by already have a lot of those higher tiered items still in the field. Mining: While this uses the same basic mechanics, it plays quite differently. To mine you first need to spend some of your current food supplies to enter the mine (the more food you supply, the more turns you can take before having to come back up from mining). Once you've decided how much food you'll be taking into the mine with you, you'll enter the mine making groups of dirt (lots and lots of dirt), rocks, and iron. Gather a big enough group of rocks and some pieces of coal will show up in the mine. If you later gather a big enough pile of coal in a single move, a diamond will be dropped into the mine! So while this then sounds a lot like farming, there is another unique twist to mining via the gas explosions! If you gather 8+ pieces of dirt in a single move it will create a gas cloud. While single gas clouds, one their own, are no more than annoying obstacle taking up space something useful could appear, if 3+ of these gas clouds manage to land adjacent to one another there will be a gas explosion which will immediately terminate your mining session (no sure if you still get to keep what you'd dug up so far in this session or if it is all lost)! Just try to make sure these gas explosions don't happen while you're down there. Here money can be used at the end of a run to buy a few additional turns (although you can't buy your way out of a gas explosion). Town Building: Using the resources you've gathered from the farm and mine you can create all sort of useful structures, tools, and recruit workers. Each of these facilities, power-ups, and skilled craftsmen will help you by providing additional resources or making your future farming and mining runs more effective. So in summation, by selling off extra resources, leveling rewards (gathering resources and adding buildings to your town give you experience which in turn levels up your town giving you access to new structures, items, skills, and cash rewards), and building drops you'll have enough cash to get by. If, on the other hand, you want to power through the game much quicker by building structures without the required resources, saving your farm fields for the next session, or extending your mine runs, some IAP coins can make this all possible. 5/5
As a lover of Dungeon Raid (come back to us Firefly!), I had been really looking forward to this game. I was dismayed by some of the negative feedback initially in this thread, but it is a $1 so who cares, so I downloaded it. Came back to give my positive feedback, and find that Vovin has said everything I came to say. This is a positively charming little game. I have about 2 hours played, no pay walls, no problems, just some fun match-x (as it is not match-3) goodness with some fun strategic city building added in. Already a better $1 value spent than the $4 I spent at Starbucks this morning.
Hahaha.... no sleep 'til Brooklyn. Well, that game robbed some of my sleep, too, somewhat around two hours. Well, at least we can say that the devs told us the truth about the IAP and I am very happy about it. For those on the fence and not having taken the plunge yet, get it at a single buck. The game still gets better the deeper you dive into it. Especially if you're a genre fan. @ LordGek: Hey you're right, the mechanics (create one higher quality item out of x lower quality items) also reminded me of Triple Town. The devs really created a nice blend of different games. The rest of your review was precise as always. Didn't expect anything else from you. Btw, you created a funny typo, 'cause I've never heard of Dungeon Rain before. The monsters should go and fix that bloody roof... Again, for all "kingdom sim fans": it's not as deep as a pure sim, but has quite some depth.
I have to say that my little problem with the game has nothing to do with the IAP or anything else... It's simply the super small type in the game. I was playing it late at night on my iPhone so maybe it was just a case of tired eyes, but I had to stop the game. I'll play it on my iPad later and see if that's an improvement. But I still hate it when games get on the iPhone and use so little of the real estate for copy. There is no reason at all to use such a small font or space for your important dialogue. I want to be able to read everything on the screen and for something like the opening tutorial, I think it's important enough to bring the size up a few points. Maybe it's the "Get off my lawn" old man in me, but I find that I delete games quickly if the type is unreadable (this can be by font size or by trying to get too fancy with the type). Use the space and let us read what you have to say. Use a simple font. Just because it reads well on the iPad doesn't mean it translate to the smaller devices the same way. These should be part of game design 101.
Restarting device didn't work. Re-installed it and still didn't work, but after restarting device again, it's working now. I'm really enjoying the game so far.
That would be me who suggested similar, and it definitely exists among a wide-range of publishers, big and small, so perhaps it's just that they know how to do it, or 'sell' the idea to Apple, rather than a case of Apple being totally against it? Playrix G5 Entertainment ablemagic Big Fish To name just a few who do go this route.
Is there an end to this game? How long? If there is an end, do you keep playing or start again? What would be the benefit of restarting?
Hey Devs, If I have a bunch of power-ups in the mine, while there are left and right arrows to scroll to power-ups that might be off screen, I still am having power-ups cut off (I can select the power-up on the far right but I can't see the number of uses I still have of that power-up). This is on my iPad 3 if it makes any difference.
I not yet posted my view on the game, in honest i not played it straight for like a hour or so I do busts of the game. So this "pay wall" that people have commented about i not hit while playing i seen my money go up and also seen my tax increase from 30 every 2 hours to 40. The more i get into this the more goals open up, "what should harvest for next" or "have i got all the tools i need to mine" couple of times i kicked myself for going into a harvest and forgetting to craft some very usefully tools. IMO IAP is just option open to you if you really cant wait its not necessary to enjoy this game.
