Recent reviews by djcassar

Looks like a promising game but I definitely can't recommend in its current state.

As it is early access it is hard to judge what is good and bad as stuff is constantly being worked. However, I absolutely can't stand all the cat rubbish in the game. Despite not liking them, my character wants to feed them, and they are shoved in your face in a million different ways. Can't wait until a modder gets rid of them.

What isn't broken does also need a lot of polish. It feels a lot like Sims 4 did on launch except the graphics are much nicer. The game is also surprisingly customisable which is great.

While the idea of opening fish packs is appealing, there's a major issue with their scarcity and pricing. The first packs cost $5, but then the price skyrockets to $1,000 for the next one. Considering that many of the fish are sold for a mere $2-$4, this turns the game into a idle grind. I managed to unlock all the fish in the $5 packs before I even had half the money I needed for the next pack. It would have been far better to have more fish packs with different rarity percentages, to create a sense of progression.

There are other items available for purchase, such as pebbles, lights, and decorations. Unfortunately, these items serve no purpose in the game except to drain your finances, and they don't contribute anything visually engaging.

The only interaction available in the game is right-clicking to feed the fish, which provides them with a measly +5 experience points. Given that many fish require well over 100,000 points to grow, this +5 boost is inconsequential. One would expect that purchasing accessories might increase this bonus, for people that want a bit more active play, but sadly, that's not the case.

Regarding the idea of having the game run in the background for relaxation, it falls short on this front as well. The music is ok but the effects are grating with no real control over this, and the graphics appear distorted with the fish just bouncing back and forth and does not feel natural nor do they school. There is also no attention to scaling. Oscar, neon tetra, goldfish—they all look essentially the same size.

While you can lock fish you don't want to sell, that's about the extent of it. There is no control if you want to collect golden or rainbow versions of every fish. Overall, this game lacks substance and, considering its shortcomings, it's simply not worth the money.

A terrible business model (that is more akin to a Ponzi scheme aimed at children). Would not recommend even as a free game.

The "free" aspect gets nerfed heavily as you begin to progress and it is out of frustration that you would spend money so that you can progress, however this investment is not sustained and because of the exponential progression model you have to constantly invest to maintain that progression to get any sort of return (essentially Ponzi).

Money or not, I frequently experienced bugs and frequently lost offline progress.

Poor mobile port, there are a lot of better games of this genre. constant flashing to spend money to make the boring game more tolerable.

Good
+ Addictive enough to kill a evening or two

Bad
+ Theme is a bit all over the place (not a deal breaker but a definite detractor for me! You might as well use a wet fish to blow the leaves out the way... oh wait you do.)
+ Graphics are bad (some items are shaded, others flat. The pixel art scale varies on different items)
+ Bugs ... As of 1.3 I experienced lots and lots of bugs that is causing all sorts of progress to be lost and values to change.
+ Incorrect descriptors 0.01% is 1% ... 200% increase of x value is actually 200% of the base level, not the amount it is showing you.

While it is free, I do not recommend as there are a lot better free idle games out there and I would recommend you play them instead.

New disapointment discovered by Daniel, what would you like to call it?

[ No Man's Sky ]

I have played countless hours of Heroes of Might & Magic 2 & 3 but I played it so much I kinda got a bit bored of it. After seeing 6 on special I decided to give it a go and see how it has changed and grown.

Firstly I had issues with Uplay (which every one else seems to have) and I couldn't start the game until I manually had to reinstall all that. (everytime I install uplay I seem to have some sort of issue causing that process to take a hour)

I got to play about a hour of the game before their conflux server lost connection and it booted me out of the game (why? It's single player just save the packet and send the info later!!!) again, this is a issue many other people are having and considering it is a game back from 2011 and these issues have not been addressed I can not recommend this game on these two facts alone.

As for the game, it is much the same as HOMM3, well all the good bits are the same anyway. While they have tried to give you more flexibility with the heroes in allowing you to assign skills the problem is that you need to pile all your units into your main character, so the other heroes just act like couriers and you never really "use" them.

Remove uplay and conflux and you have a decent game that has a few minor improvements over HOMM3 which is a bit sad considering there has been over 10 years and multiple iterations between the versions.