App rec: best fiends
May. 23rd, 2019 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelI have found a new mobile game addiction. It's called Best Fiends. No, that's not a typo. Fiends, not Friends.
It's a ... er, i don't know if there's a name for it; one of the types of match-3 games where you draw a winding path through at least three consecutive items of the same color. The plot, such as it is, is a bunch of insects killing evil slugs. It's a bit cutesy at times, and I'm not sure if that's a feature or a bug (pun intended).
It's free, with optional paid upgrades, and while there are ads they only occur when requested (you get extra stuff for watching ads, but it never interrupts you, and you don't have to do it). And most importantly, it's *not timed*. The closest to "timed" is that each day has a sort of daily quest (collecting carrots within the levels to feed baby slugs that are being raised on the side of good; catching escaped bandit slugs by completing levels, etc) where you only get the rewards if you complete the tasks within that day, but there is no penalty for "failing" the daily. Levels are completely untimed. There are only a limited number of moves, but you can take as long as you want to consider each move.
Oh, and there are cute little animated shorts available on YouTube. And one of the voices is Mark Hamill.
(Because I do watch the ads sometimes, I also have a new pet peeve: ads that have absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay. There's this trend of showing this ... like, there will be a scene with several things wrong (cat clawing up couch, fish tank leaking, dirt on floor, curtains on fire) and tools that make things better (vacuum, tape) or worse (gasoline, sledgehammer) ... and it's not interactive at all, you just watch the hand in the ad make various choices, and it has *nothing st all* connecting it to the gameplay for that game. One of the games that has ads like this, Homescapes, is one I used to play, and it's mostly bejeweled-style match-3. I stopped playing it because a) something about the main character drives me crazy and I want to punch his face, b) they had weird frustrating limitations, c) it talked about designing your own unique garden but there were always only three choices and they all sucked, and d) I forget what else but I filed it in my brain as "never touch again". The use of this advertising strategy just cements that in my mind. The best ads are ones that show how the game is played -- merge dragons does this, empires and puzzles does this, a few others -- but somehow they'd rather go with stupid annoying unrelated shit.)
It's a ... er, i don't know if there's a name for it; one of the types of match-3 games where you draw a winding path through at least three consecutive items of the same color. The plot, such as it is, is a bunch of insects killing evil slugs. It's a bit cutesy at times, and I'm not sure if that's a feature or a bug (pun intended).
It's free, with optional paid upgrades, and while there are ads they only occur when requested (you get extra stuff for watching ads, but it never interrupts you, and you don't have to do it). And most importantly, it's *not timed*. The closest to "timed" is that each day has a sort of daily quest (collecting carrots within the levels to feed baby slugs that are being raised on the side of good; catching escaped bandit slugs by completing levels, etc) where you only get the rewards if you complete the tasks within that day, but there is no penalty for "failing" the daily. Levels are completely untimed. There are only a limited number of moves, but you can take as long as you want to consider each move.
Oh, and there are cute little animated shorts available on YouTube. And one of the voices is Mark Hamill.
(Because I do watch the ads sometimes, I also have a new pet peeve: ads that have absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay. There's this trend of showing this ... like, there will be a scene with several things wrong (cat clawing up couch, fish tank leaking, dirt on floor, curtains on fire) and tools that make things better (vacuum, tape) or worse (gasoline, sledgehammer) ... and it's not interactive at all, you just watch the hand in the ad make various choices, and it has *nothing st all* connecting it to the gameplay for that game. One of the games that has ads like this, Homescapes, is one I used to play, and it's mostly bejeweled-style match-3. I stopped playing it because a) something about the main character drives me crazy and I want to punch his face, b) they had weird frustrating limitations, c) it talked about designing your own unique garden but there were always only three choices and they all sucked, and d) I forget what else but I filed it in my brain as "never touch again". The use of this advertising strategy just cements that in my mind. The best ads are ones that show how the game is played -- merge dragons does this, empires and puzzles does this, a few others -- but somehow they'd rather go with stupid annoying unrelated shit.)
no subject
Date: 2019-05-24 07:06 pm (UTC)I too find the ads in these games incomprehensible. Why on earth do they think someone who plays spider solitaire would be interested in a game where someone blows up their kitchen with stupidity?
also, we are in Davis full time now. we might figure out a thing maybe to meet? we're near slide hill park.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-24 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-31 02:13 pm (UTC)And yyyyy the ads for Homescapes et al drive me BANANAS, because while I really don't like limited-move match 3s, I would LOVE a game like what's depicted in the ads, so the bait-and-switch feels epically mean.