Clicker Heroes Review

Clicker Heroes is a "Clicker" game in which your goal is to achieve the last room of the "dungeon" (or beat your highest room ever) by killing creatures. Despite being a very simple game, it does require active play to an extent, but the most part of it will be the game open in the background waiting for enough gold to accumulate before you can move on to the next stage, we will explain that soon.

The game loop consists of killing creatures by either clicking on them or waiting for your heroes to do it for you, for which you will be awarded gold, which then will be used to level up your heroes and cause more damage. Once you have enough damage you will be able to kill bosses for Hero Souls(HS), that can be claimed once you reset your progress by Ascending. Each HS improves your damage by 10% or can be used as currency to buy Ancients, statues of great power that will improve your performance by increasing damage, gold dropped, skill cooldown, skill duration and other chances in the game. Every Ancient has their own level that can be permanently increased for more powerful bonuses, some of them have no limit for how much bonus they will provide. You also can equip Relics, artifacts that have been infused with ancient power, so you can boost even further your bonuses.

Every 10 levels that you beat for the first time will give you a special boost called Hero Gild, and this boost can be moved between your different heroes to provide the best damage possible. Unfortunately each boss is roughly two times more difficult than the last one, which means that sooner or later you will achieve a point in the game where you will be forced to either ascend, going back to room level 1, or wait for increasingly long hours until you can level up your heroes enough to kill the boss. It does take much less time to go through the levels again, as you will be much more powerful with the HS you just got, than it would take farming gold on a fixed level to defeat the next boss. This is where the "waiting in the background" comes from, as the more quickly you want to move on, the more constantly you will have to ascend and level up your heroes so you can move on to the next level before being able to push your limit again.

Despite feeling that the ascending mechanic needs improvement compared to idle gold farming, overall the game presents a very singular experience that can be taken as light or as hard as you want. You can click and reset often for a fast paced game or you can just chill and wait until your heroes do the work for you, resetting your progress whenever feels convenient or when you have time to click some more. The game is also free to play, so you can check this emerging "clicking" kind of game with no strings attached.

Final Score: 7 out of 10.

AdVenture Capitalist! Review

AdVenture Capitalist! is, for the lack of a better description, a very simple "Clicker" game in which your goal is to figure out which business of your portfolio will give you the best return over each dollar you invest. The more money you make, the more you can grow your businesses so you can make more money, and then... you get it. Made first for mobile, this is a casual game but due to a "reset" mechanic it can be played quite "actively".

The game has two main mechanics, you must click on the business you want to run and you must manage your profits in order to increase your business. Clicking on a business icon will start a timer before giving you the corresponding profits, while investing your money in the business will make it more profitable by either increasing your profit per iteration or reducing the timer in which your profits will be given. Either way, you are increasing your profit by investing in the business. Every time you reach a milestone you get a nice extra bonus!

Lets be honest though, would you like to spend hours just clicking on the screen? Probably not, and we wouldn't either! That is why this game gives you a very nice and valuable feature in which you can hire a manager to click for you! So instead of having the game open with a macro for clicking on your screen, you can just pay a "digital someone" to do that for you. Not only that, but once you hire a manager he will keep running your businesses even when you are offline! This way you can spend your time making real important decisions, like where to invest your profits! =)

To close the game loop we have a second currency called "Angel Investors." The more money you make the more angel investors you will get and the more angel investors you have the more money you will make. But in order to claim these wonderful angels you will have to start from the beginning. You will loose all your money and current business level, going all back to only 1 lemon stand. Do not worry, because this process is healthy and will make you go much, much further!

Despite it's simplicity and few mechanics, the game has nice art, a clear design and if you are the kind of person that enjoys figuring out optimal play, you will have hours of entertainment. Best of all, it is a free-to-play game, so you should try it, no strings attached! Who knows, maybe you can even get to found a space expedition and take your entrepreneurship to other rocks of the galaxy.

Final Score: 8 out of 10.

Transistor Review

Transistor is an isometric action RPG in which your goal is to revenge your friend's death by deleting The Camerata, a group of four people that cares about nothing but their own agenda. This game has a unique combat system that is guaranteed to keep you hooked with the many possibilities it presents.

The combat mechanic is essentially very simple, each enemy has their unique pattern and you have to bring their health down before they do the same with yours. What this game excels at is how you do this. You have four active skills at any given time, but you will have sixteen different functions (abilities) to choose from. On top of that, each active skill can have up to two upgrade slots, which means you can use two other functions to enhance the skill power and functionality. Some basic math will show you that each active skill has up to 240 combinations!! Don't worry, the numbers seem daunting, but in reality the system is very easy to understand once you start playing with it. You won't be able to use all that power and versatility until later in the game when you will already have a good understanding and practice experience with the system.

You also have four other passive slots, in which you can use your functions to give passive bonuses to your character. These bonuses might come very handy depending on your build or even your play-style.

Speaking of play-style, you have two major ways of fighting The Process (your enemies). You can either stop time and plan a limited amount of actions with the Turn() mechanic, which will make your active skills locked for a couple seconds but allows you to perform a set amount of pre-planned actions in hyper-speed, or you can specialize in real-time combat and use everything you have got at will. Still regarding play-style, there are some special "equipment" called Limiters. Once equipped they will provide you experience with boosts by giving your game a disadvantage. It could be something as simple as The Process doing double damage, or something very troublesome as reducing the memory you have available to install functions. The worse the disadvantage is, the more experience you will be given. One tip tough, you can replay the game as many times as you want and keep your progress through game plays. We do not recommend using all limiters in your first time around as this will make combat quite a challenge!

One last thing we would like to mention regarding the game mechanics is how it deals with failure. Once your character has it's life points depleted you will loose one of your installed functions by Overloading. Which means you will lose the access to that skill until you reach the next save point. If you have four functions installed you can "die" four times. Once you run out of functions you will have to load the last game saved.

Although the combat system is the most relevant mechanic in the game, there are many other little things that just add to the overall experience. On top of it all, Transistor has stunning art work and an outstanding soundtrack, as well designed as their mechanics, we highly recommend this title!

Final Score: 10 out of 10.