Trick or Treat!

Halloween Hi-Jinks from My Singing Monsters

It's great to see developers, particularly those that make free-to-play games, release holiday content that doesn't require the player to jump through a million hoops, or even worse, pay money for. Such is the case in My Singing Monsters. Every day for the past week-ish, Big Blue Bubble has been giving one of the monsters in MSM a Halloween costume makeover, pictured here. It's a nice touch, and once again speaks to the quality of the developer and the game. 

Zynga Cares!

Leads Charge With Hurricane Sandy Charity Aid

Really Zynga? Temporarily disabled "wither" in Farmville 2? What generosity. How about matching player harvesting with in-kind monetary donations to an aid organizations like the Red Cross? 

Freebie Alert: Draw Race 2!

Start Your Engines...

Just a quick heads-up that Draw Race 2 is free at the moment. The original Draw Race was a heckuva lot of fun, particularly multiplayer, so it's stands to reason that DR2 will be at least 2 times as good. Intuitive user interface, and really well executed. The iPad version looks phenomenal.

Gizmonauts

You'll Go Nuts For These Buckets of 'Bots Made of Bolts

You may have a heard of a little 'ole iPhone game called Dragonvale aka free-to-play app crack. Well, Backflip Studios, the team behind that game, are back with a new title - Gizmonauts. And much like Dragonvale, Gizmonauts contains every bit of the same addictive fun, except this time around, it's all about robots. You are tasked with raising (upgrading?), feeding (fueling?) and breeding (building? constructing? assembling?) various 'bots, but this time around, you can also upgrade individual robots with specialized tools to increase specific stats, as well as take them into combat.

I've already started to put together some numbers on optimal robot Snax to farm, so here's some initial stats for production amounts vs. time:

Food		Farm		Cost		Time (in Mins)		Amt Made		Amt Made/Hour
Micro Chips		Small		50		0.5		5		120
Spring Salad		Small		250		5		20		240
Bolt Burger		Small		1,000		30		75		150
Carbon Cola		Large		5,000		180		425		141.7
Battery Bites		Large		15,000		540		1,200		133.3
Coolant Cone		Large		75,000		1,440		3,000		125.0

As you can see, Spring Salad is your most efficient choice. So go nuts (no pun intended - this time).

My Kingdom For An Entbrat!

Going insane, for free, in My Singing Monsters.

I really enjoy playing My Singing Monsters. It's fun, off-beat, and challenging. And yet, it's driving me nuts. I cannot, for the life of me, get the correct breeding combo that produces an Entbrat, which is THE El Supremo Singing Monster in MSM. Possible combinations I've used, with no success, are:

Clamble + Toe Jammer

Blowgart + Noggin

T-Rox + Potbelly

Pummel + Mammott

Shrub + Maw

Fwog + Furcorn

Oaktapus + Drumpler

Am I missing any combos? Anyone? Buehler? Anyone?

"No brown M&Ms, I said!"

On the plus side, however, I finally got a Clamble. It's stats are:

Monster		Island		Level		Coins/Min		Max Coins
Clamble		Plant		9		65		13,478

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Besieged 2: Dark Territory

Now With 100% Less Steven Seagal

I have been playing Besieged 2 for the better part of 2012, for reasons even I'm not clear on. During that time, it's gone through several game balance changes, some for better, some for worse. Now in it's newly released third incarnation, Besieged 2 still manages to not quite get it right, and yet for some reason I still keep playing, in the hopes that things will get better. It's a classic side-scroller tower defense game; defend your castle against waves of undead hordes. Each wave, in the form of discrete levels, cranks up the difficulty by introducing enemies that shoot back, burrow underground, turn invisible, raise magical shields, or just generally are tough mothers to kill. In turn, you will occasionally get more powerful and versatile arrows to slay enemies, such as explosive projectiles, fire arrows, multi-shots, and the like.

The problem(s) with the game however, are two-fold; one, arrow upgrades are awarded only after you have to go through a laborious and dull process of building various useless structures inside your castle walls, which usually provide zero weapon awards, aside from the ability to construct another useless structure, and two, if you die on say, Level 5, you have to start over from Level 1 and work your way back up all over. It's really quite boring and a major misfire in terms of enjoyability. However, I still consider Besieged 2 a diamond in the rough, and with a few small tweaks, it could be quite great.

Truth in Advertising: Punch Quest

Lest there be any doubt as to the main gameplay focus of Punch Quest, it's a game about punching. Lots and lots of punching. What Temple Run is to, uh, running (in temples, no less), Punch Quest is to knocking out whatever gets in your way. On occasion, you get to punch AND ride dinosaurs at.the.same.time. How can you go wrong with such a concept? Answer: you can't. So grab a copy for the amazingly low-low price of nothing.

Got A Case of The Mondays?

Then grab a FREE copy of Super Crate Box today only!

You can't go wrong with Super Crate Box. Amazingly fun? Check. Great retro graphics? Check. 4.5 star rating on iTunes? Check. Free today? Check. There's really no excuse not to get a copy. 

Monster Tower

Mini Review

Monster Tower might be described as part Donkey Kong, part Tower Defense. Except you play as Kong, and you don't build any towers. Totally explains the gameplay, right? No? Well, that is part of the slightly wacky charm of Monster Tower. Your job in the game is to defend the last king monster egg on the highest floor of a tower from an onslaught of human attackers intent on destroying said egg. You have an array of monster types to choose from, as well as various traps to lay, as the soldiers try to advance their way to the top. With each level won, money is rewarded to you, which can used to upgrade your various monster troops. The variety of monsters in your command is varied in both look, ability, and cost, so it's not just a simple matter of flinging 100 green goo melee minions at the invaders of your tower. Strategy and tactics are required, not just brute force. Also, it's kinda fun to try to say "green goo melee minion" three times fast. 

Making Money With Monsters

A look under the hood into some of the money-making stats of monsters in My Singing Monsters.

Making cash in My Singing Monsters is no different than most other feed-breed-upgrade monster farming simulation. The more money you have, the cooler the stuff you can buy with it. Below is the breakdown of cash creation stats for the Plant Island Monsters in MSM:

Monster		Island		Level		Coins/Min		Max Coins
Potbelly		Plant		9		27		130
Noggin		Plant		9		43		130
Toe Jammer		Plant		9		17		216
Mammott		Plant		9		33		216
Shrub		Plant		8		47		768
Oaktopus		Plant		9		45		2,160
Furcorn		Plant		9		45		1,620
Fwog		Plant		9		54		1,620
Drumpler		Plant		6		36		864
Maw		Plant		9		43		2,160
Pummel		Plant		9		72		13,478
Clamble		Plant		?		?		?
Bowgart		Plant		9		50		13,608
T-Rox		Plant		9		72		15,552
Entbrat		Plant		?		?		?

The Mammott is the last monster you can create that does not require cross-breeding. After that, you need to start cross-breeding to create hybrids. Once you get to the Pummel, breeding gets even more complicated, as you need to successfully cross breed using a hybrid, which increases the number of potential combinations, and only one combo is the correct one. As you can see from the question marks, I still haven't gotten the right combo for the Clamble or Entbrat. The Entbrat in particular will be a challenge to breed, as it requires the right combo of two hybrids, which makes for breeding permutations that gives me a headache.

My advice would be to get to a Furcorn, Fwog, or Maw as soon as possible to start raking in the cash. Once you've bread a few of those, it's a pretty quick trip to get the 500,000 coins required to build the Green Crystal Mine, and unlock more islands. 

Note: The column titled "Coins/Min" refers to the number of coins per minute a monster will produce.

There's No "I" in "Tribe"

Oh wait...nevermind.

"Last time, the doctor just gave me some lotion to get rid
of these darn crabs!'

Part Gilligan's Island, part Lost, part Cityville, and part Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tiny Tribe is a serviceable little village building simulation, set on a remote tropical island full of mysteries where the player is tasked with rebuilding a semblance of civilization in the jungle after a plane crash. Food and water are the primary resources your tribe of hapless survivors require in order to gather resources and build stuff. Water, in particular, is quite scarce, so often you will be handed a mission, only to discover you need another 45 minutes before water will become available again. This happens quite often early on in the game, so ration your water supply carefully. The other main resources are wood and stone, which can be used-, and later crafted into-, various other production resources. Level, up, and new buildings, tools, and missions will become available. 

Of course, no free-to-play game would be complete without some item you can purchase with real money to speed things along, and Tiny Tribes is no exception with it's crystals. However, the mildly patient player will find that most of the items required to complete a mission eventually turn up in the game after a brief period of time, so only the most impatient need to spend real cash to advance through the game. The missions themselves are a fairly varied lot, and often completing one mission requires multi-step tasks in order to complete, so at times it's easy to get confused as to why exactly are you're mining rocks, when you're supposed to be finding crabs to eat. But all in all, Tiny Tribe is a fun little diversion that mixes up a few genres to good effect.

Musical Mutants

The only thing missing? Monster groupies.

No cavities.

In an App Store filled to the brim with a bajillion variations of the monster/dragon/zombie feed-n-breed ilk, My Singing Monsters stands out as a brilliantly quirky and creative take on a tired sub-genre. The concept is simple: you breed various monsters, each of which has a specific audio talent. Cross-breed them to create new musical mutants. The monsters come in all varieties, from percussion to strings to vocals. With every monster you add a new element to the tune being played. Add more monsters of the same type to increase their particular sound, or mute them to create a new take on the tune. 

There are three primary resources at your disposal to grow your band; gold coins which are produced by the monsters, food, which is made in the bakeries, and green diamonds, which are the defacto freemium resource you might be tempted to use real money on. Feed monsters food, and their level increases, which in turn increases both the rate and amount of gold coins they will produce. I'm not sure what the level cap is for monsters - I have a Level 11 Maw (think pink bean bag with a mouth and a voice like James Earl Jones) that shows no sign of maxing out, except he requires a pant-load of food in order to level up - 20,480 food for this level, and each subsequent level doubles the amount required to increase to the next level. But as a Maw is a relatively higher level creature, he produces a lot more money, and quickly. So if you want the cash to buy cool stuff, you must feed the beast.

"We're putting the band back together!"

Beyond just the sheer fun of listening to the monsters sing their tune, and uncovering what exactly a T-Rox sounds like, there are layers of fun waiting to be discovered and reward players. The Time Machine building? Genius. A mine to gather green diamonds instead of paying real money for them? Thank you very much, Big Blue Bubble. Additional islands with different tunes and different monsters? Here you go. It's a great game that is superbly executed, and a hoot to play.

News Flash: Carmageddon Free For 24 Hours!

Well, what are you waiting for? Go get it! The clock is ticking.

Miscellaneous


UPDATE: No longer free. Hopefully everyone grabbed a copy earlier.

Win, Place, or Show?

Having a bit of a minor dilemma over what game to focus on next. Also, from My Singing Monsters to World of Warcraft in one paragraph.

Miscellaneous/Micro-Review

At the moment, I'm simultaneously playing My Singing Monsters, Jurassic Park Builder, and Restaurant Story, with moments of Farmville 2, as well. Deciding on a focus is proving difficult as each has some quality that keeps me coming back hour after after. Monsters is outright musical, silly, fun, Jurassic has a really robust set of missions and realistic (for a theoretically improbable zoo) sim feel, and Restaurant Story is mostly sheer stubbornness on my part - I want a diner that still runs smoothly when I'm asleep. Then there's Farmville 2 - a game I swore I'd never play again. But the more I play, the deeper I find the gameplay. As soon as I unlocked the 'crafting' house in Farmville 2, it was all over. As a reformed crafting junkie from World of Warcraft days, turning apples into scones via the right combination of ingredients was all I needed to hook me.

UPDATE: I'm going with My Singing Monsters for my next review. I just unlocked a whole new island with a different song, monsters, etc. Plus: a Time Machine. Really.

E.T.: The Green Planet: Whoops I Did It Again

In honor of the 30th anniversary of releasing the Atari 2600 E.T. game, Universal has recreated that special magic with a new E.T. game on the iOS...

...and aside from outstanding graphics on the iOS, this version is a mess, too. What should have been a simple farming/breeding sim game, like Smurf Village, is instead a broken, convoluted train wreck in "ET: The Green Planet".

The game contains a  back-story about helping another planet come back to life, but then you're building a launch pad and spaceship to travel to other planets to find parts to assemble E.T.'s Speak-n-Spell SOS transmitter. Except the spaceship only worked twice for me in the game. There's quests to gain XP that rely solely on a resource you can only acquire if someone visits your farm. The camera that will inexplicable pan and zoom onto your E.T., not to be confused with THE E.T., who is apparently too busy because he's making a guest appearance at an opening of a Gamestop in El Segundo. Your E.T. doesn't do anything. You can purchase a grand total of one (1) type of plant to grow with the only resource you produce\harvest. All other plants require other players to come by and drop off a special resource when they visit your farm, which never happens. Breeding new plants purposefully destroys the two parent plants, which theoretically might take a player days to grow, assuming other players visit and drop off precious resources, which they don't do, so it's a moot point.

I'm baaaaack....

I'm currently stalled at Level 6 with nothing to do. It might be free, but it's still not really worth the effort unless the bugs and design flaws are addressed. The in-game graphics and animation are top-notch, but it's a Potemkin Village when it comes to gameplay. E.T. - phone home and get a new agent.

Blah-arracks

I mean, Barracks a.k.a. the least effective units in Kingdom Rush.

"I suck!" "No, I suck more, knave!"

I hate to end on a low note, especially after singing the praises of Kingdom Rush, but the Barracks Towers are quite unnecessary in order to succeed in Kingdom Rush, IMO. I never built  them, never felt I needed them, and never understood their utility. They're filler, like rice cakes, or Ryan Seacrest. But here now, for the sake of completion, are the cost stats for the Barracks Tower:

	Lvl 1		Lvl 2		Lvl 3		Special		Lvl 4	Xtra 1	Xtra 2	Xtra 3		Total Cost
Infantry	70		110		160		Holy Order (Heal)		230	150	150	150		1130
Infantry	70		110		160		Holy Order (Shield)		230	250	---	---		930
Infantry	70		110		160		Holy Order (Strike)		230	220	150	150		1200
Infantry	70		110		160		Barbarian (+ Axes)		230	300	100	100		1180
Infantry	70		110		160		Barbarian (Attack)		230	150	100	100		1030
Infantry	70		110		160		Barbarian (Throw)		230	200	100	100		1080

So, according to this table, The Barbarian Attack Specials Tower is the most cost efficient. I found it even more cost efficient to just not build them and save myself 1,030 coins.

Forecast: Cloudy, with a 100% Chance of Fun!

News Flash - Kumo Lumo is Aces (& Free)!

Kumo Lumo, from Chillingo, is the most creative, quirky, and entertaining app I've seen in a while. It's the kind of game that would emerge if Miyamoto, creator of Mario Brothers, was forced to watch only The Weather Channel for a year straight 24/7. I've been playing it for just an few hours, but already all other plans for the day have been tossed aside. I'd much rather have my plucky cloud hero, Kumo, water trees, put out fires, and so on. So excuse the brevity of this post - a cumulus's work is never done, and I have to get back to mine.

Big Bang Theory

Bombs & Artillery Towers in Kingdom Rush

With special guest star, Nikolai Tesla!

The usefulness and utility of Artillery Towers in Kingdom Rush is a bit like a tortoise and hare race; slow and plodding at the outset, but ultimately a real winner in the end. These towers cause area effect damage, meaning they can do bad things to multiple enemies with a single shot. It might take some time and money, but in the end, you'll end up on the path to victory with them. 

	Lvl 1		Lvl 2		Lvl 3		Special		Lvl 4	Xtra 1	Xtra 2	Xtra 3		Total Cost
Artillery	125		220		320		Bertha (Dragon)		400	250	100	100		1515
Artillery	125		220		320		Bertha (Cluster)		400	250	150	150		1615
Artillery	125		220		320		Tesla (SCharge)		375	250	250			1540
Artillery	125		220		320		Tesla (OCharge)		375	250	125	150		1565

Yet again, the cheapest upgrade path is probably the best weapon against your foes, at least in my (never wrong) opinion. The Big Bertha Tower with the Dragon's Breath Special variant can hit multiple enemies, both on land and in the air, from vast distances. While I like watching the Medieval steampunk-esque Tesla Towers zapping multiple enemies, they don't seem to have the same effectiveness as the Big Bertha Special. For my coins, Bertha is the girl that can hurl!

The Wiz Biz

Mage Towers in Kingdom Rush - you know you wand them!

Review

Apologies for that awful pun - it's early, OK people? Hopefully the following peek under the hood into Mage Towers in Kingdom Rush will make up for that.

The Mage Tower units are the mystical counterpart to the Ranged Towers in KR. However, once upgraded into and above their Special level, they can wield an extremely wide array of destructive spells. Lets take a look into the four types available, and their cost:

	Lvl 1		Lvl 2		Lvl 3		Special		Lvl 4	Xtra 1	Xtra 2	Xtra 3		Total Cost
Mage	100		160		240		Arcane (Death Ray)		300	350	200	200		1550
Mage	100		160		240		Arcane (Teleport)		300	300	100	100		1300
Mage	100		160		240		Sorc (Polymorph)		300	300	150	150		1400
Mage	100		160		240		Sorc (Elemental)		300	350	150	150		1450

Clearly, Teleport is the cheapest of the four options. But in this case, I think it's a tie between Teleport and Elemental in terms of usefulness in battle, despite Elemental cost being second highest. Teleport will transport your enemies back to an earlier part of the path, which allows your other Towers to have a second shot at damaging them. This is really useful during boss battles. The Elementals just stop the enemy dead in their tracks, can inflict damage, and can be re-positioned. Teleport is more of passive defense. If you have the coins, a double tower team of both types can be beyond lethal.

Mage Towers do have their weaknesses - certain enemies, like Shaman, Giant Spiders, and Worg, all have high resistance to Mage Tower attacks. So placing other Tower types, like Ranged, in the same area as Mage Towers, will keep the enemy from just running through your Mage Towers unscathed.

A point of clarification: A Tower can be upgraded to both type of Specials i.e. an Arcane Tower can have Death Ray AND Teleport powers. But often, it's better to spread your limited coin resources to other Towers, rather than totally pimp out just one Tower.

Kingdom Rush

Rush out and download this game asap!

Plus, a look at Ranged Units in Kingdom Rush.

Back in ye olden days of PC gaming, I used to play (a lot of) Total Annihilation by Chris Taylor. Great RTS with tons of units, depth, and frightening amount of fun. I loved constructing elaborate defenses and watching my enemies smash themselves into oblivion against  my high tech fortresses. Prehistoric tower defense, if you will. Kingdom Rush by Ironhide Game Studios recreates that same vibe of well done game design, fun, creative units, and great combat. It's balanced, has a superb art style, and immense replayability. It's almost a crime that it's free.

Now I'm gushing like a school girl, so lets get back on track. The game provides a tremendous amount of stats on player units as well as enemies. But lets not bite off too much and just start of with a look at the cost of ranged units (Archers/Rangers & Musketeers):

	Lvl 1		Lvl 2		Lvl 3		Special		Lvl 4	Xtra 1	Xtra 2	Xtra 3		Total Cost
Ranged	70		110		160		Ranger (Poison)		230	250	250	250		1320
Ranged	70		110		160		Ranger (Wrath)		230	300	150	150		1170
Ranged	70		110		160		Musket (Sniper)		230	250	250	250		1320
Ranged	70		110		160		Musket(Shrapnel)		230	300	300	300		1470

Clearly, a fully tricked out Ranger Tower with maximum Wrath (an entangling spell) is the cheapest. It also tends to be my personal favorite, particularly when used in concert with the Artillery Tower and the Mage Tower. Root enemy units in a kill zone, and let the other nearby towers decimate them.

We'll get into some suggestions on which Ranged Towers are most effective against various enemy types in a future posts, because they are definite strengths and weaknesses when using these type of Towers.

But for now, happy Orc hunting!

Weekend Warriors

New (FREE!) mobile apps to download and play this weekend...

...instead of, you know, being productive:

Kingdom Royale

Farmville meets Warcraft.

The Better Bacon Book

Bacon is a good game, k?

Vector Runner

Tron * Star Wars Arcade.

Yes, dear, I'll take the kids to the park in a minute.

Apps for Kids

Or, hopefully this will keep my kid occupied for 5 minutes so I can get something done.

100 years ago, parents of squabbling children would fix a bottle of warm milk and bourbon to get a little peace and quiet and give it to them (I would have hated to been around the next day, and have to deal with a 2-year old with a hangover, however). Nowadays, it's the iPhone etc. to the rescue. While there's nothing wrong with 99.9% of the apps a kid might play, there's actually a bunch of kid-oriented titles in the App Store you should grab for Junior. AppChronicles (dot com) maintains a great and regularly updated list of paid and unpaid apps you can download.

My Top 5 kid-tested and approved personal favorites are:

SkyBurger
Kids Doodle
SpongeBob DinerDash
Laugh & Learn Shapes
Dress Up - Pet Salon