Review: Tropicats

Tropicats is a free-to-play app match-3 style app available to download on the Google Play Store. Similar to Gardenscapes and the slew of solve-the-puzzle-repair-the-area clones - as you complete levels, you will earn coins and gems that you can use to build houses, trees, flowers and decorations needed to rebuild a tropical island inhabited by a tribe of cats.

The storyline of Tropicats revolves around an island being devastated by an earthquake, as the magic totem of the village that normally protected the village and its inhabitants from harm was chopped down by an unknown vandal - and it’s up to you as chief of the village to find the culprit, rebuild the island and restore order to the cats.

Though similar to Gardenscapes in the respect that you complete missions and tasks to repair and rebuild - Tropicats has many differences, some I believe make it a better, easier and overall more enjoyable experience. After a while, Gardenscapes felt like it was becoming obnoxiously difficult just for the sake of it, forcing players to buy boosters in order to progress. Tropicats however allows players numerous opportunities to continue playing even if they are stuck on a hard level.

For example, there is a roulette wheel you can spin in order to win lives, coins or gems. Instead of getting one spin per day, you are given a spin every 10 minutes after watching a 30 second ad - and after you’ve span the wheel 5 times, you’re rewarded with a bonus prize. You can frequently win infinite lives for 5, 10, 15 or even 30 minute periods.

If you connect your game to the internet you can also take part in the Tropicats tournaments and compete against other players to win prizes. These tournaments are simple enough, points are awarded by making the special fruit the tournament asks for - either fruit bombs, fruit lines or butterflies. If you place within the top 10, you will win boosters and other prizes. I’ve won the first place prize twice - which was 3 of each type of booster and special hammer.

Remember how in Gardenscapes I mentioned that you couldn’t replay levels? Well guess what you can do in Tropicats? Each level has an easy, medium and hard variant - the differences being more obstacles, larger numbers to reach the objective or less moves in which to complete the objective. You can replay the hard mode level an infinite number of times in order to earn coins, diamonds and triple or even quintuple the points you can win in the current tournament.

The art style is bright and colourful - the cats themselves have somewhat of an anime inspired look to them with the big eyes and exaggerated facial expressions - but each one has a different personality and their dialogue with both you and the other cats is well written and often quite entertaining. 

Like many free-to-play games, there is the option to spend real world money on coins and diamonds. However - you aren’t encouraged to buy boosters or life refills - instead, the focus is on “making your village pawsome,” both coins and diamonds can be spent on the various decorations needed to restore life back to the village, increase your overall village rank and contribute to the happiness of your cats.

What makes Tropicats stand out from the other endless slew of match 3 style games is the game’s sweet sense of humour. A lot of the dialogue between the cats centres around feline puns - such as “you’ve got to be kitten me,” or describing your actions as “purrfect” or “pawsome.” Numerous jokes are made about kitty litter, peeing in the bushes, catnip and being either a brave tom cat or a scaredy cat. Amusingly however, the cats subsist on a diet of grilled bananas and other fruit. Weird, considering how they’re on an island - they could easily go fishing. 

Review: Neko Atsume

Neko Atsume is a free-to-play app available for Android and iOS devices. Released in 2014, it still maintains a devoted player base and still receives regular updates that add new content. Neko Atsume is a game of Japanese origin - Neko Atsume literally translates to “Cat Collection,” which is a pretty accurate description of the objective of the game - which is to collect cats.

You begin the game in an empty yard, and must lay out food and treats to attract stray cats to visit you. You can also lay out toys, cushions, beds and various playthings to entertain the cats and encourage them to stick around for longer. Cats who enjoyed their stay will subsequently reward you with either silver or gold fish, which can be used to buy better quality food and treats and new items for your cats to play with.

Neko Atsume is the epitome of casual gaming - the majority of the time you “play” it, you're setting out food and items for the cats - then leaving for a while to wait for them to assemble. This literally involves exiting the app and doing something else. So as you periodically check your yard, you may find cats have appeared and are playing, sleeping or just hanging out.

This is where the collection part comes in - you can snap photos of the various cats and fill up their respective photo albums. Once and cat has visited several times and feels a friendship with you, he or she will present you with a memento - another collection you can slowly fill up.

Eventually you will be able to expand your yard to allow for more items to be placed and more cats to visit - and this larger yard can then be customised in various styles, such as remodelling it into a Japanese zen garden.

In addition to the regular cats of varying breeds, there are also a handful of cats that are considered rare, and will only be attracted to certain items. These cats tend to parody pop culture and celebrity icons, such as the cat who wears a baseball jersey, Joe De Meowgio or the cowboy cat, Billy The Kitten.

The art style is adorable - one of the most recognisable features are the cute little crosses the cats have on their bums - and the way cats squeeze inside glass vases or nestle comfortably inside cardboard shopping boxes is sure to warm the heart of any cat lover.

For a game that is severely lacking in actual gameplay and interaction, Neko Atsume is bizarrely addictive. You'll find yourself compulsively checking your yard, experimenting with different combinations of food and toys to attract the rare cats and bragging to your friends that you actually managed to snap a photo of Frosty.

>

Review: The Grossery Game

Today I’m taking a look at The Grossery Game - a free-to-play app available to download from the Google Play Store. The Grossery Game is based on the series of blind bag collectible figurines from Moose Toys - The Grossery Gang. If you’re unfamiliar, they’re little rubbery toys of everyday grocery store items - but massively past their use-by date! They’re often covered in mould, slime, maggots and flies - and are proving popular with thousands of kids and toy collectors alike - myself included.

The Grossery Game is ideal for fans of the figurines, particularly children with a gross sense of humour. The game itself is actually several mini-games based in hub world known as the Yucky Mart - a convenience, or some might say, an inconvenience store where The Grossery Gang live. The main Grosseries who host the various mini-games are Putrid Pizza, Sticky Soda, Dodgy Doughnut, Rotten Egg and Shoccoli.

As you earn high scores in the mini-games, you will earn coins - which you can trade in for mystery milk crates - each either containing a virtual Grossery Gang figurine or more coins. Your virtual collection can all be viewed in the form of 3D postcards and can be dragged and dropped to create dioramas. You can also place them in the real world and add them to photos taken with your smartphone’s camera. There is also a game called Cruddy Crunch - which is essentially an augmented reality mini-game - which involves either pointing your phone’s camera at packaging from Grossery Gang figures, or printing out a target.

So, let’s take an in-depth look at each mini-game. 

Firstly, we have the Mucky Maze. This clever little game employs the use of your smartphone’s GPS sensor to detect movement. The object of the game is to roll Rotten Egg around on a greasy baking tray while collecting coins and avoiding obstacles. To control him, you simply tilt your device from side to side to roll him in the desired direction - it works remarkably well and is pretty addictive for such a simple concept.

Next is Maggot Mash. You are faced with a mucky microwave, covered with congealed nacho cheese and absolutely crawling with maggots and flies. You're on a timer to see how many slimy maggots you can splat and squish with your finger! Once you have squished around 50 or so, you can turn on the microwave and zap the on-screen critters to quickly clear the screen.

Next we have Goo Shoot. This is my favourite of the mini-games, and in my opinion, the easiest one to quickly earn coins on. You use a catapult, assisted by Lame Licorice to fire blobs of goo at the green, black and yellow soap bubbles that are rising from a scummy mop bucket below. Hitting combos increases your score multiplier - and if you aim carefully, you can quickly earn a lot of points!

And finally is Sludgie Slurp. In this mini game, you control 3 Grosseries who are standing underneath the Mushy Slushy machine, in hopes of grabbing a drink. Drops of slushy will drip from the machine, and it’s up to you to tap each Grossery to make them jump up with their mouths open - and if you time it incorrectly, they’ll end up with a bunch of gross goo dropped on their heads!

As I previously mentioned, The Grossery Game is free-to-play, but like many free-to-play games, there is the option to spend real-world currency to purchase milk crates to quickly fill up your collection - but is isn’t necessary to fully enjoy the game. There is also the option to watch advertisements, usually for other apps, to double the coins you have won. However as it is a children’s game - the app will prompt the player to “ask a grown-up” before an advertisement is played. The app is also easy to understand for children, as instead of long winded instructions, each mini-game is explained simply with easy to understand diagrams.

As a fan of The Grossery Gang myself, I can wholeheartedly recommend The Grossery Game to other fans and particularly recommend it to those who may not be able to find the figurines easily for sale in their country, or may not be able to afford to buy them on a regular basis - as the game does a reasonable job of replicating the excitement of opening mystery milk crates and filling up your collection.

Review: Gardenscapes: New Acres

Gardenscapes is a free-to-play match-3 style app available for Android and IOS devices - but unlike the usual slew of Bejeweled clones or multiple Candy Crush Saga spin-offs - Gardenscapes also features an RPG-style story mode which involves restoring a run-down botanical gardens back to its former glory.

As you complete the match-3 levels, you will be rewarded with stars - these stars can then be used to complete various tasks within the garden, such as planting trees and flowers, repairing fences and fountains and building new features such as a tree house and spring. Part-way through the game, you will also adopt a dog, which you can name (I named mine Rufus) who will create chaos within the garden and provide you with other things to build, such as a kennel.


For such a simple concept, Gardenscapes is actually filled to the brim with content - throughout the game you interact mainly with Austin, your butler - but as you progress, you will meet and unlock more characters who can be recruited to complete tasks within your garden. There is also a Facebook-style newsfeed app where you can read conversations between them - the posts between Austin and his parents are particularly amusing.


Unlike many match-3 games, each coloured piece is unique - made up of fruits, acorns, droplets of water and flowers - and Shelly (who is red-green colour-blind, remember) assures me she has no problems distinguishing between colours like she has done in similar games.

Of course, the game is not without issues. As with many free-to-play apps, you CAN use real money to purchase in-game coins, which can be traded for lives, boosters or be used to speed up tasks taking place within the garden. You are rewarded with these coins simply by playing the game, but it's a paltry amount. For each level you complete, you'll receive 50-75 coins - but it costs 900 to refill your lives and even more to buy boosters. 

Once you pass level 60, the levels begin to become unforgiving - whether you can pass the level or not will be determined in your first few moves, and quite often, it's based on luck - hopefully you can start a level with the means to create bombs and rainbow blasters in your first few moves.

The game can also be linked with Facebook - to IN THEORY send and receive lives between your real-life friends - well I'm calling this feature out right now - it DOESN'T WORK. Shelly and I were constantly asking for and sending each other lives - the requests for help sent, but the actual lives we sent each other were lost in cyberspace. I think out of the dozens she sent me, I only received about two of them. 

Also, unlike Candy Crush Saga, Bejeweled Stars and similar games, you can't see your friends' progress - and overly competitive people like Shelly enjoy this feature. You also can't replay levels - so if there was a level you particularly enjoyed - too bad, you only get to play it once. I'm not sure why this feature isn't included - even if they allowed replaying of levels but didn't reward you with the paltry amount of coins they do initially.

I enjoyed Gardenscapes initially, for the first few days I played it - before the levels began to become unforgiving and downright frustrating. I can't help but think it's fallen into the typical trap of trying to squeeze real money out of players just so they can continue progressing through the game - and I'm only onto the 3rd area of the garden - there's a greyed-out area you can scroll across that's 3 times bigger than the area I've already unlocked - so clearly this game is pretty beasty. The Facebook-esque newsfeed also has several greyed-out profiles of characters I can potentially unlock in the future - if I can ever get past fucking level 77.