Pixel Art

Forager

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The Game

Forager is a survival crafting game developed by HopFrog in which you start out on a single island with nothing but a pickaxe and a desire to “forage” everything around you. You start out simple – focusing on trees, rocks and berries. Gradually you expand your operations to include idle fish traps that will catch fish for you and eventually a smelter and the first crafting elements. The game allows you to expand by buying new islands adjacent to yours. As you expand you will find new materials and ways to upgrade your gear or build new machines to help you. As you establish yourself you can automate certain tasks and set your smelters or factories to constantly produce the materials that you need.

Every time you hit something you expend your energy, you can regain it by eating. Similarly, you start out with 3 hearts/health, if you get hit by an enemy that can drop to 2, certain foods will help replenish hearts. As you unlock islands you come across various puzzles and dungeons which will reward you with resources and ways to increase your health, damage or energy. Every time you level up you are also given a chance to spend your skill points on new skills. There are 4 main areas to spend your skills in, which are also the 4 main building types – industrial, farming, economic and magic.

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Worth it?

The game is free on PS Plus Premium and also available via Xbox Gamepass, on Steam you can get it for around £15, but it’s frequently on sale for around £5. Overall that price seems fair – it’s a great little game, brilliantly simply with quite a bit of depth and very easy to get sucked into and lose hours. Once you get multiple machines and automation running the game is almost musical in its constant sound effects, it also has some great puzzles that are just the right amount of challenging. My single biggest issue with the game is that it seems that some of the trophies are broken on PlayStation (and possibly elsewhere) and it’s been a known issue for a while. It would be a great game to 100% but not getting that achievement really stung and killed the joy of it for me. It’s also worth mentioning that Forager multiplayer was in development but was canned due to some controversy around how the creator treated his team.

Overall Forager is a great game that will make time fly and keep you hooked for at least 10-20 hours while you complete the majority of it. The simple graphics and musical sound effects make it a great experience.

Tips

  • You can get void items by building a void portal from the sigil maker, unlocked via the magic skill tree
  • Build multiples of your industrial buildings and split stacks across them in order to get materials faster
  • Buy sigils from the markets in the late game as a way to quickly grind bosses
  • Don’t bother with the pet skill until later – it just gives you a pet, nothing more
  • Most quest lines require a rare item that can be found by digging in dig spots (small holes in the ground), which randomly spawn on uncovered ground
  • Geology is a very useful early skill to target in order to improve your coal production
  • Vaults and Banks can also be useful early game in order to store items and generate passive income
  • Combine quarries with mining lasers to automate the workflow
  • Magic is useful early game as it will add fairies to the world which can instantly replenish your hearts and energy
  • Dump your inventory at the museum

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VampireSurvivors

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The Game

VampireSurvivors developed by Poncle is a roguelike bullet hell survival type game for mobile, PC and Xbox. Similarly to a lot of the other such games you try and survive against endless waves of enemies (well around 30 minutes of them) and you collect and upgrade various weapons and equipment as you do so. Get a specific weapon and it’s corresponding piece of equipment and you can upgrade the weapon to an ultimate version. There are 5 main levels and as many bonus/challenge ones. As you play the game you can find and rescue other survivors which become characters you can play with. Each character starts out with a specific weapon but will be able to acquire other weapons as they level up.

In each level you can collect gold coins, these will let you get upgrades that apply to all levels and characters. As you work your way through the achievements list more and more of the game will be unlocked. You will find new characters, new weapons with new ultimate versions, new levels and challenges.

colourful bullet hell image with swarms of enemies
colourful bullet hell image with swarms of enemies
colourful bullet hell image with swarms of enemies
colourful bullet hell image with swarms of enemies
character unlock image
colourful bullet hell image with swarms of enemies
colourful bullet hell image with swarms of enemies
loot box opening and awarding prizes
colourful bullet hell image with swarms of enemies
character selection screen

Worth it?

A simple but effective survival bullet-hell game with some really fun and well hidden surprises. There is also a good deal of humour in the naming of weapons and items (like the Candelabrador candelabra). The game is free on mobile and also ad-free (unless you want an additional life when you die). On PC it will set you back around £3.99 and there some DLC which will give you access to new levels and characters.

The collection of characters and the methods by which you unlock them are quite addictive and make you want to try each and every one of them out. The sheer amount of items there are to unlock – from game modes to weapons and additional features give the game a great amount of replay value. Each level usually lasts around 30 mins, which is a touch on the long side and sometimes the game might not save your progress if you close the app if you’ve had to do something else. However, the game works perfectly in offline and also in portrait, making it perfect for time killing. Overall if you’re a fan of bullet-hell survival games then this is a great one to add to your collection.

Tips

  • Learn the weapon evolutions and collect items/weapons accordingly.
  • Destroy torches and braziers for food and coins.
  • Upgrade your permanent upgrades using coins.
  • Some levels will have items on the floor, use these to get your ultimate weapon upgrades right.
  • Find the Milky Way Map in order to unlock the pause menu map which will show you the locations of items in the level.
  • In order to get to the coffin in Gallo Tower, look out for a glowing mirror on the left side of the level (around the area where the arrow points you to) that will get you through to a small room where the coffin is.

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Life in Adventure

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The Game

Life in Adventure is a text based D&D RPG fantasy game by StudioWheel available for mobile. The game uses familiar D&D mechanics and delivers an experience with a surprising amount of depth and good storytelling. You start out with a randomised character (in the free version) as a person who is tired of their boring day to day life and set on becoming a famous adventurer. You progress through random encounters, each with a detailed description and a variety of options – some encounters spanning several pages or even in several non consecutive parts.

Each encounter will test your skills (through dice rolls and RNG) and you may come out victorious and stronger or you may lose health and sanity. Lose all your health or sanity and the adventure is over. You will also gain EXP and find better loot and equipment as you adventure through the world. Survive for long enough and you will become a renowned adventurer and essentially win the game. There are 4 types of starting equipment – Fighter, Ranger, Wizard and Warlock, but you can build your character however you see fit depending on your stats. Character stats are standard D&D ones such a strength, dexterity, intellect, charisma, constitution and wisdom.

Worth it?

The game can be played completely for free, but there is also an Adventurer’s Guild premium option which will set you back £3.99, the main advantages of this option are the ability to customise your new adventurers, a free dice reroll and the ability to speed up or skip fights. A lot of these perks can also be purchased using in game premium currency (gems). The game is quite generous with giving out gems which you can also spend on new encounters, background stories and storylines and traits. The premium option isn’t needed, however it’s a nice way to support the developers and also helps speed up the gameplay. Overall I’d recommend it for any D&D or text based fans out there looking for that nostalgia factor, the game plays in portrait mode making it ideal for mobile.

Tips

  • For detailed in-game tips and info check out the comprehensive guide linked below.
  • Avoid battles (especially early game) – trying options that will get you out of combat and events can still give you EXP.
  • Items like Rope, Lantern, Pickaxe and similar are very useful – hold onto them as you may need them in your adventure.
  • If you are Very Superior to an enemy or better you can skip the dice roll to get a 10 and avoid a critical fail or rolling less than 10.

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The Sea of Death

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The Game

The Sea of Death is an adventure puzzle game developed by HoitStudio. The game has a nice pixel graphic aesthetic and features a large variety of puzzles as you embark on a rather mysterious journey in which you attempt to figure out what exactly is going on in this world. You start the game out on a ship during a storm, but after a rather mysterious turn of events you wake up in a strange and dark world and begin trying to piece things together and to find your way out of there. The slightly dystopian world seems to focus on doing various menial jobs and talking to some rather strange people.

The core gameplay loop gets you completing various tasks for people in order to progress “up” in this unfamiliar place. You take on various jobs which involve solving puzzles, collecting items and talking to strangers. The puzzles are all quite different and unique (the game has over 50 different ones) – some of them will really challenge you. As the story develops you begin to learn more about this world and how it works, its social class system and hierarchy.

Worth it?

Overall the aesthetics of the game are quite appealing and it does a very good job of creating a dark and sombre atmosphere. The puzzles the game offers are quite unique and there is a good variety of them to keep you busy for a while. The dialogue is ok, can be improved in certain areas grammatically, but the story does really make you wonder what is going on and figuring out how you ended up where you did.

The full game will set you back around £3.99, which isn’t too bad given that it will give you unlimited actions to continue your adventure. Prior to that the only way to get more than your initial 500 actions is by watching videos (each one gets you 100 actions). For those of you who enjoy a good puzzle mystery game then this one is worth checking out. The game works for both shorter stints where you just do an odd quest, but is much more suited to a mid to long term session as it allows you to engross yourself much more in the story.

Tips

  • Pay attention to what people say or their roles – these will give you hints when someone else mentions them
  • Use and pen and paper – as some of the tests get more complex or involve you keeping track of numbers or even doing some calculations
  • Tap on the text get the entire dialogue to print out
  • If you’re really stuck – hints do help

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The Way Home – Pixel Roguelike

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The Game

The Way Home by CONCODE is a rogue-like dungeon explorer game with some interesting crafting and progression mechanics. You play as a cat named Cheese fighting your way through procedurally generated dungeons as you attempt to figure out how you and your human ended up on a mysterious island. Each time you take on a dungeon you can choose the skills you get when you level up from a choice of stat improvements, passive abilities or modifiers for your bow shots.

At the end of each floor of the dungeon you will have the option to walk away with all resources you have gathered so far or to carry on (risking the loss of 2/3 of your gathered materials). Once you return to your home island you can invest the materials gathered into work stations, permanent buffs or new spells and passive abilities to chose from on your dungeon runs. As you progress you also find out more about the backstory to how you ended up on this island and why it is so cursed.

Worth it?

The game is really fun and aesthetically pleasing, there’s a good sense of progression and it provides a good challenge too. The story and writing are interesting and engaging, there’s a variety of enemies and their attack patterns and a good variety of upgrades and skills to try out. Where this game is let down a little bit is in it’s pricing for the full game.

After beating the first boss you are prompted to pay £5.99 to access the remaining 3 islands of the game OR watch around 15-20 ads per platform (you need to get to the adjacent island) and then watch an ad after every dungeon run. While this model is quite interesting and does allow you to essentially play the game for free, quite a few players feel a bit tricked by the free trial aspect of the first island (no ads). The full game price is possibly slightly on the expensive side – 15-20% less would make it a much easier decision to purchase.

Tips

  • Research the work stations first (Resource/Etc page)
  • Focus on getting the better pick to get better materials (Anvil)
  • Skills that modify your arrows (like Ricochet) are particularly useful for attacking large groups of mobs
  • For the boss focus on building up your damage and health, ideally have a potion as well

Useful Links

The Final Earth 2

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The Game

Looking for a slightly different city builder to play on your phone? The Final Earth 2 is just that. A game developed by one person (Florian van Strien), The Final Earth 2 lets you build a cubical vertical city on series of small floating platforms. The game revolves around various building types and resource management – ensure you’ve got a steady supply of wood, stone and food, adequate housing and keep adding to your never ending tower blocks.

The game starts you off with some simple scenarios which introduce you to the various types of building and resource. There’s a constant loop of creating housing, ensuring there’s enough work and providing happiness boosts to your population. This makes for some pretty addictive gameplay in which you’re constantly adding and expanding your city. The various buildings synergise with each other, have a variety of upgrades and some can even be customised aesthetically. The building synergies will challenge you to think about your layout and you may find yourself going back to redesign and rethink certain areas.

Worth it?

A simple but effective game. A very clever concept with huge potential for additions and growth. There are loads of new buildings to unlock as you build up your city and various upgrades and improvements to purchase. The game is quite light on ads – there’s a boost option (for watching an ad) that will temporarily increase your production. There are also some ads in between scenarios, but other that no annoying constant ads or gatchas. There’s an ad-free version for £2.69 or a premium edition for £4.49 which ads some new buildings, creative mode and removes all ads – this is definitely a great deal and is an awesome way to support the developer. The game is better suited for longer play sessions when you’ve got time to kill, because trust me you will find yourself glued to it. The game only plays in landscape mode – it would be interesting to see if it could also work in portrait (resources on top, controls on the bottom).

Overall a very satisfying game to play for medium to long play sessions, lots of buildings, upgrades and new things to discover. I would definitely recommend giving it a go if you like city builders.

Tips

  • When setting a job priority – if you want everyone focused on that job up the value to “Max” – that will ensure all these jobs are always filled first
  • Build lots of stone mines and rock teleporters
  • Focus on establishing your basic resources before adding new ones – you need a sold supply of stone and wood before starting to thing about machine parts and refined metals
  • Don’t worry about happiness too much at the start of a city, but don’t completely forget about it either
  • Surround labs with 4 farms or tree plantations to get the most out of them
  • The Living Research Center allows you to upgrade all generic houses to a specific type of house

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Evil Hunter Tycoon

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The Game

Evil Hunter Tycoon by Super Planet is a mobile game based around managing a city and its heroes in a typical fantasy RPG world. The concept can be a bit confusing at first, but once you get your head around it you will be hooked. Essentially you will invest in buildings and create weapons, armour and various services for your heroes. The heroes generally do their own thing and will grind monsters and collect loot and gold. As the shop owner you can then buy loot from the heroes, it can then be used to produce items and services to sell back to the heroes at extortionate rates.

There are 3 main areas in which your heroes can grind, they can also complete bounties that you set them for XP and gold. There are various tiers of hero as well, so you will want to try and collect the best of them (Legendary). There’s a good variety of alternative tasks such as dungeons and boss fights. Heroes will level up from slaying monsters and completing quests, getting them up to level 100 will also allow them to reincarnate – this is the game’s “prestige” element. The reincarnated heroes will start from level 1 as a much enhanced version of their former selves. Reincarnate enough heroes and you can increase the “difficulty” of the world, this will “prestige” the world by enhancing enemies, their loot and your heroes.

Worth it?

Evil Hunter Tycoon approaches the idle and tycoon genres (especially with regards to mobile) in a very interesting manor. There are also some great RPG elements sprinkled in there. The game doesn’t actually progress or do much when you don’t have it open. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about this, but this actually makes it that much more addictive. Sure, you can probably leave your phone running with the game to grind up some cash, but progress won’t be as good as it would from active play. As you progress you’ll kit out your heroes with better armour and equipment, you’ll level up your various buildings and improve your little town.

The concept of buying resources and materials from your heroes as opposed to farming them yourself is a nice twist and while it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge to get an exact idea of what you’ve got and what you’ve ordered, overall it works quite nicely. Overall it’s a very addictive game, great for active play sessions. There’s no offline idle progression, but that helps make the game more compelling than most typical mobile idle gatcha games. There are a few “watch ad” or gatcha elements, but they are not at all intrusive or needed. There are various methods of acquiring new heroes, but again no need to spend real money. There is a VIP subscription service, which we’re used which offers various bonuses, cool down reduction and (perhaps most useful) is an automatic dungeon runner. Personally it’s a bit on the pricey side and I’m not very keen on these subscription based models for mobile games. The game screen can be a bit intimidating at first as it’s a lot of text and various options all around, but with some time (and by minimising the chat window) you can get a better overview of things. It would be nice to be able to sort or group heroes in some sort of way. The difficulty/prestige system ensures you will keep playing for a long time as there are a total of 8 tiers, each with an improvement in your heroes outfits, a “new” or upgraded set of enemies and more weapons and armour.

Overall I’d recommend giving it a go, it’s a good game for medium to long active play sessions. There’s no offline progress and you probably won’t miss it that much as there’s so many other things going on. The simple pixel art style is very aesthetically pleasing, it’s a nice twist on the typical mobile idle game and will keep you coming back (there are events and login rewards).

Tips

  • Hero hierachy/tiers go Normal, Rare, Superior, Heroic, Legendary – when banishing your heroes keep that in mind
  • You can upgrade weapons or armour from a previous tier
  • Make sure you’ve always got a bounty running
  • Make sure the Inn, Restaurant, Tavern and Infirmary are always stocked up
  • You can place an order for infinite items, meaning that any time a hero has that item they will sell it – for some things like linen or fruit this can be very useful, but be weary as it will eat into your finances
  • Don’t bother summoning Normal heroes unless you’re really struggling, always try and get Superior or better
  • Do dungeons regularly (they also drop hats for your heroes)
  • Don’t forget to learn skills and traits (whenever you reincarnate)
  • Leave your phone charging and running (with stocked up services) in order to grind some easy cash and loot
  • “Normal” dungeons start after the 25th floor
  • If you minimise the dungeon, don’t forget to collect the chest and dismiss your heroes, otherwise they’ll be stuck there

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The Burnable Garbage Day

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The Game

The Burnable Garbage Day by GameOn Co. Ltd is a casual mobile game with a powerful message and some really amazing graphics. The game is set in the distant future where you are a cleaning robot who has discovered that Earth has been covered in garbage, humanity has disappeared and nature is struggling. You quickly discover that some humans have been frozen away in settlements and you can help them rebuild society.

The core gameplay loop focuses around you tapping away the rubbish and completing quests for the various settlements you discover tucked away under all the garbage. Each city you unlock will come with a set of quests and its unique set of items that it produces. You are limited in the number of clicks you can do by your battery, which recharges over time, when you level up, clear an area or by using a battery pack. As you unlock more settlements you will have access to more items, which will in turn allow you to complete more quests. Completing quests will give you xp and level up the settlements. While it is a very simple and repetitive gameplay, it can be quite addictive as you unlock further regions, new settlements and upgrade yourself.

Worth it?

The game does have a bit of a gatcha side to it with the battery aspect, but you can find a lot of spare batteries during your adventures (or from quests), there are also some short ads whenever you level up (after level 10), but overall nothing too intrusive. There isn’t much to the game, but it’s nice and relaxing and something you can come back to for a few minutes every few hours. Town’s take around 5 minutes to reset their quests, once you unlock a few regions you can bounce between towns to get quite a longer session in. The story and the message of the game are quite relevant to the challenges we face as a species. The robot (you) is quite endearing and some of the dialogue with its voice assistant (Biri) can be quite amusing. It could be nice to have some sort of daily login reward or achievements. There are some minor text and translation errors, but they don’t detract from the overall experience.

Overall I’d definitely recommend it as a casual time-waster game, the ads are not intrusive, you can buy an ad-free version for £2.99, which is a great way to help out the developers. There are plenty of regions to unlock, each with its own set of challenges, resources and towns. It’s an aesthetically pleasing game with a great message, endearing and funny dialogue and story line, perfect for a quick session that will keep you coming back regularly.

Tips

  • Try and get the gold chests in each area as soon as you enter it
  • Once you encounter the vending machine it’s worth visiting it every time it appears to get more batteries
  • Many of the settlement upgrade quests are fairly easy to guess, if in doubt read the item descriptions – they are usually quite close to what the quest giver is asking for
  • The Dolphin in the tropic area needs Stone Axe to make him feel cool
  • The Octopus in the volcano area needs Honey Flavouring to help him calm down from his nightmares

Useful Links

The Wanderer

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The Game

The Wanderer is a mobile game made by Jamie Parish, an indie developer. The game draws inspiration from other post-apocalyptic titles (a few nods to Fallout), you will be challenged to survive and wander around the irradiated plains of what used to be a civilised world. At the beginning you are given a base camp where you can manage and store your resources, upgrade certain devices that will aid your survival and generally rest and reset between exploration missions. The core gameplay loop consists of you venturing out from your camp to various points on the map where you hope to find resources. Each hour of movement will cost you water and food, which you must replenish with the resources that you find. You will also have to maintain your health, illness and radiation levels as various foods or events can have an impact on those.

The game gives you some neat customisation options when starting out as well as a list of options that can make your playthrough even more challenging (should you choose to enable them). You will also have skill points to spend and you’ll earn more each time you level up. On your adventures you will often encounter random events where you will have a choice between several interactions – sometimes you may run into someone who requires some items, other times you may get attacked by irradiated monsters or bandits. When you arrive at points of interest you will be able to collect resources, these will reset each time you return to your home base. While there isn’t much to the core loop it can be quite addictive as you try to collect the resources you need to upgrade your tools and the ultimate goal is to repair the old van, which will massively aid you on your journeys.

Worth it?

The game has come a long way from its humble beginnings and there is really very little to fault on it. It’s great as both a casual game or something you spend hours on, trying to gather the right resources. There are some very minor gatcha elements like a log in reward, reward chests and you can watch videos to help boost XP or buy premium currency (which allows you to fast travel or respec), but for the most part these are completely unneeded and not intrusive at all.

Overall it’s a great little game and has all the key elements to keep you engaged for longer periods of time – things to build and upgrade, plenty to explore, some tricky resource management at times, quests, achievements, levels and even things like daily login rewards. It can be great for either a short play where you just go and explore a few locations or for extended sessions where venture much further from your home base or work towards building that van and upgrading your camp as much as possible. Definitely worth checking out as it is still being updated and actively improved,

Tips

  • If you are over exposed to radiation you will mutate – this will prevent you from getting radiation or illness from eating bad food, but you will lose health every hour. This can be easier to manage than constantly buying radiation masks
  • Revisit places near to your base – these reset every time you go back to your home base.
  • Focus on upgrading your backpack and base storage
    Recruiting the dog companion can be very useful as it can do really good damage at a higher level, however you will need to give it food and water
  • Don’t bother healing the dog as it will restore health provided it’s got food and water
  • Invest some points in Agility and Strength in order to increase the size of the hitbox in combat, as sometimes combat is pretty unavoidable
  • Ammo sells for quite a few caps
  • Karma will affect the sort of things that you find when scavenging – better karma, better loot

Useful Links

Stardew Valley

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The Game

Stardew Valley is a modern gaming masterpiece made by a single person – Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone. The game is one of the ultimate open world, farm, spelunking, life simulator RPG. Yes that is a lot of things and this game does them all. You start out having inherited a plot of land from you grandad – a farmer. Upon your arrival the farm is in quite a state, your long term goal is to turn it into a cash cow (you can have cows) and don’t forget the cash crops as well. From the very start the game allows you to do your thing and introduce yourself to the inhabitants of Stardew Valley, the first few days have a bit of guidance but from then on it’s mostly up to you to figure things out by exploring the world around you.

The primary game loop focuses around farming and spelunking in the caves where each level increases in difficulty. Some days there’s so much farm work to do that you won’t have much time to do anything else. In the winter you might find yourself spending a lot more time there. There are occasional quests on the town board with a time limit and there’s a series of main quests that develop over time and depend on your actions, decisions and interactions with the other townsfolk. The main quest alone will keep you playing for around 50 hours or upwards of 2 in game years – and that’s just the surface of the game.

This game is packed with mysteries and achievements to collect and discover. Your relationships with other townsfolk can get deep; you can even get hitched and have kids, if that’s your thing. You could also just string along all the singles in town until they all find out… If you’re not all about that you can just spend your days fishing and forget about the hustle and bustle.

Worth it?

Ranging from £7.99 on mobile to £34.99 on Switch the game is available on virtually all platforms and put simply it’s worth it. The game is frequently on sale and while the upper end of that price range is a bit too much, anything less than £15 is a steal. The mobile versions are extremely good and a touch cheaper, albeit a bigger phone is useful

The game will keep you in for hours and even after you play through the main story you can always start another farm on one of the other farm layouts. My first playthrough is over 70 hours long. The game is packed with secrets and unique interactions and scenarios. You will want to keep upgrading and improving your farm – it just keeps you coming back thinking “just one more day”.

Overall if you’re after a farm/life/dungeon RPG game this is it. The game is still regularly updated with new content and fixes. Put simply, this game is a must.

Tips

  • There’s so much to this game that I would simply recommend checking for specifics in the Wiki linked below.

Useful Links