Blizzard is a well-known game developer. Most of older players do remember their series of Warcraft, one the the first massively played strategy games for PC. They have also developed one of the most successful MMORPG games “World of Warcraft“.

Company didn’t get much into mobile games platform – till now. Meet new candidate for epic multi-platform game.

Overall gameplay

Game is simple, fun, and addictive. Using already proven game system, like in Magic: The Gathering, Blizzard brings cards system into exciting gaming world. There are no complicated rules or weird “enrage” systems, like other similar games are suffering, while the game itself is still challenging. Every player can gather great rare cards quite quickly, and using rank matching algorythm you will always end up playing with “Worthy Opponent”.

Making good deck combinations, and picking up suitable starting cards is crucial here. Most advanced players can get golden heros, specific card backs – which makes every player quite unique.

We rank Overall gameplay as 9 out of 10.

Freemium Eligibility criteria

It looks like game suffers same problems like all other Freemium games do – it is possible to get into higher rank by combining great cards (which appereantly can be bought using “Arcane Dust”), and your intellect. While of course, you can try to search for rare cards from “Card Packs” – however, it will take ages to find that required one.

Game tries to ease searching process by giving daily quests, to get you that required “gold” as fast as possible – but you would have to be quite addicted and spend bigger amount of your free time to get enough required. And it becomes quite difficult to win matches in higher ranks, and – to fulfill quests.

We rank Eligibility criteria 8 out of 10.

Actual cost

Game is absolutely playable and interesting without spending real money. That is, you can be successful just by using daily quests, winning matches or participating in Arena.

We rank Actual cost 10 out of 10.

Conclusion

It is one of the best games we saw, which are aiming to “Freemium” niche. It’s definately worth playing, and maybe some investment of your time and money too.

Overall rating: 9 out of 10.
Recommended for: everybody.

You can play this game on a PC, and it is being rolled out to iTunes at the moment.

Every mid-aged player remembers series of “Dungeon Keeper”, developed by Electronic Arts – it was one of the best strategy games in these times, played by lots of players around the world.

Game developers are tend to take “old proven games” back to life, usually – to mobile platforms, and probably this is what EA Games was thinking of. Logics behind is quite clear – people, who liked original series, probably are still game-addicted, have richer wallets and may jump into new redeveloped game with joy. Also, it may compete with lots of similar games currently at the market, just because of known brand and game name. However, they made couple of big mistakes.

Overall gameplay

It is quite hard to judge this game by comparing it to original series. Game still has it’s own “dungeon”, “imps” (workers), as well as digging feature – but that’s pretty much it. Other features and functions are common for action+strategy game principles, copied from well known games like Clash of Clans. Game reviews in Google Play market are more than obvious – with lots of complains that game is nothing near by the original one.

Gameplay, while adopted to mobile-friendly actions, is still quite difficult to manage. You will end up to clicking on wrong spots by accident, and multi-purpuse buttons on specific elements (like rooms) will get you nervous.

Animations are quite good, but barely visible because of dark environment. Game uses real 3D engine – which is great – however, it will drain your phone battery quite fast; even with Samsung Galaxy S4 big capacity battery, it may deplete within an hour of gameplay.

Also, game has lots of annoying phone notices comming out – and there is no way to limit them.

We rank Overall gameplay as 5 out of 10.

Freemium Eligibility criteria

Game is near by to Freemium – while it follows it’s principles, it’s practically impossible to play it without spending real money. Some digging takes 24 hours to complete, so you will definately be stuck after first few days. Attacking other players doesn’t help much, as usualy your warehouses will become full after few attacks, without possibility to expand them fast enough.

You can buy virtual money and advance faster – however, prices are huge. In-game promotions are annoying, provided as banners on game load, and sometimes they even make application non-responsive (ANR).

We rank Eligibility criteria 5 out of 10.

Actual cost

First investment into “Imps” is a must. Further investments may speed things up at least to mediorce gameplay. Prices are enormous, probably targeted to rich players.

We rank Actual cost 4 our of 10.

Conclusion

Overall rating: 4.7 out of 10.
We can’t recommend this game, unless you have a big pocket full of money.

You can download this game from Google Play Store or Apple iTunes.

This game became one of the mostly played Freemium games on smartphones during past few years. Developed by SuperCell, it is considered as a standard for successful action and strategy game combination in mobile world.

Overall gameplay

Game is fun and attractive, has helpful hints inside. Graphic assets are beautiful – adopted even to big tablet screens. Animations are pretty much general, however – look good and “alive”. Gaming principles are ballanced, and – even more often – too strict and limited for advanced players (example, you can’t send a private message to a specific player, or attack his village, unless he attacks you); from the other hand, they make game quite unique in techniques and strategies possible.

In long term, game misses the bullet – unless you want to rank yourself in “Top Players” list, just because of the numbers, there’s not much what to do there. You can still upgrade your village, research new warriors, advance their level – but, as it should be, higher levels take a fortune to reach if you are tend to be a peaceful “simcity” type player. Only aggressive attacking may speed things up – however, it also may push you down if you attack wrong players because of their “farming” strategies.

We rank overall gameplay as 7 out of 10.

Freemium Eligibility criteria

Without spending money, you may be stuck in very first levels with “click and wait” principle. “Gems” – virtual money – are slowly gathered; however, developers have increased amounts you can find in surrounding obstacles slightly, which may have boosted new players to advance more quickly. One special quest gives you a bunch of gems, which allows you to purchuase additional builder and speed things up.

Gems is the only thing you can buy in a game. Using them, you get all things faster, may purchuase a shield for protection, and etc. There are no “special” items, which are available for purchuase only, which is good for overall evaluation.

There are no general player lists, so you can actualy identify your possition amongst others. However, game has quite interesting ranking (league) system, as well as clans, where you can quickly understand your progress. Only problem is, that actualy higher possition does not give you any real benefit – morewise it will mean stronger opponents. Players are even tend to move their rank down – which is possible – to save their resources from attacking players, as weaker opponents usualy will have weaker armies.

We rank Eligibility criteria 7 out of 10.

Actual cost

Without buying at least smallest amount of gems, which ends up with nearly €5, you may end up with 2 times slower envolnment. We consider this as an “crucial” investment for normal gameplay.

After half of the year of play, you will end with huge requirements for resources, and long waiting lists (3, 4 days and above). So either you have to spend your whole time in there by attacking other players, either spend quite big money for gem bundles.

We rank Actual cost 7 out of 10 – just because small investment at the beginning gives you good boost to progress for quite a long time.

Conclusion

Overall rating: 7/10.
Recommended for: all players.

You can download this game from Google Play Store or Apple iTunes.