AppReviewToday- AppReviews

Dungeons & Zombies is exactly the kind of title you’d expect at this time of year: a cutesy, vaguely spooky twist on an existing casual genre, to capitalize on the Halloween festivities.

However, scratch under the surface and you’ll find an altogether tougher proposition than first impressions might suggest. Like a midnight triple bill of scary movies, Dungeons & Zombies is not for the faint of heart.

The gameplay is based on Sokoban, a puzzle genre in which you have to slide things around on a grid. In this case, the thing you’re sliding is a little girl, and the grid is a series of dungeons.

Every dungeon contains its own features and hazards, such as pillars, pools of water, and – most pertinently – zombies. The aim is to navigate the features, avoid the hazards (i.e., the zombies), and reach the stone staircase that takes you to the next stage.

If left undisturbed, zombies are perfectly harmless. Unfortunately, you can’t venture into the same row or column as a zombie without alerting it to your presence, at which point you have just one move to get out of the way. As long as you move out of that row or column, the zombie will skate past you and stop at the next obstacle it meets.

Unfortunately, you can’t escape a room if a zombie happens to be facing the exit, so the game basically involves using the natural inclination of the zombies to dart, with a slight delay, in your direction to shepherd them out of your path and away from the exit.

In the first few stages you’ve only got the zombies to worry about, but the game soon adds further elements – brains that attract zombies, pulling them away from you for one move; piles of bones that you have to remove by directing zombies at them, and fires that are impassable to you, but not to zombies.

There are 120 dungeons to complete, though only 60 of these are available with the basic download. You have to pay for the other two sets of 30.

The Good

Dungeons & Zombies is difficult, but it gives you lots of tools for getting around tricky stages. For one thing, there are solutions, step-by-step guides to completing stages in the fewest possible moves.

You get five of these, and they refill over time. And if that’s not enough, you can buy packs of five for 99p, or watch an ad in exchange for one.

For another thing, you don’t need to unlock the majority of stages. The first 18 are open, with the remaining 12 becoming available when you get 25 stars. This means you’ve always got somewhere to go if you’re hopelessly stuck.

Of course, the best solution is the one you work out for yourself, and in time you’ll get the knack of Dungeons & Zombies, however impenetrable it seems at first. The trick is to work out where you need the zombies to end up, and then work backwards from that point.

The Bad

While Dungeons & Zombies is definitely a challenging and fairly original puzzle game, it could do with a few more elements to keep it interesting. Brains, bones, and fires are all introduced fairly quickly, and there are few surprises after that.

If you’re after a casual gaming experience – a hypnotically relaxing puzzler like Candy Crush – you may find Dungeons & Zombies a bit of a shock. While developer Manic Player has provided ways to relieve the frustration, it should arguably have been a bit easier in the first place.

The Verdict

Dungeons & Zombies shouldn’t be mistaken for a throwaway casual puzzler. Gamers looking for some light, Halloween-themed relief are in for a shock. However, if you’re brave enough to take on a proper puzzle gaming challenge, you should definitely give it a try.

8.1

OVERALL

Game Controls 8.5

Graphics 8

Sound/Music 8.1

Gameplay 8.1

Replayability 7.8

FREE

Dungeons & Zombies

Jacek Zielinski

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews

Before the smartphone revolution, trivia contests were something that most of us watched rather than took part in. We tuned into game shows and shouted answers at the TV, with no prospect of recognition or reward for our general knowledge prowess.

Those days are behind us now. There are dozens of apps that let us participate in quizzes every single day, against other players, for real cash prizes. Skilli World is the latest to have caught our eye.

Set in a region of space where chunks of land are floating and, improbably, supporting human life in tropical resort-style settlements, Skilli World contains four main modes of play, three of which are available around the clock.

There’s the tutorial, which you can hop into whenever you like without restrictions, and there’s the 1v1 Friend Hut and the General Party Hut, which you can only play after you’ve linked your bank account to the app and made a deposit. More on that later.

Finally, there’s the main event, the Daily Mastermind Tournaments, which take place at the same time every day. These are often themed, so that one day you might be answering questions about Game of Thrones and the next you might be tested on your knowledge of South Park, or Friends.

For every themed quiz, more or less, there’s a general knowledge one too, so if you consider yourself an all-rounder you’ll have plenty of opportunities to strut your stuff. DMTs consist of up to 15 questions, and the answer to all of them is either True or False.

Skilli World’s distinguishing feature in the trivia genre is its unusual pay to play model. While most trivia games are free to play, but dangle lives in front of you as a way to monetize, Skilli World does things the other way around, letting you accumulate lives for free but charging you $5 to enter a DMT.

The Good

According to developer Under The Tree, Skilli World pays out more per player than its rivals. It would say that, of course, but it seems to have some supporting evidence.

For instance, during the app’s soft launch phase it was downloaded 4000 times, and its players managed to collectively win $30,000 – a highly respectable average. In total the app has given away $100,000 in prizes.

This is purportedly thanks to the restricted player numbers. While some of Skilli World’s major rivals might have a prize pot of $3000, there could be more than 100,000 players competing for it. By contrast, a maximum of 300 Skilli World players might compete for a prize pot of $1000.

On cost, too, Under The Tree claims that it represents better value than its rivals, since those games charge extortionate amounts for lives, or for in-game currency with which to buy lives. Of course, you don’t necessarily have to use those lives – you’ll just stand less of a chance of getting into the prizes if you don’t.

In any case, the variety of questions and the simple True/False format make Skilli World a fun trivia app, even if you stick to the prizeless and free tutorial mode.

The Bad

Whether or not you prefer Skilli World’s way of doing things will likely be a matter of personal preference. Under The Tree’s perfectly valid arguments about player-to-prize ratios will fail to convince you if you lay down a cool $5 and crash out after the first question. At least those other apps let you fail for free.

In that sense, Skilli App could do with more modes that don’t require you to enter your bank details and deposit cash up front. While we’ve got no reason to question the offer that Under The Tree is making, some players will be hard to convince, and it would be nice if the app contained more for those cautious souls.

Overall

Skilli World is a polished, accessible, innovative trivia app that gives you a genuine chance of winning some cash – as long as you’ve got the knowledge. Make use of the free introductory DMT to establish whether you’re in with a chance.

8.3

OVERALL

Replayability 9

Game Controls 8

Sound/Music 8.5

Gameplay 8.2

Graphics 7.9

FREE

Skilli World-Real Money Trivia

Under The Tree Ltd.

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews