I hilariously keep forgetting Team Kirby Clash Deluxe’s name

At first, I thought it was called Kirby Battle Royale–y’know, the game where 100 Kirbys jump out of a plane, land on an island, and must fight each other to death. Then I thought it was Kirby Star Allies, which is some new thing full of big reveals coming out real soon for the Nintendo Switch. Lastly, I thought it was Kirby’s Blowout Blast…but nope, none of those are right. I mean, yes, they exist and are all technically games starring the titular pink vacuum-beast, but the game I am playing and constantly forgetting the name of is Team Kirby Clash Deluxe. Oy vey. Look, there have been a lot of similar-sounding and looking Kirby-based games coming out of Nintendo these last few years, and it is difficult to keep them all separate.

Evidently, to make things even more complicated and layered, Team Kirby Clash Deluxe is a spin-off of a mini-game from 2016’s Kirby: Planet Robobot, available as a free-to-start digital down on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. It’s a game entirely made up of boss fights from previous Kirby-starring games, with all your favorite cute-as-heck baddies showing up, like Waddle Dee, Meta Knight, and King Dedede. RPG elements like leveling up, class types, and unlocking new weapons and armor sets are the key to making your Kirby super strong. You can take on the fights somewhat alone, with three computer-controlled Kirbys–should it be Kirbies?–or you can team up online with other real-life players; I’ve not tried the latter, and I’m doing just fine without human help, though I guess then I’m missing the whole point of this experience. For what it’s worth, I’ve never done much online multiplaying on my Nintendo 3DS, save for Animal Crossing: New Leaf and a few matches of ScareScraper slash Thrill Tower from Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. I like flying solo.

Now, the fighting in Team Kirby Clash Deluxe is not the most technical or satisfying combat system this side of the moon. It’s mashy and chaotic and that’s never really been the focus of Kirby games, of which my favorites are Kirby’s Dream Land 3 and Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Speaking of the latter, I seemingly still have my case and instruction manual for it, but no longer the disc. Boo to that. Also, not-favorites in the franchise include Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. Anyways, you can freely switch your Kirby between four different classes, which are as follows:

• Sword Hero
• Beam Mage
• Dr. Healmore
• Hammer Lord

These classes are basically locked-in versions of when Kirby would copy an enemy’s ability for his own nefarious purposes in a traditional game. Y’know, but sucking them into his mouth and swallowing them whole. Class-wise, they are easy to figure out, with Sword Hero being a general warrior type, Beam Mage being a ranged wizard, Dr. Healmore is your cleric, and Hammer Lord is most definitely a tank. I’m putting all my chips, and therefore Gem Apples and currency fragments, into Beam Mage, buying weapon and armor sets as they unlock because trying to spread out my spending on multiple classes, without using real money–more on that in a bit–is a fool’s errand. I really like the Beam Mage’s Time Stop ability and the fact that I can keep my distance from bosses and let my AI-driven team get in close for me. As fights progress, the boss will drop stone tablets, and if you collect all four of them you can perform a supermove that deals massive damage; other than that, the strategies are mash attacks and heal and dodge when necessary and obvious.

Let’s now talk about the free-to-play stuff. Team Kirby Clash Deluxe‘s freemium currency is Gem Apples, and there’s a tree in your main hub area that will give you five Gem Apples every 12 hours. Naturally, you can also buy Gem Apples for real cash money through the nearby shop or upgrade the tree itself for better harvests, and I wish I could tell you what the best deal is, but I honestly haven’t even looked at the prices. Each boss fight requires a certain amount of Vigor to take on, which recharges over time–it’s basically your standard energy system to restrict you from playing too much at once. You can instantly refill the meter by eating a Gem Apple or leveling up. Gem Apples are also used to unlock new boss fights and, along with additional currency requirements, acquire new weapons and armor. At first, everything only takes a few Gem Apples to do, but as you progress the amounts required will increase, insisting you pay real money for more; thankfully, I’m as patient as an anaconda hunting its prey and don’t mind checking in every 12 hours or so for my free Gem Apples, stockpiling them until I can unlock the next whatever.

So, similar to my approach with Pokémon Shuffle, Disney Magic Kingdoms, and other free-to-play games, I’m okay taking it slow in Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, so long as I get to see a majority of its stuff. Some of these armor sets look adorable on the ol’ pink sphere. I doubt I’ll get my Kirby up to level 50–he’s currently sitting rotund at level 12–but I’ll keep checking in on this until the Gem Apple requirements truly become too steep to climb.

If you wish for peace, be ready to wait in Battle Ages

One of my more fonder early gaming on a PC moments was the time I spent in Age of Empires, a history-based real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Yes, despite my natural disdain for the majority of RTS games out there, save for things like Kingdom Rush and the random run of a Command & Conquer: Red Alert skirmish, I did have a good time with that one, as it was a much more methodically paced foray into building up your camp and defending it when deemed necessary. It was definitely more Civilization than Warcraft, and that’s probably why I did better at the whole goal of trying to maintain peace for years on end. I’m into peace, majorly.

Anyways, Battle Ages is without a doubt no successor to Age of Empires, but it tries to guide the player slowly through different historical ages and creates one-off scenarios to do battle with other players’ camps or in-game missions. The problem is, right from the start, it’s a free-to-play game, and that means progress barriers for those unwillingly to pay money to knock those walls down. Like me. I started playing Battle Ages back in October 2016, and I guess I’ll consider myself being done with it as of this month. There’s still a new age to reach, as well as four seemingly unattainable Achievements, so I’m ready to uninstall the whole thing as soon as this post gets posted. Boom.

I’ve dipped into Battle Ages almost daily, whether to collect coins or begin researching a soldier or upgrade a building, because all those things are important to growing a strong, survivable settlement, as well as heavy on time. Naturally, the timers begin short, with some ranging in the 15-30 minutes range. A few, such as for upgrading landmines or walls, are instant, so long as you have enough free workers available for the job. By the end though, you’ll be waiting up to 5-6 days for some processes to complete. You could, of course, use money to bypass these timers via the use of jewels, the game’s special currency, but you don’t need to, if you are patient enough to wait. You will earn some jewels as you play, and I ended up burning a bunch to instantly have enough coins to push my civilization into the next era.

At some point during my journey to earn more gold so I could upgrade quicker, I broke some sort of peace treaty. This meant that, while I wasn’t playing Battle Ages, other people playing the game could attack my settlement and steal my hard-earned coins, as well as deplete my stock of soldiers. Boo to that. There were times that it felt like I was going nowhere, earning just enough gold to repair my bombs and restock my army tents. You can also go through a number of campaign missions where you attack a settlement and try to utterly destroy it, and these range in difficulty, but the most annoying thing for these is that, after you do one, you need to restock your army and call-in help before doing the next one. I eventually stopped doing these early on and stuck to timers for earning money and fame…which is probably why it took me so long to reach the Industrial Age.

So, with all that said, my time with Battle Ages has come to a close. I don’t see myself acquiring the four following Achievements left unpopped on my account:

• Moving on Up (Acquire 2,500 trophies in battle)
• Sticky Fingers (Steal 1,000,000 coins from the enemy)
• Hold the Line (Achieve 250 defensive victories)
• For the Win (Achieve 250 offensive victories)

If anything, Moving on Up seems permanently glitched, having been stuck at 40% for me since last year. Unless I’m doing something wrong. Either way, whatever. No Achievement for lowercase trophies. Well, when I get that next free-to-play, lots-of-timers itch and Fallout Shelter isn’t doing the job, I also have Battle Islands: Commanders from the same publisher 505 Games to get into, with that one focusing on World War II.

Feverishly swiping away at my phone to Make It Rain

I am a patient man. Perhaps maybe the most patient, but that is a test that anyone claiming such a thing could easily fail. I mean, if someone sits next to me and continues to flick my nose once every three seconds for the rest of my given life, I don’t expect to last long. For the most part, when it comes to videogames, I don’t mind having to wait. Sometimes the waiting, whether it is for a certain upgrade or pivotal story-beat, can be kept to the shadows when grinding or side quests are involved, and other times, like with a lot of today’s mobile entries, such as Disney Magical Kingdoms or The Sims FreePlay, the waiting is the entire game itself.

Make It Rain: Love of Money didn’t start out being a waiter, but it eventually hit a point where progress was unobtainable except through the passing of time. I’ll tell you how I know for sure in just a bit, but I guess I’ll cover the game’s story and mechanics first. Story-wise, it’s a mix of the thoughtful, coming-of-age journey Kaitlin’s sister experiences in Gone Home and the multiple dimensions, always-a-lighthouse time-funkaroo from BioShock Infinite, with a dash of Jazzpunk‘s zany playfulness thrown in for good measure. Okay, no. Just kidding. There isn’t a lick of narrative here, just a means to get digitally rich. Perhaps you are an absent-minded app developer who accidentally created this money-making product and must now figure out the quickest way to make it big. Your adventure may vary.

The game’s theme revolves around money, greed, and corruption, and opens with a Biblical quote, every single time, to remind you of the evils of temptation and your place as a servant to a higher being:

“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

That aside, once you are playing Make It Rain, the greed takes over, and all you can do is earn money and spend money to help earn more money faster in the future so that you’ll have more money to spend on earning money. Money money money. You can do this in a few ways, with the main method being swiping the screen in the same fashion that one might swipe a wad of money from their hands if they wanted to “make it rain” on a stripper. It’s an amusing means to an end, even if it’s demeaning in nature. I often made it rain on my cats, for what it’s worth. Another way to earn money is by putting your hard-earned green stuff into things like insider trading, subprime mortgages, and the bribing of political figures. Doing this raises how much money you earn by swiping, how much you earn when not swiping or the game is off, and how much your bucket can hold before you need to empty it and start again. All of this has me wondering how much cash I’ve accrued in Fable II since last turning it on.

Make It Rain is the type of experience that can be never-ending. I decided to toss a flag and march towards it, with the end goal being to unlock every Achievement. By September 2015, I had all of them, save for three. One Achievement was for purchasing two bee-related services, of which I had one already, and the other cost a whole lot of money that seemed, given the game’s pacing, decades away. The second was for swiping 100,000 times, which I’m convinced is glitched. Lastly, the developers would love to reward you with a digital picture and 5 Gamerscore if you connected the app to your Facebook account. Well, zip ahead a whole year later to today, and I’ve crossed off two of those three and decided that “Erased Fingerprints,” the Achievement for swiping way too much, is never gonna happen.

I hope to never write about Make It Rain again–really, there’s not much more to say, and a part of me is still baffled that I played this and consider it something one plays–so let me tell you how the last year went, which was all about earning $123 KBB to purchase the Electronic Apiary. I first started out trying to both increase the size of my bucket so it could hold more cash, as well as boost how much I got per hour when not playing the game. I quickly became less interested in actively making money and preferred to let the app work its magic in the background. This proved glacier-like slow, with each increase being so minor that you never really felt you were making any ground, but so major that all your funds were depleted and you had to start from square one. I then decided to give up on trying to upgrade either and simply empty my bucket whenever it filled all the way up, which was probably every day and a half or two days. Granted, I often forgot to do this, which only prolonged the experience. This took, oh, about a year, and I’ll point you back to the very first sentence of this blog post.

It’s strange. In just the last few weeks or so, I’ve polished off a number of games that have been lingering in my backlog for a good, long while: Final Fantasy IX, Crimson Shroud, Spyro the Dragon, and now this. Also, Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, a game I’ve been tapping away at its puzzles since 2014, is creeping close to the finish line. It’s like these things happen in large, social waves, and I have to wonder if some of the games I’m playing now won’t see their special haiku rewards for still some time. Again, I really don’t mind the wait. Occasionally, it’s not ideal, but sometimes it’s all you can do. In terms of Make It Rain, money doesn’t grow on trees overnight.

Some of your dreams can come true in Disney Magic Kingdoms

At some point, I do promise to write about Theme Park, which was not the greatest simulation game ever to be simulated, but it stands out in my mind as something special because my sister Julie and I played it together, creating less-than-stellar amusement parks and laughing at how many people we could get to hurl after going on our sick–and I do mean sick–rollercoaster designs. I also remember being extremely impressed, at the time, over the visuals, especially the 3D parts where you could go through the rides view a first-person POV. I guarantee the game doesn’t hold up one lick today, but it’s a sentimental entry in my gaming history nonetheless.

Disney Magic Kingdoms doesn’t let you do that or even really run an amusement park in a simulation fashion. You can’t adjust how much the hot dogs cost or what admission tickets go for on a weekend versus a weekday. It’s instead more about leveling up, both the rides and attractions you place on the ground, as well as the familiar characters inhabiting the park from open to close. Yes, you level up Mickey Mouse, and it is both satisfying and unnerving at the same time. Also, every time you complete a mission with a character, you collect your reward by tapping their upraised hand, giving them a digital high-five. I’m pretty okay with that, especially when it is Buzz Lightyear.

Magically, Disney Magic Kingdoms does come with a plot, as well as many small, off-to-the-side subplots. Here’s the big one: Maleficent casts an evil spell on the Kingdom, ridding it of all of its powerful magic, and it’s up to Mickey and his friends to bring everything back. A bit perfunctory, but it gets the job done, and this thing is clearly aimed at a younger generation, with its bright, colorful graphics and bouncy tunes, so it’ll never get darker than that. Basically, you’ll be trying to build specific attractions and bring in famous characters from all the popular franchises, ranging from Sleeping Beauty to Toy Story to The Incredibles. To do that, you need the right amount of currency and special items, which you collect from rides/attractions on timers and completing missions. Alas, some missions take sixty seconds to do, and others go for anywhere between six to twelve hours. Yikes.

I find that, obviously, Disney Magic Kingdoms, is best played in short bursts, with the goal of returning to it many, many hours later to see what got done and start the process all over again. I usually finish everything I need to do in under 10 minutes, and once you have checked all your rides for currency/items and given every character a quest there isn’t much else you can do except stare at your screen and wait. Might as well wait doing something else. However, let me confirm that it is a big bummer when, after waiting six hours for a quest to complete, you sometimes don’t get the item you want and have to try again. I’m sure there is a way to buy the item or complete the quest using real-life U.S. dollars, but I’m not interested in that. I’m saving my hard-earned cash-money for next month for Disney Magical World 2, which should come as no surprise to those that read my thoughts on the first game.

Oh, and I never really mentioned the whole Happiness aspect. See, a bunch of the park’s visitors are looking for things to make them happy, and that could be going on a specific ride or listening to Jessie yodel. Everyone has their kinks. Anyways, if you fill the Happiness meter up all the way, you can start a themed parade, which, for a limited time, allows rides and attractions to give off bonus magic and XP, and quests will also end with better rewards. Unfortunately, the Happiness meter drains when you aren’t playing, so I haven’t focused too hard on this area as it never feels worth the effort.

Being a free-to-play mobile game, Disney Magic Kingdoms is constantly changing. The game has gone through several updates already. One update brought in a timed event themed around The Incredibles and tapping on a bunch of evil robots invading the park. Looks like this week there’s an update that’s all about Pirates of the Caribbean. When will we get one focused on The Rescuers, hmm? There are also now chests akin to the chests from Clash Royale that you can find and open, but they are naturally on timers, and you can only open so many and open them so fast unless you are willing to spend the rarer currency of gems. No thanks. I mean, I’ll continue to open one chest at a time and hope for the best, but otherwise want nothing to do with this system.

Disney Magic Kingdoms is a more enjoyable time-killer, tap-taker than other games in this genre, but I wonder if that is mostly due to my love and appreciation of all things Disney. It really does help that the quests revolve around familiar, likeable characters, and that the carrot on the stick is unlocking more familiar, likeable characters. Plus, the game both looks and sounds amazing. They have Mickey’s “Oh boy!” and Goofy’s “Guffaw!” down perfectly, and the soundtrack features a number of memorable tunes. The characters are well animated, the environments are authentic, and you’ll find yourself whistling while you work as classic Disney themes play overhead.

Look, I’ll keep going with it, but I wonder if, just as with The Sims FreePlay, I’ll hit a point with Disney Magic Kingdoms where the grinding takes too long and becomes more of a nuisance than fun and close this park for good, only to ever see it appear again in one of those posts about creepy, neglected amusement parks overgrown with rust and decay.

Matching four of a kind in Gems of War is indispensable

Early on during my Nintendo DS days, I played a lot of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, as well as Mario Kart DS. But more Puzzle Quest than anything else. It successfully combined role-playing, strategy, and puzzle elements in one addictive pill to swallow, and threw in a fun, if cookie-cutter storyline to follow. At some point, I showed it to my sister D, and she got hooked, asking to play any time I came down. Eventually, I just left the cartridge with her since she could play it on my mother’s Nintendo DS easier–and faster–than waiting for me to visit every few weeks. Anyways, when I was into it, I was into it, and Puzzle Quest was this nearly perfect storm to kill fifteen minutes and feel like you were accomplishing something and having fun, marching down a path.

Hold on. I just pulled out my copy of Puzzle Quest and popped it into my Nintendo 3DS. Looks like my save data is still there, as well as my sister’s. My character’s name is Ferpina, and she’s a tough-looking, dagger-wielding, redheaded warrior at level 50. Oh my. When I load up the current mission, it’s called “The Final Battle,” and a message says that I managed to escape from Lord Bane’s clutches, and that I must try again. That means either I never actually beat Puzzle Quest or I did beat it and this is the last moment it saves your progress. Ha, I just tried taking on Lord Bane and he whipped my butt hard, so I have to imagine I never saw credits roll.

Well, good news and bad news–the developers behind Puzzle Quest are back (505 Games), and their new game is just as appetizing and fulfilling as before, if strikingly similar. In Gems of War, you create an avatar–I’m a cat lady warrior–and then match gems to power your array of spells, as well as match three or more skulls to deal direct damage to your opponent’s team of enemies. If you take out each troop on the opposing side, you’ll gain gold and souls, both of which are used to buy more soldiers, as well as level up the ones you got. Rinse and repeat until you take hold of all the kingdoms, of which there are currently fifteen. It’s quite close to what Puzzle Quest was, but with some free-to-play stuff here and there, though none of it has been bothersome or in the way at this point.

For Gems of War, I’ve been sticking to a specific team, really enjoying the way these troops interact and gel with each other. In my first slot is either a red mana or yellow mana weapon (I keep flipping between them) that does damage to a single enemy. Then I have a Boar Rider, currently strengthened up to level 7, followed by a Templar for boosting shields, and a Golem for exploding skulls and reducing enemy armor. Boar Rider is maybe my favorite troop, as its ability is to clear out an entire row, deal damage to an opponent’s troop, and then take a free turn afterwards. If you are playing strategically, you can use this ability to gain multiple turns in a row and keep the attack pressure on your enemy.

Still, I mash buttons during the intro and outro “dialogue” sequences, which exist only to give you a story-related reason to do battle. It’s fine, but fluff, and I’m never very invested in any narrative here. I just want to do all the quests in a kingdom and then claim it as mine. I also feel like there are perhaps too many choices when it comes to troops and you can waste a bunch of souls leveling up the ones that don’t matter or aren’t great for long-term play, which is why I’m rocking a team of one common and two rares because that’s all I’m comfortable experimenting with. Some of the rarer cards look neat, but aren’t immediately easy to use.

Perhaps my favorite thing about Gems of War is that, so long as you don’t go spending all your coins like a kid without a care, you can play duel after duel after duel. There’s no energy system here to stop you from playing. Each duel costs 50 gold to start, and that’s easy scratch to have and hold on to, even if you end up losing a few. Other free-to-play games bum me out in comparison to Gems of War, simply because they make it a struggle to even play and make progress. Not in this realm though.

Also, allow me to list what other match-three (or try hard to match four for better results!) games I’m currently juggling alongside Gems of War:

• Frozen Free Fall: Snowball Fight
• Pokémon Shuffle
• Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition

Okay, three. That might not seem like many, but it is when they are all at once similar and dissimilar to each other. It’s like trying to eat four cheese sandwiches at the same time, but each one contains a drastically different tasting cheese that lingers on your palette and actually begins to affect how you taste the other delicious sandwiches. Also, you like cheese, so this is one of those first-world problems, where it’s only really a problem if you analyze it too deeply. If you have a better analogy than this, please leave it in the comments.

Well, back to matching I go. These skulls aren’t going to combine themselves. See you after I’ve conquered every kingdom in the realm, leveled up every troop I like using (sorry, Zombie), and decked out a variety of teams to their fullest capacity, each capable of handling a number of situations tossed before them, whether it’s a boss fight or simply trying to stay alive as long as possible in an arena battle. In short, “To (Gems of) waaaaaaaaaar!”

Help elf people survive in Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure

There’s a first for everything, and Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure is my initial dip into a free-to-play hidden objects game. Y’know, that mega popular genre where you examine a scene and click on items to check them off a list. Back in the old days, you used to do it on paper, in magazines like Highlights, while waiting in some reception area. It’s strange to see this genre smothered by staple free-to-play elements like energy and special currencies, but it’s free on Steam and sometimes all I want to do is scour a scene for the most random of items, and this kind of fills that desire, but only kind of. Unfortunately, while clicking on crabs, knapsacks, and hidden oars, I also found a number of problems along the way.

Allow me to get the silly out of the way fast and describe the game’s story. Yes, Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure has a plot, if you want to follow it. Right, here we go. A bunch of elves were forced to set sail for a new home after their kingdom ends up in ruins. A terrible storm ends up crushing their ships, forcing them to the shores of a lost island. Unfortunately, despite all the green grass and flowing rivers, this beautiful new world is filled with danger. The elves try to leave the island, but discover it is surrounded by an impenetrable magic storm. Survivors on the island recall a legend about the last of the ancient elves, who they hope will awaken sleeping for a thousand years to help them overcome hardship. Dream big, I guess.

Overly epic plotline aside, gameplay revolves around scanning a scene and finding a number of specific items hidden in the picture. Just like you’ve always done in these games, which my mother was a huge fan of on the Nintendo DS, with titles like Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville in her collection. Sometimes they will list the items by name, sometimes they are silhouettes, and sometimes you have to search the scene at night, which means your point of view is limited by darkness. Each scenario is timed, and if you finish finding everything fast enough, you’ll gain stars (three, two, or one), which feed into upgrading that specific level, allowing you to find more ingredients upon completion. Ingredients are used to complete other quests and help deal with different races without paying gold coins.

Shockingly, I’m barely paying attention to the plot, only interested in which locations I’m supposed to analyze for the right items. Since you have to deal with a limited amount of attempts, I’m finding myself min-maxing every choice to ensure I’m spending those energy points wisely. Occasionally you’ll unlock a treasure chest, but to open it you need to do a Professor Layton-esque mini-game, like hitting all beams of light in a certain order or connecting colored lines without crossing over each other. I am curious to know if there are boss-like battles down the road, and if they are anything more than gathering a bunch of items to clear the path.

Besides the fact that you can’t simply play this to your heart’s content due to a stupid energy meter, there’s a few other issues in Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure that bring the fun down several notches. First, no matter how many times I select “Click to continue,” the game still wants to force its intro movie upon me, which features an old elf speaking like you might suspect an old elf would speak; thankfully, it’s skippable, but the game should remember that I’ve already seen it. I think having a time limit, and a short one at that, negatively affects my enjoyment, forcing me to often click like a madman in hope of nabbing that last item that can’t possibly be found unless I had all the hours in the world to scan every pixel from left to right. Lastly, I’ve popped a bunch of in-game Achievements, but after nearly two hours with the game, not a single one on Steam has unlocked. Sure, that’s a small quibble, but I need my digital rewards, and I’m not sure if the whole thing is borked.

Similar to Taptiles and Microsoft Jackpot, Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure is a game I will probably check in on daily for another week or two, especially to get those daily rewards, and then walk away from entirely once I feel sated. I don’t care whether the elves make it off this island and are safe and happy and making future elf babies to rule the kingdom. I only care about finding the paw print, butterfly net, and shoe quick enough to get three stars and unlock more loot to finish that quest for what’s-his-name faster. Call me a monster, or call me casual. This is the way it is.

Time Clickers and the idle quest to destroy colored cubes

Well, here we are. After listening to Jeff Gerstmann speak feverishly and passionately about an idle clicking game called Time Clickers on the Giant Bombcast for the past two weeks, I decided to see what was what. The blasted thing is free on Steam, and I dabbled in things like AdVenture Capitalist and that strange monster-driven mini-game during this past Steam Summer Sale to grok the concept. Little did I know that watching colored cubes explode would be so gratifying, even when I barely contributed to their demise.

Made by Proton Studio Inc., Time Clickers is…a clicking game with guns. For those that don’t know what that means, a clicking game basically revolves around on you, the player, clicking on different elements to eventually get to the point where actions are happening automatically and you can just sit back, eyes dilated, absorbing the delicious, dopamine-triggering rewards. A few examples that I’ve not played but heard of include Cookie Clicker and Clicker Heroes. In this one, you collect gold by blasting apart colored cubes, upgrade your click pistol, hire a team of elite soldiers to fire additional weapons at the cubes, and take down bosses as quickly as you can. You do this ad infinitum, constantly leveling everything up and “advancing” further through the game.

For a game that demands such little interaction, I can’t stop thinking about it. See, even when you are not running Time Clickers, you are continuing to earn gold. It’s like in Fable II, when you’d purchase houses and rent them out to villages. You could turn the game off, come back a few days later, and be much more richer, as the pay-rent-to-landlord system kept turning even while you were away. A part of me wonders how much money I’d get now if I turned Fable II on and loaded up my save from 2009-ish. Anyways, Time Clickers does that, which means it is always luring me back, with the completed promise of more gold to spend on DPS upgrades.

Steam says I’ve logged about two hours or so already in Time Clickers. Ugh. Here, let me let you in on a dark secret; the other night, while on the phone with my sister, I let the game run, watching cubes explode and Achievements pop, all without my hand even hovering over the mouse. Yes, it’s that kind of experience. It’s as if you had a fish tank full of bright, vibrant sea life, and every now and then you got a reward just for looking at it. Or not looking at it. Nothing can stop the clicks.

I’m sure there’s plenty to probe here. It all boils down to this: clicking games are a horrifying examination of human psychological weakness. They take hold of us and never let go. Even now, while I’m far away from my gaming laptop where Time Clickers is installed, it’s calling out to me, a siren on the shore, lulling me into a haze, one where the numbers keep going up and the cubes explode faster and arena bosses grow in size. I wonder if I’ll ever escape its grasp.

Might & Magic: Duel of Champions battles for my attention

Readers of this blog should know that I love just about any and every CCG I can get my hands on, whether or not I actually have someone to play against. Part of it is the collecting aspect, the fantasy that if I get this card or that card or three of that card then I can really build something special and unique to my playing style. It’s all about dreams, and this definitely started with Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, and Lord of the Rings, which I played with a small circle of flesh-and-blood friends. I also have some other card games in stuffed away in a box in my studio space that I’ve never played with anyone, such as The Simpsons TCG, Gloom, and Wyvern; I just have ’em to have ’em.

However, over the years, my gaming circle has diminished, though there are the occasional spouts of Munchkin and Lords of Waterdeep with friends, which are board games with some card-based elements, but not enough to get my palms sweating. Alas, I’m pretty much alone nowadays in my affection for CCGs and TCGs, and since I have no one else to share that love with, I must resist and sit on my hands. Even when it comes to digital card games. Sorry, Cardhunter. Bummer, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Too bad, SolForge. My apologies–argggh, fuck it.

I can’t hold out forever.

I guess there was a beta for Might & Magic: Duel of Champions a couple months ago, but I only ever first heard of the game when it released–for free–on Steam recently. You can mostly thank Penny Arcade for tweeting about it, but I decided enough was enough, clicked “play,” and waited for the game to finish up its installation thing, which did not take very long. However, before I could partake in any collectible carding, I first had to create a Uplay account, much to my disliking–a minor annoyance at best. But then it’s right into the action of this fantasy-themed strategic online CCG where you choose a hero, build an army of creatures, cast spells and fortunes, and defeat your opponent as swiftly as possible. Basically, Magic: The Gathering, but a teensy bit different in a few areas, just enough so that Wizards of the Coast does not come armed with lawyers and paperwork and turn one Lightning Bolts.

Duel of Champions opens with a faction selection: Haven (protection and healing), Inferno (attack damage), or Necropolis (infecting and stealing life). Depending which one you align with, you’ll see a different story and deck of cards to muck around with. I went with Haven as it reminded me the most of white weenie MTG decks, where it is all about small creatures and protecting yourself with spells. The campaign starts with a lengthy, but vital tutorial that teaches you all the basics before padding off main story missions. Each encounter has some–well, to me–throwaway dialogue at the beginning that ties into the plot, and you battle with cards to earn XP, gold, and seals. To win, you have to damage your opponent’s hero until he or she has no more health.

In order to play cards, you not only have to use stored resources (like mana, but not), but also a combination of three different tracked elements: Might, Magic, and Destiny. Each turn, the player can increase one of these stats or their hero can use a special ability to do something else. I think the Haven hero lets you draw an extra card? Sorry, I don’t remember. Also, each player has eight event cards on the side, which are shuffled together and brought out in twos. These rotate around with each use and can only be activated once a turn if you can pay for the cost, with effects that generally target all players, negative and positive. They remind me of portals/dungeons from Munchkin and planes in MTG, in that they often are the vital game-changers in any round.

After all that, there are three main types of main cards found in every hero’s deck: creatures, spells, and fortunes. Data printed on creature cards correspond to an attack score, a retaliation score (damage dealt back to an attacking creature), and its overall health points. Health does not regenerate at the end of the turn like in MTG, meaning you have to be always aware of who is hurt the most. Spell, so far, are rather straightforward, such as raising the strength of a creature or healing its wounds. Fortune cards are like mini-event card that seem to only effect you and play around with the rules of the game.

And so it goes: you play cards, perform your actions, attack, and prepare, and then the other player goes. An opponent’s turn can sometimes go by in a blink of an eye, so you have to be paying attention, but truthfully…it’s a bit lifeless against artificial intelligence, but it’s all I have currently. Not terrible, mind you; just void of something. I suspect once I’m further along I can do a little online multiplayer and see what that’s like, but for a free card game riffing on what MTG created, it’s pretty good and has enough tweaks to make it a wee bit more interesting than a blatant clone. I certainly am playing it more than I did that other Might & Magic title. And if you read through all this with wild, excited eyes and totally grokked all that I wrote, please come over and play card games with me on the weekend. I have plenty to try. Any time is fine.

You say you want a Tekken Revolution

Last night, I switched on my DownloadStation 3 to see what I should grab next and add to my growing digital collection of games that I worry I’ll never get time to actually play. Yes, first-world pains and all that, but really now, the amount of free games being tossed into my face on a weekly basis is staggeringly frustrating. And now the Xbox 360 is getting in on the action with Fable III and more to come. Please pray for my well-being. Anyways, upon seeing that Uncharted 3 is a…40 gig download, which would probably take me an entire weekend to download and then install, I scanned the store for something smaller. First I grabbed Machinarium for free thanks to my PlayStation Plus subscription, and then noticed that there’s a new Tekken game available for all to enjoy. Me like Tekken. Of all the fighting franchises, it’s the one I feel most in sync with, and I think it has to do with the throws.

So, what exactly is Tekken Revolution? Well, in short, it’s a very simplified, non-serious version of the age-old Tekken utilizing a “free-to-play” business model. This mostly involves avatar leveling mechanics in order to lure new players to the franchise, as well as a regenerating token system to limit just how many online fights one can participate in over a given period of time. Currently, there are only three modes: arcade, online player match, and online ranked match. That’s it. No training mode, no silly bowling mode, no local competitive “vs. player 2” mode. You either fight a random roster of opponents up to the boss Ogre or you test your luck against online combatants.

Again, since this is not a full Tekken game in all senses of the phrase, the roster is quite small. You begin with eight default characters, plus four more which you unlock in a random order by earning gift points at specific amounts. In short, here’s who you can use: Kazuya, King, Paul, Law, Asuka, Lili, Lars, Jack, Leo, Steve, Alisa, and Bryan.

I played through the arcade mode twice and found the experience to be just fine. It’s the same ol’ fighting you know from previous Tekken editions, and it feels good. I played as Asuka and watched as she earned experience points by defeating enemies, eventually leveling up to LV 3. This meant I now had some skill points to assign, boosting her health total, the damage she deals, and her chance of nailing a critical hit. This felt beyond foreign and tacked on, and I have to wonder what the whole point of it is. Probably to make actual money, in that maybe players can purchase more skill points to be one step ahead of the curve, and then their Asuka will always be a slightly bit more powerful than mine. I don’t know. Again, it feels unnecessary. Oh, and once you assign points, there’s no going back.

After that, I was able to log on once to play an online match against someone using Law. The fight was very close, each of use winning two rounds, but I was defeated in round 5. I did not try to play any further rounds after that, but it seems like you have tokens that regenerate slowly over time that allow you to play arcade or online matches. If you run out, you have to wait to play more. Or you can bypass this roadblock by purchasing gold tokens via real money. In the short time I played Tekken Revolution, nothing got in my way of fun, but I suspect if I tried to play a few more rounds I would have hit a wall.

Probably the biggest bummer is the lack of story here. There are no intro videos for characters and, more depressing, no end videos after you take down Ogre in the last fight. These zany pieces of cinema were always a treat and made trudging through the arcade mode over and over worth it. Now it feels kind of pointless, and earning experience points is not enough to satisfy. I want to see Paul and Kuma hanging out and doing flips or something. I want Jack to blow up a planet. I want people tossed into volcanoes.

It’s certainly not a revolution, but it is something to play now and then if you like Tekken and, for some reason, don’t have a copy of Tekken II or Tekken Tag to enjoy. Well, you know.