The setup and story are intriguing enough. It bills itself as all play areas fitting onto one screen, so even if playing on a phone you can still see everything. Game commands are simple, as pretty much every action just requires one touch, so your finger(s) won't cover up crucial moments where you could die because your digits are in the way at inopportune moments.
As far as the story goes, you've been shipwrecked, awaking on a mysterious island with no memory as to how you got there. You need to make your own tools in order to make your way through the game, what with chopping down trees and digging up rocks to improve your tools or sell what you don't need to an island local (hey pal, just where the hell am I and how do I get out of here? No speaka English? Damn) in exchange for gold. At first I was worried about causing a small environmental apocalypse by cutting down trees and digging up rocks, but luckily via the magic of video games/hardly anything in the game makes any sense the trees and rocks will be replenished within seconds.
As you start clearing out the forest, you'll start seeing movement (one of several surprises when you start uncovering the island, as it's totally dense with trees at first until you start clearing them out). Local denizens with the same job as you (digging up rocks and all) can kill you if you're not careful but they're easy to avoid. They can also screw up your job but if you're quick enough you can kill them and get back that rock you were *planning* on digging up but they beat you to it.
Unfortunately you have to grind away throughout the game. In no time flat your tools won't be strong enough in order to dig up certain rocks or cut down certain trees (even though they all look the same). So you have to, over and over again, gather enough materials to upgrade your equipment.
Finally after grinding away for quite a while, you'll clear out the top of the screen and reveal whatever it is that's causing all this smoke to appear. Once you get inside that it'll open up area #2, where chances are pretty good you'll get killed pretty quickly (I didn't even know you could die until then!). But of course, in this area with 20 floors, you'll have to, yep, keep on returning back to your makeshift bench area to upgrade your tools over and over again in order to keep getting further into the game. With every tree you chop down, every time you collect from a mine and with every rock you dig up that takes away health until you sleep it off and get your energy back (yet for some strange reason whenever you engage in combat you won't use any energy at all).
So, after fighting the enemies in this area, grinding away at upgrading your tools and returning over and over, if you're able to defeat the boss at the end you're taken to a third screen that's dark and you barely can do anything before you have to, yep, upgrade your damn tools over and over and uncover more of the area.
It took me a while to figure out how to beat the boss in that area, as I had TWO items I had to upgrade over and over again. I'm done with the game for now, as it said onscreen that the game's over until the next upgrade, so I assume the creator is working on a map for area #4.
The game's graphics are terrible but retro cute (kind of look like they're from the NES era like Crystallis). Sounds are a bit better and the soundtrack for area #2 is a bit in the horror synth vein
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_colors.gif)
Obviously I didn't find the grinding to be a lot of fun, but somehow this was still pretty addicting to the point where I didn't get to bed until after 1 a. m. several times over a period of two weeks. That's pretty bad. I guess I just wanted to see what was going to happen next even though it's not gigantically engaging. It's pretty overrated though, being at a perfect five stars out of five at two million downloads. My guess is that a lot of parents rated it that high since it's for ages 8 and up and there isn’t a drop of blood in it (even with plenty of killing you have to start doing after a while). I just give it three stars. The online version is rated a little more fairly at 4 ½ stars but that's still too high. Maybe others like it better than myself for some reason but it seems to me the guy started off with a cool concept, then seemed to run out of ideas on how to further expand the game without grinding through sh*t to death, unfortunately.
However, this could be a good change of pace from shooters, done to death old arcade clones and "match 3"-type games.
BEWARE of what could be a big time-consuming addiction though!