Dungeon Village [Android, iOS]

Dungeon Village is another sim by Kairosoft who specialise in this type of game. Your goal is to build a village for adventurers, who then go into the dungeons and fields surrounding your town to fight monsters and loot treasure.

The gameplay focuses on building things for and managing, your adventurers.You build an inn for your adventurers to recover in, item shops and places for them to train and if they really like your town they will move in permanently. You can also reward your heroes with new gear and medals for good performance.Quests will pop up in the field outside your town and will require you to pay a fee of gold to get your adventurers to complete them. They range from kill x monsters, to adventures through dungeons that yield lots of treasure and even boss fights.Initially these boss fights will challenge your adventurers but they suddenly reach a point where they go backwards in difficulty.

 

As you progress you receive a cauldron that you fill with magical ingredients in order to produce new items and buildings. This is like the "research" element of the game and it does add it bit of fun. Here you can develop powerful weapons for your adventurers and even create spell books for them to learn new magics. As I understand it, this is an element that was added after launch and in a way it exemplifies the problem with this game. Whilst it is good, it just needs a little something more.

If you have played one of Kairosoft's games then you have more or less played this game. If the theme suits you and you have never played a Kairosoft title before, give this game 1 point extra and give it a go, because their mechanic is fun the first time through. The game is priced at $4.49 AUD and I think this is a little too much to pay for something that just feels like a recycling of their other titles 6.9/10.

My Little Hero [iOS]

Your favourite toy has been stolen and you must don your cardboard helmet, sheathe your wooden sword and take it back from the enemy.The story and the feel of My Little Hero is very cutesy yet it seems to be aimed at an older audience than what it's tone would imply.

The game is a Zelda style 3rd person adventure and just like Zelda your levelling up is achieved through collecting new items. The combat is not as involved as a Zelda title though and you mostly just resort to mashing the attack button with most enemies. However the enemies are quite interesting and there are plenty of attack patterns you must learn so you can time your headlong mash attack correctly. Collecting your toys hidden across the levels adds an extra element of replayability and on some of the levels they are quite well hidden. However for the most part the level design isn't particularly interesting and they often make you back track over the same old boring ground.

The difficulty curve could have been improved greatly. The beginning of the game is quite easy, a little too easy in fact, then suddenly it has a difficulty spike that eases off as you get to the end and unlock more powerful tools.

As mentioned before the graphics of the game are quite cutesy. The monsters that you battle are actually your toys and a lot of them have a patchwork like quality about them.The worlds are varied and interesting enough to make exploring them exciting but by the end of a world you may be a bit sick of the feel.One annoying thing that the game does just a bit too much is put trees and other things that block your camera view.

There is a game in here somewhere.

It's at a "limited time offer" of a dollar on iPhone and 2 dollars for iPad and for these prices it is well worth the adventure. The game released with many bugs and whilst there has been a patch which fixed many of the issues I faced, (mainly crashing) I am still hopeful that there will be another patch to make the game even smoother.Overall though I enjoyed the game, though I found the main content a little short, however for a dollar it is not too bad 7.5/10.