Illuminati
Another day another casual game made it to top ranks of play store. Illuminati looks very appealing with both graphics and style.. It is after all, the good old "click to make money" game. Wait, let me rephrase.. because in this game you actualy dont earn money, but followersr on you way to world domination.
First glance
At the first glance the game looks amazing. It has all the main components such as good lvling system, upgrades and nice layout. You can create different influences on a country and as you hire more people, you can influence even more people. All in all first 30 minutes of playing were a blast!
Ads - Finally done right
No anoying popups, no bars on sides or bottom, no forced videos that take 30 seconds and ear-rape you whenever you put on headphones. Thats right, monetary system in this game is truly fitting for that grindy gameplay. Instead of all those app-killers stated above you will actually gladly watch an ad or two once in a while as they offer engaging boosts to the game. There are two types availible:
- By watching an ad you activate a speedboost for all you influences for 4 hours
- Once in a while a phone rings and offers you some random boost like gathering more people, forwarding time a few hours or even tripleing your people (which is like a currency)
I watched many ads during time spent on this game and chose to do it every time!
Sounds too good?
Yes, nothing can be this good right? Well turns out it really cannot. All of those positive feeling gathered in first hour of playing (described above) are absolutely shattered as you progress into the game. The more you unlock the better you are, but as you get major uprageds and open the second playingfield, you start to realize it. There is ABSOLUTELY no thought put into the scaling of this game. NONE. I finnished the game in maybe a day (being generous) of casual playing and the progress just shocked me. Have a look:
Let alone having a bit of a story, they didnt even bother to draw different pictures!!! You grind for the second playingfield which is.. spoiler alert.. The planet.. and they offer you on several occasions to buy some diamonds here and there to speed up the process, YET they dont even bother to put in a differnt names and pictures of next unlock. You just keep buying the same shit for different price all over. Upgrades are no different, 3 times the speed of newspapers -> 5 times -> 10 times. So are the actual influences you buy in the game. After like 4 unlocks you realize, that there is no room for you to strategize.. The most effective way is always just buying the last unlocked thing.
Really Taps games? really? If you're doing a spin-off from your older games atleast do it right. Not cool bro..
Conclusion
Cool game that seems very rushed to me. They did some things right, and its worth trying out if you are a really casual gamer.. Definetly dont spend money on diamonds, it will only shorten play-time 3, 5 or 10 times depending on how much you invest :D
Hope this was helpful
Thanks for reading