Kaboom Monsters

[h1]Potentially Dead Game![/h1] I reviewed this last on September 17, 2016. It is now October 20, 2016 and it doesn't look like there have been absolutely any updates. It's a fun casual game, but it gets boring too quickly and is too easy to play. Edit: The developer just now replied to my review (November 30, 2016) letting me know what's up. Hopefully there are more updates to come now. I will be updating my review as things change - if they change. [h1]Review[/h1] I do not recommend this game in its current state. Here's a simple explanation on why. It's too easy. I've been playing for 30 minutes and stopped at Level 13 to keep farming level 7 for "Juice" or in-game money. All it takes is 110 to buy a Giant Golem which is probably the best card you can buy. You get 50-56 Juice for finishing a level 10-0 so every two levels completed - or farmed - gets you a Giant Golem. I now have 15 Giant Golems and am unstoppable right now, and I've only played for half an hour. Edit: I'm editing my review with some more information about the game rather than just how it plays. Kaboom Monsters is a very interesting game. If you'd like to know about what it plays like, read some of the other reviews. The game itself, I enjoy it. After the 30 minutes I played before writing the top half of my review, I played for about another 2 hours the next day. I completed the rest of the levels and began equiping all 15 of my Giant Golems with the strongest and best gear available. However, currently, the features the game includes are not needy. They're just there for show. For example, right from the beginning when you unlock the Market you can buy anything. You can buy all the cards and you can buy all available and unlocked equipment. The booster packs are irrelevent as well as buying materials to make weapons and shields. What's the sense of getting rid of three cards to make a stronger one when you can easily afford the best card in the game by time you reach Level 7? My recommendation to fix this is to put locks on the cards until you've reached a set milestone, and increasing the prices of all the cards. Especially the rarer ones. One onion rarity are cheap, two onion rarity are moderate, and three onion rarity are expensive. Other than all of that, the game has got immense potential and I will be following this game and updating my review as things are changed. However, like I said above, in its current state, it's too easy.

First of all, my negative judgement is preliminary, as it is still an early access game. I also want to mention that the developer contacted me a few weeks ago and promised to publish a final version soon, which is always a good sign. At this moment however, my verdict must be: This game is cute, but it feels a little weird. The quite original gameplay combines concepts of trading card games (destroy the opponent's cards by beating them in certain stat numbers) with the 3x3 grid of Tic-Tac-Toe. This "combat" is embedded in a rudimentary fantasy world with crafting and merchant hubs, where you can upgrade your cards. I do like the artstyle, and I appreciate that the creator wanted to try a new idea. For my personal taste however, the execution of that idea has not matured yet. The game world needs to be fleshed out further, with NPCs and some lore, in order to feel authentic. The progression needs balancing, because right now, the way to go is to grind certain resources and then buy cards of the strongest type, which then devastate everything that stands in front of you. Most importantly, the cardgame combat system is not satisfying at the moment, as you can only choose the card you want to deploy from a very limited selection, so there is too much chance involved in how the "battle" plays out. I hope that this kind of criticism helps to make this game more enjoyable in the future, and I will gladly check it out again and change my review if the developer lives up to his promise and makes some improvements.

There just isn't enough to make this game interesting. The final AI decks are too powerful, the only way to defeat them is grind for hours on stages you can beat easily the first time around. Support and updates are minimal. It's just not going anywhere playable soon.

"Kaboom Monsters" ist ein Fantasy-Kartenspiel. Was überhaupt Sache ist oder worum es in diesem Universum inhaltlich geht, bleibt weitestgehend unklar. Es gibt zwar eine kleine Hintergrundgeschichte, in der ein Zauberer alle Bewohner in Monster verwandelt hat, so wirklich Sinn entsteht dabei aber nicht. Sicher ist nur: im Kern stehen Kämpfe, die mit quadratischen Karten, die in ein 3X3 abwechselnd Grid gespielt werden. Alles drum herum dreht sich im Wesentlichen nur darum, neue Karten zu kaufen, Karten zu verbessern oder mehrere vorhandene Karten in eine bessere neue zu verwandeln. Das Kartenspiel funktioniert nach relativ simplen Regeln. Zunächst stellt sich jeder Spieler ein Deck aus 15 Karten zusammen, mit denen er den Kampf bestreiten möchte. Im Kampf hat jeder Spieler die Auswahl aus drei Handkarten. Jede Karte hat an jeder der vier Kanten einen Kampfwert. Spielen wir sie an eine Position im Grid, werden die Werte aller angrenzenden Karten einzeln mit der gespielten Karte verglichen. Der höhere Wert gewinnt und die niedrigere Karte wird gegebenenfalls vom Spieler übernommen. Zusätzlich hat jede Karte noch einen Zeitwert, der oben links in der Ecke angezeigt wird. Jede Runde tickt der Wert um eins runter. Eine Karte mit Zeitwert 0 wird im nächsten Zug automatisch vernichtet. Der Platz wird wieder frei, um eine neue Karte abzulegen. Für jedes Übernehmen einer Karte erhält der Spieler einen Punkt. Gewonnen hat derjenige, der zuerst fünf Karten mehr als der Gegner übernommen hat oder derjenige, der die meisten Punkte hat, wenn alle Karten gespielt wurden. Durch gewonnene Kämpfe erhalten wir Währung, die wir dann in Verbesserungen oder neue Karten investieren können. Das kann man als relativ simplen Deckbuilder bezeichnen. Und an sich funktioniert das Karten-Spiel selbst auch relativ gut und bietet sogar immer wieder interessante Entscheidungen. Große taktische Tiefe kommt allerdings nicht auf. Und das ist eines der Probleme des Titels, denn die Kämpfe sind im Kern immer gleich. Im Laufe der Zeit werden nur die Kampfwerte der Karten immer höher. Das größte Problem ist allerdings, daß das Spiel ursprünglich vom Mobile-Markt stammt und einst auch eine Echtgeldwährung hatte. Die wurde hier zwar entfernt, aber viele grundlegende Strukturen eines solchen Pay-to-win Titels sind immer noch spürbar. Das Spiel ist extrem grindig. Immer wieder müssen wir die praktisch selben Kämpfe durcharbeiten, um jeweils nur minimale Verbesserungen zu bekommen. Auch mechanisch merkt man die Herkunft des Titels. So lassen sich einige Menüs nur schwerfällig scrollen, weil die Mechanik offenkundig einst auf Touch-Screens ausgelegt war. Auch Grafik und Sound lassen die Mobile-Herkunft durchschimmern. Dazu sein noch erwähnt, das der Titel 2016 auf PC als Early Access herauskam, kurz danach ein einziges Update bekommen hat und dann jahrelang nichts mehr passierte. Das Spiel ist zwar grundsätzlich spielbar, ihm fehlen aber offenkundig noch zahlreiche mechanische und inhaltliche Elemente, um ein wirklich interessantes Kartenspiel daraus zu machen. [h1]Wertung:[/h1] 5/10 Atmosphäre -/10 Story 5/10 Grafik 4/10 Sound 5/10 Spielmechanik 3/10 Balancing 4/10 Spielspass [h1]Fazit:[/h1] Fauler Mobile-Port. [h1][b]4/10 Gesamtwertung

Казуалка с интересной механикой и коллекционированием карточек. Механика интересная, есть улучшения карт и в игре достаточно уровней. Также хочу отметить хорошее визуальное оформление. Попробовать определённо стоит.

I cannot in good conscience recommend this game to anyone for any reason. The supposed fantasy world that doesn't take itself too seriously doesn't actually exist. Make no mistake: this is a bad card game and nothing more. There is no story to dig into nor characters to care about. The game is abysmally short, even for early access, and the only increase in difficulty is that the AI gets flatly stronger cards to work with. There is the slight possibility of strategy but this would only matter in a match with mirrored or balanced decks, which will never be the case. The first mission is literally impossible to lose because this is merely a numbers game. When and if player versus player is implemented as promised the player who did the most grinding for "juice" will always win, guranteed. If you grind long enough to have only the most powerful cards with the strongest equipment then you've already experienced the full depth of this game. There are twenty-three matches to be played on the "map," though to call the singleplayer a map or campaign is to overstate it. There is a slight bit of instructional dialogue with horrible grammar in the tutorial and then nothing for most of the matches, while occassionally a set of nonsensical imagery will pop up like a comic before a mission. Keep in mind that once you beat the final match you will be forced to click through the last comic any time you play any match anywhere until that glitch is fixed. On top of the grinding tedium you will not be rewarded for achievements until you click into the achievement list in-game and redeem them one at a time, with no scrollbar to make the process quick. Furthermore equipment cannot be moved from card to card so if you need to use an equipped card to create a stronger card you will also have to make that equipment again. Plus, once you beat a match replaying it only yields juice rather than the card and resource rewards, so when you run out of new matches to play the grinding gets much slower. I will never play this game again and I'm selling my trading cards. Please, don't waste your money here unless the final version proves to be much better. If there was any nuance to the gameplay at all I would not be so harsh, but there is none.

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Abandoned