Take a break from a stressful day with this good time killer!
App Name: Game42 – Board Game
Platform: Android
Price: Freemium (with Ads)
Game42 is a collection of 9 puzzle games:
Caro
Tiling
Co Ganh
Coloring
Othello
Checkers
Conquer
Chess
Tic Tac Toe
I like puzzle games, I got had some good times with this game. Puzzle games are…well puzzle games and while games are fully functional and good there are some issues though. I am going to walk through each of their puzzle games one-by-one.
Caro – a variation of Gomoku Not trying to be rude, but with this AI, gameplay makes me think that Caro is just a Tic Tac Toe game with more tiles and more crosses/circles required to win a game (5 instead of 3). In other words, you need to place crosses/circles into one of the tiles while AI will try to the same, blocking your path on the way. Nothing wrong with that, until AI goes full dumb mode and sooner or later it becomes predictable and it takes you no effort to win the opponent.
Tiling – make lines, get lines! While this game has heavy traits from the game I reviewed several months earlier in which you put tetris-based shapes into a grid. But in this case, the game makes a use of AI, which is dumb and undeveloped. It’s pattern can be easily predicted: it chooses a random location, then if there are shapes in the way, it starts rotating the figure, trying to fit it in. If it can’t fit its shape, it moves to another random location and finally places his shape, which gives no tactical advantage neither to me nor him.
Go Gahn – a Vietnamese traditional chess This game tend to have better gameplay. Never played Go Gahn, but it turns out to have quite easy mechanics, but quite difficult to play. Recommend playing it! In Game42, this puzzle game tend to have no negative attributes unlike previous games.
Coloring – fill polygons, get points!
Looks easy when you start playing it, but becomes more and more challenging as the game progresses. AI is quite stable, but it could be nice if he was acting a bit faster.
Othello – friends or foes? Gameplay is fun and challenging. AI is fully functional and quite smart when it comes to othellos. A nice game to play at free time.
Checkers – who will be the king?
Good time killer for those who have 5 minutes in their pocket. AI is smart and becomes a great opponent over time. But sometimes makes dumb moves, which makes a game less interesting. However, this could be because I was playing a “Newbie” mode.
Conquer – dots and boxes game It may be just me, or the whatever I do, brings me a step closer to losing this game. Nothing to say about the game overall, really. Just dots and boxes…
Chess
Gameplay is fine. AI takes ages to process a single movement, as if trying to predict my next 20 moves. Overall, it’s okay, but not recommended for people who have only a minute or two to spare.
Tic-Tac-Toe Game is fully functioning, but AI is completely undeveloped over there. It takes less than a second to finish it. Changing to hard mode and you’ll notice that AI feels much smarter, reacting to your movements, blocking out each of your shapes, trying to win at the same time. However, over time you both end up in draw as you will try to block him, while he tries to block you.
What else? With individual puzzle games reviewed you must’ve noticed that I constantly bragged about ad pop-ups. And indeed they’re very annoying as everytime you enter/exit/win/lose a game you’ll be shown an ad, which is then followed by a banner asking you to purchase a full game. Which leads us to another issue of Game42: You can’t play with another real and smarter/responsive human being unless you pay, which is just ridiculous!
This has been removed and from now on there will be less frequent pop-ups and premium features are completetly removed. Now you can play with your friend for free!
Audio While audio is okay in this game you’ll start feeling they’re being overused too much.
Dear developers… You guys need to seriously to work on your AI, at some point it feels dumb and it make player feel stupid at some point it make ridiculous moves. In turn, you guys need to seriously work on your monetization strategy as I feel surrounded by your ads and it makes me really annoying. Like literally everytime I do some action like opening/exiting game, winning or losing I end up seeing your interstitial ads.
Good guys developers read this review and fixed their business model along with frequent pop-ads. This is a great example of good developers who take care of their fans and take reviews seriously!
Final Verdict… I rate this game 3.5/5. Developers got in touch with me, informing that there is a new update for the game with no more premium features! However, AI needs some love and attention.
App Goodies 