clicker heroes

Hey, hey, Geekly Gang! I haven’t done a free-to-play video game review in a handful of months and figured I’d give the treatment to a game I played a lot of this past summer, Clicker Heroes. Yes. Clicker Heroes has been out for over a decade, but it’s still available on multiple platforms: PC, mobile, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Clicker Heroes started as a Flash game, so this free-to-play video game has been around for some time. But just because a game is “free-to-play,” does that mean that it’s free-to-play friendly? Let’s subject Clicker Heroes to our review criteria.

Mechanisms: 2/10

Clicker Heroes doesn’t cover new ground, so its mechanisms score suffers as a result. Don’t get me wrong, I like idle games. I played the heck out of AdVenture Capitalist. I did the same with Clicker Heroes. I sunk hundreds of hours into this game, but it doesn’t do anything more than click on heroes, like the game’s name suggests, allow you to upgrade the heroes, and then face the next goofy-looking boss monster.

I do like how you can choose to upgrade your heroes by factors of 1, 10, 25, and 100 levels each time. This makes leveling up lesser heroes like Cid, the Helpful Adventurer (your first Hero), a breeze. Goldfish and Bees will flash on the screen with button prompts, but this does little to shake up the stale gameplay.

Above Image from GameDesigning.Org

Gameplay Loop: 2/10

I know I just said I sunk hundreds of hours into Clicker Heroes, but most of that time I spent AFK (away from keyboard), and that’s by design. Clicker Heroes is one of those games you log in once, maybe twice, a day, check on your heroes, and put the game back to sleep.

You’re encouraged to “ascend” your world, which erases much of your progress, and then you must climb back to where you just were. This is what keeps Clicker Heroes’ gameplay loop score from reaching even lower, because Clicker Heroes’ most engaging gameplay is at the beginning. Waiting for your power-ups to recharge or your characters to defeat enough monsters to upgrade your heroes becomes tedious.

After some time, you can use hero souls (from ascending) and purchase Ancients that can help you progress faster in the game, but once you reach Level 300, you’re given the choice to “transcend” your world. This is another layer of ascending that erases your gilded heroes (upgraded heroes through relics) and your Ancients. So, after “ascending,” you go all the way back to the game’s tedious beginnings.

But you do obtain “Outsiders,” which are supposed to be stronger Ancients, but it takes a long time to accrue enough ancient souls, what you get for “transcending,” before you begin to see a tangible difference. Plenty of websites offer ideas on how to speed this process, but I don’t imagine too many players will sink enough time into learning Clicker Heroes’ math to take full advantage. Clicker Heroes becomes a slog.

Respecting Time: 1/10

Clicker Heroes is an idle game, so it’s supposed to be more of a time waster, and it does indeed do that. I can forget Clicker Heroes exists for several days and return to my heroes. But Clicker Heroes makes upgrading your world so difficult that it goads gamers into either spending hours of research to get the perfect set-up or spending money to make the hurting stop. Is the drop of juice you get worth the tens of billions of squeezes? I don’t think so.

True Cost: 3/10

While Clicker Heroes offers skins for auto-clickers (Why would anyone want that?, but okay), it gains most of its money through the purchase of rubies. Fortunately, players can earn rubies by sending mercenaries on missions, opening relics, and clicking on goldfish. But I still struggled with how to grade Clicker Heroes’ “True Cost” or its “free-to-play friendliness,” because I can see players getting caught in a trap. Heck, I got baited into that same trap: reviving mercenaries.

Every once in a while, one of your mercenaries may perish while on a mission. You can spend rubies to revive a mercenary, but there’s some math (I haven’t done the research) where the mercenary’s level and/or the amount of time they have remaining for a mission dictates the number of rubies you’ll need to revive them. In my experience, reviving mercenaries takes a mountain of rubies. Players have little chance of having enough rubies to revive advanced mercenaries, like the “Demigod +13 level” mercenary pictured above with the low, low revival price of almost 5000 rubies. Looks like time to open another credit card and buy 5000 rubies for about $400.

With one exception, outside of reviving mercenaries, I see little use for spending rubies. That one exception is a one-time damage boost for your Heroes. This costs somewhere between 50-100 rubies, and once you buy it, you’ll have it for the duration of the game. 100 rubies or less is a steal.

But the remaining ruby purchases involve buying gilded Heroes, which will reset after you ascend, some version of speeding up Clicker Heroes’ glacial pace, or buying an auto-clicker. Eh. I almost gave Clicker Heroes an average score for “True Cost.” Reviving mercenaries aside, few of the other ruby purchases can be avoided.

User Interface: 2/10

Clicker Heroes doesn’t have that many menus and submenus, but what is there is confusing and difficult to navigate. I’ve played the game for months and still get turned around, not knowing where I can find certain information. I can’t imagine a noob looking at the screen above and being able to tell what does what. And several buttons have multiple functions, so it’s easy to misclick.

Graphics: 3/10

While simplistic, Clicker Heroes’ graphics are pleasant. I’m grading this one on a little bit of a curve, because Clicker Heroes is over ten years old. But the game hasn’t received too many graphic updates through the years, so I can’t get too crazy with this score.

Audio: 6/10

I had to average Clicker Heroes’ audio score. Clicker Heroes has epic music. It often gets stuck in my head. But the sound effects are as annoying and repetitive as clicking a button thirty-five times a second. Ow! My ears. Those moments when I don’t use an ability and listen to Clicker Heroes’ soundtrack make all the difference for this score.

Aggregated Score: 2.72

Clicker Heroes is an idle game, so don’t expect much. While it has charm, the graphics haven’t been upgraded too much to keep up with modern devices. Clicker Heroes can be a slog if you don’t research how to maximize your Heroes or spend money, and I worry about gamers who fall into the ruby pit of reviving their “good” mercenaries.

Happy Wednesday, Geekly Gang! The Geekly writers have another month of video games and board games to discuss, but we’d like to hear about the games you’ve been playing, too. Whatcha been playing, Geekly Gang?

Kyra’s Games

Kyra’s Video Games

I haven’t played many new video games this past month, but I have gotten into a decade-old mobile game, Clicker Heroes. Yes, this is a hella old mobile game, but it’s new to me. The monsters remind me of the monsters from My Singing Monsters. I’m guessing that’s on purpose. Oh! I may have to redownload My Singing Monsters. Clicker Heroes is a standard idle game. The idea of the game playing itself while you’re gone isn’t new (it’s at least a ten-year-old concept at this point), but Clicker Heroes does a good job of executing the gameplay. I wonder if I can level up my heroes enough to break the game.

Just because I haven’t played many “new” video games doesn’t mean that haven’t been replaying games. Terra Nil and Dorfromantik have dominated my video game hours this past month. I’m writing reviews for both of these cozy games. These reviews should be posted in September. That let’s you in on how far into the future these reviews are. Terra Nil is an anti-city builder (you’re trying to reclaim the earth for wildlife), while Dorfromantik is tile tile-laying video game, where you’re building a pastoral landscape. Both are chill games. I love playing them for the vibes.

Kyra’s Board Games

My gaming group has played even more Flip 7 over the past several weeks. Flip 7 is one of those games we play as a warm-up or as a quick change of pace game. Essentially, Flip 7 is a large group game of Black Jack with specialty cards. The game’s easy to pick up, scales really well, and is a great way to bring in people who aren’t already board game enthusiasts. My Monday gaming group meets at the public library, so we get a lot of random people who walk up to the table. Flip 7 works as an introductory game. It combines just enough new elements with a classic card game.

Prior to joining my gaming group, I hadn’t played many Set Enterprises card games. But we’ve been playing Quiddler, which is a quick and fun word-building game, and Karma, where players try to empty their hands, but they have three cards face-down that they don’t know what they are until they’re played. I’m a bigger fan of Quiddler than Karma, but I appreciate what Karma’s trying to do. The face-down cards cause enough chaos that they even the playing field of a standard card-shedding game. Still, there’s a little too much luck involved (for my tastes) with the Set Enterprises card games I’ve played. But I do really like Quiddler. It’s short enough that I don’t mind the heightened aspect of luck.

I could talk about a handful of other board games, but I’m certain Season and Skye may mention them in their write-ups. I won’t swoop in with any of their entries. Speaking of which, let’s see which games Season and Skye have played over the last month.

Skye’s Games

Skye’s Board Games

I’ve heard good things about Cretaceous Rails for a while–mainly from Kyra and Season–but I haven’t played it until now. I had fun. Cretaceous Rails is a simple board game about creating a dinosaur tourist resort by time-traveling to the past. While I didn’t do so well my first time, I rarely do, I still enjoyed Cretaceous Rails enough to want to play again. Cretaceous Rails is one of those games that has several interesting elements that can only be properly explored across multiple playthroughs. I intend to “git gud.” Also, it’s trains and dinosaurs. Together at last! What’s not to love?

Skye’s Video Games

Over the past month, I’ve migrated back to mobile games. Meow Tower is one of the phone games I’ve discovered. In Meow Tower, you’re a human making an apartment building for cats. That’s pretty much it. You get to know each of the cats individually; you design each of their rooms to their liking. You progress through Meow Tower by solving puzzles, specifically Nonogram puzzles. If you’re unfamiliar, Nonograms are spatial puzzles that force you to uncover hidden images given the available clues. If you like brainteasers and cute cats, Meow Tower is a great leisure game.

Last Stronghold is another phone game. I know, I lost a good amount of gamer-cred this past month. Last Stronghold is a basic zombie survival game. What appeals to me about Last Stronghold is its focus on building up your base, exploring the world around you, saving other survivors, and shooting zombies in the face. I just described every zombie game in existence. Dang it. My favorite thing about Last Stronghold is its art style. Call me petty, but that’s pretty much it. With it being an offline phone game, Last Stronghold also has a significant element of leisure to it, which allows you to go at your own pace. Last Stronghold is by far the most benign zombie apocalypse I’ve ever seen.

Season’s Games

season’s board games

Wingspan is technically a board game, but I’ve played the Steam variant. I’m still counting it since I have physical copies of Wyrmspan and Finspan. It’s like the same thing. The interface on Wingspan is easy to follow. Players can tab between different zones, and the game will remind them in which order to take actions. It’s definitely easier to learn how to play Wingspan through the Steam version since there’s a tutorial. My only nitpick with this version is that players must remember which birds are holding eggs whenever they need to spend eggs. Players can click on the zone where said bird is, but there isn’t a separate interface.

season’s video games

I completely forgot a Persona 5 gacha game was getting released on June 26th. I got an ad for it on YouTube the other day and was like, “Oh. Yeah. I forgot that was a thing.” I’ve gotten a decent way through the story so far, and it’s definitely made me nostalgic for the original Persona 5. The combat hasn’t changed, except that it can be sped up, and they’ve included auto-battles. Some other minor differences include synergy between characters instead of confidants, and, as far as I know, there isn’t a finite amount of time to complete the story.

Persona 5 The Phantom X has players progress the story similarly to the original Persona 5. You must complete the first Palace and learn mechanics. Story-wise, it’s better than other gacha games. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a Persona game, even if it’s a free-to-play gacha game. I’m also digging the character designs. Unlike most gacha games, there are an even number of men and women characters, and they’re adequately dressed. I’m not a fan of boobs in my face. Just saying.

Side note: I pulled for Joker and got him on my first ten pulls. I’m a huge Joker simp lol.

Hey, hey, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here again. Those are all the games our writers have played over the past month. Feel free to share the games you’re playing. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Tag: clicker heroes

Free-to-Play Video Game Review: Clicker Heroes