Game Name      : Tap Titans

Platform              : Android, iOS

Genre                   : Action

YouTube Link    : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjbIbZHN7Eg

Description

Tap Titan run in the similar reins as cookie clicker with added RPG elements. Play as a hero that slay giant monsters and earn golds from their deaths. As you progresses through the stages, you can enlist the help from other heroes to aid you, with the gold you acquired. Boss battle appears that the end of each level and you are given 30secs to defeat it. Only upon successfully defeating the monster, can you proceed to the next level. Upgrade your heroes’ skills and slay monsters!

Own observation

1. Elemental Tetrad

• The 2D graphics of the game is clean and colorful. The animations is smooth and fluid as you pummel the monsters with your attacks and watch the monster’s health goes down. It gives an adrenaline feeling.
• The background environment give the game setting as the player progress through multiple stages, showing the hero journey.
• The mechanic is fairly simple. Each tap does damage to the monsters. Monster drop coins when defeated which can be used to recruit heroes or power-up your hero skills.
• There no groundbreaking technology used in this game but instead it leverage on the touch input and manage to pull it off successfully.

2. Fun

• It is simple to play the game and pick up. The fun is instantaneous as you whack away and continue defeating monsters after monsters.
• The game can get repetitive very fast and frustration and boredom will seep in as your attacks does not deal enough damage fast enough.

3. Curiosity

• Curiosity is what keeps me playing the game as I wanted to unlock new skills and heroes.
• Heroes are similar in that they just deal damage but have different skills set to set them apart.

4. Essential experience

• The game have what makes cookie clicker so addictive. In a game where anyone can just pick up and play, it feeds on the player wants to keep on going to defeat more monsters.

5. Problem solving

• The problem you will probably face is down to defeat the boss monster. As the game progresses, the boss monsters have a ridiculously high health points.
• Not to mention the amount of gold require to unlock skill or hire new heroes scales drastically.

Friend observation

In the game my friend was playing, he has already progress far beyond what I have accomplished.

1. Fun

• It can be easily seen that the boss battle is where the player has the most fun. As there is a time limit of 30secs, it forces my friend to furiously tap the phone. As he realized that tapping alone will not be enough, he reluctantly uses a few skills to fasten up the damage process. Once the boss is down, he goes back to normal tapping.

2. Curiosity

• My friend mentioned that what keeps him playing was trying to reach as high level as much as possible in game. As the game scale ridiculously hard in later stages of the game, there is an option to rewind the game progress to the beginning in order to gain artifacts. These artifacts can be used to purchase even stronger skills which can allow you to proceed to higher stages of the game. My friend had used this option 3 times.

3. Essential experience

• While the game is not social, trying to get to higher level can become a competition. It gives the player bragging right, as what my friend did was show off his unlocked heroes that deal enormous amount of damage.
• The game also rewards you for coming back into the game by giving you gold based on amount of heroes and time passed. So even though you have not kill any monster, it gives a chance for the player to upgrade their heroes.

4. Problem solving

• My friend was trying to find way to defeat the boss monsters without using as much hero skills as much as possible. This allows him to defeat more monsters in the long run.
• As the skills have cooldowns, he also planned to use which skill is appropriate so that it is timed enough to finish when he has no more skills to use.