Windows Phone Xbox Live Review: Bug Village

For the longest time, microtransactions were prohibited in Windows Phone games. Microsoft's Beards & Beaks dabbled in offer PDLC (premium downloadable content) terminal July. But no third party games offered PDLC until Gravity Guy'due south January update. Before you tin buy actress stuff for those games, you'll first need to purchase the game itself. Bug Village, on the other mitt, is the merely freemium Xbox Live title then far. The game itself is completely gratis; developer Glu Mobile makes its profits from the title's optional content purchases. While this style of game won't be for everybody, you lot tin can color me excited for the potential of time to come freemium Live titles.

If you build it, they volition come

Bug Village, like Smurfs' Village and several other freemium titles, is a boondocks-building game. Your bugs will be constructing their homestead in a man's back yard. The yard is divided into two halves past a stream, over which someone has kindly constructed a bridge for the insects. The left side of the hamlet is dedicated exclusively to bug homes and decorations, while resources mining takes place on the right side. The village itself never expands beyond its initial borders, but you'll certainly pack the allotted infinite with objects and insects as time goes on.

At the start of the game, you're given a single pismire. The object of the game is to rise through the experience level ranks past completing tasks. Chief amongst the tasks is gathering acorns. Acorns are the primary resource of the game, used to build new insect homes, decorations, piles, flowers, and purchase food. Ants get together acorns from piles. Starting from level 5, you'll recruit bees, who gather acorns from flowers for some reason. Maybe they're trading the pollen and nectar for acorns behind the scenes – who knows? Completing tasks also awards you with XP, which in plough leads to leveling upwards and increasing the number of bugs, piles, and flowers you can have at one time.

Watch the clock

The process of gathering acorns (too equally building or upgrading bug houses) takes existent-world time. Whenever you select a pile or bloom (and have the appropriate number of complimentary bugs to mine information technology), yous're given the choice of iii chore durations. These start out in relatively modest increments: 15 minutes, two hours, and six hours from a small pile. Merely the larger, higher paying piles and flowers can have anywhere from i hour to two days to mine. Lengthier tasks pay larger amounts of acorns and XP, but shorter tasks actually pay ameliorate per minute.

The idea isn't that yous sit at your phone with the game running for an hour while a task completes. Instead, you play Bug Village in small spurts throughout the day. Bank check in, start or complete whatever tasks you can, and then check back later. Some gamers won't encounter the point of this play way or go much fun out of information technology. Others similar me will enjoy playing the game over the long term in tiny increments. It's designed to exist addictive, and information technology certainly can be, if it fits your lifestyle and you requite it a chance.

Food for thought

Gathering resources isn't the but thing for players to exercise in Bug Village. For ane, you'll need to feed your little workers regularly. Nutrient costs acorns, but as long equally you're completing tasks you'll be taking in much more than you spend on nutrition. Keeping the nutrient meter in the green (nearly full) when completing tasks results in a fair acorn and XP bonus, so it'southward worth doing. Besides, if you let the meter run empty (which takes near 33 hours), your bugs will fall asleep, cancelling all ongoing tasks.

Quests

In one case every experience level or and then, the game presents a new optional quest. These include building a sure number of objects, completing specific tasks, and more. Quests pay large and provide something else to focus on other than the normal grind. And then again, at level 21 the new task is to attain level 22, which you'd already want to do anyway – not very creative.

Visitors

Games like this benefit from a trivial randomization – something beyond your control that necessitates a reaction. And so iii different visitor bugs pop up at random intervals: ladybugs, stinkbugs, and antlions. Borer the ladybug (who has fallen over) one time sends her on her merry style. It takes three hits to eliminate a stinkbug, and he teleports to a different location after each hitting. But if let him live as well long, he'll stink up the hamlet with gas clouds, obscuring the screen. Antlions supposedly scare your ants just don't actually seem to harrow them in any fashion; multiple taps knocks them back into the ground.

While I similar the idea of the visitor bugs, their implementation leaves much to exist desired. For one matter, they actually should brand sound effects to alert the histrion when they appear. Instead, the only audio effect whatsoever of them plays is when you lot rescue a ladybug. Worse, all three bugs have major hit detection problems. They often appear right next to flowers and other objects. The game prioritizes everything else over these bugs, then yous'll terminate up selecting a pile when you really wanted to hit an insect. Also, the stinkbug in particular has a ridiculously small hitbox. Even when he's non obscured, information technology sometimes takes me ten or more taps to register a hit. Double tapping the screen zooms in and out for some reason (ugh), and naturally the game tends to zoom instead of hitting him too. The developers accept told me these issues may be fixed in a future update.

Handful of coins

Nosotros've come all this way and I haven't even touched on the PDLC notwithstanding! Bug Village's second currency is coins, which cost Microsoft Points (i.e. real-globe coin) to buy. Coins can get you exclusive bug houses, decorations, piles, and flowers. They can besides exist used to instantly complete tasks rather than waiting for a timer.

All players outset with 10 coins in the tutorial, but it besides forces you to spend them. Other versions of Issues Village refund the coins after the tutorial ends, but non this one. Hopefully this gets fixed in a time to come update. At any rate, coins purchases are entirely optional, and then you needn't buy them if y'all don't want to. For more than information, see our premium content analysis.

Buggy village

Problems Village is something of a flagship title on Windows Phone, just information technology'due south not perfect. For starters, every fourth dimension you lot launch the game, it plays a loud and annoying jingle when the Glu Mobile logo pops up. Turning off the sound in-game does nothing to kill the logo sound, which tin be disruptive when yous're booting up the game around other people. There'due south a reason not 1 other mobile Xbox Alive championship plays a audio during the startup logo screens…

As well, Problems Village is a lengthy game by design. If y'all play without cheating, it will accept about two months to 'complete' (i.eastward. become all the Achievements). The game drip-feeds new content like bees and antlions as players progress through the early levels. But after level 12 or so, the new content stops coming and it essentially turns into a grind. Glu Mobile would have been wise to include new mechanics and more than meaningful content in social club to retain player involvement at higher levels.

Finally, the game launched with a few abrasive bugs that were apace patched out. A few problems still linger though. The 1 that keeps popping up for me is the brandish sometimes turns black for cursory periods of time every bit I whorl effectually the village. This appears to result from placing a big number of objects in the village and is pretty much unavoidable. It definitely makes the game less enjoyable as time goes on. A few other gamers have reported that their company bugs stopped spawning, but it hasn't happened to me.

Achievements

Problems Hamlet's scant seven Achievements were almost worth only 100 GamerScore, only thankfully Microsoft decided to let free mobile games to offer the full 200. None of the Achievements crave the buy of coins to earn – just a meaning time investment. Reaching level 25 and earning 300,000 acorns will accept vi-viii weeks of dedicated playing. If that seems like also much trouble or yous just don't like this style of game, cheating by playing with the telephone's clock works besides. Encounter this Accomplishment Guide for the how-to.

Overall Impression

Microsoft was wise to open up the platform upwardly to freemium titles, which do large business on other mobile platforms, PC, and Facebook. Bug Village works corking on Windows Phone since yous can play it whenever you lot have a few minutes to spare and then not worry about it again for hours. The content is a bit light for the time investment, just the game remains addictive. Now that Glu Mobile has shifted their business to freemium games, I look forward to more costless stuff from them in the future.

Aspiring entomologists/architects can find Bug Hamlet hither on the Marketplace.

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-xbox-live-review-bug-village

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