#THE TRIBEZ AND CASTLE UPGRADE#

I fired up Twitter and to my horror, saw that the game had posted more than 58 tweets, seemingly posting nearly every single action I had taken. Shortly thereafter, a friend wrote and told me that my Twitter feed was jam-packed with messages from the game. In order to gain a magic reward, I allowed the game to post for me to Twitter, thinking it would be an occasional achievement message. Worse yet, its social elements are horrendous. The Tribez and Castlez eliminates the second option by making it essentially impossible to progress without pulling out your wallet. The best free-to-play games give players two options: pay to make things happen faster, or grind to make things happen for free. That is, until you run into the gameвЂ™s built-in micro-transaction wall. This gives purpose to your activities, which makes watching your kingdom get more populated and busy lots of fun. Also good is the way the city-building mechanics are augmented with a storyline that keeps introducing us to quirky new characters (again, the character art here is exceptional). Graphics and sound are very nicely done and give the game a lot of personality. Still, thereвЂ™s something gratifying about watching your little kingdom recover, and thatвЂ™s because The Tribez and Castlez does a number of things well. Essentially, to progress you just click and wait. ThereвЂ™s not a ton of thought involved, little strategy and virtually no skill. Gameplay-wise, The Tribez and Castlez couldnвЂ™t be simpler. When these collections are complete, you can activate them for decent magic and experience rewards. In addition to building and expanding your kingdom, you also collect items by locating them (or in some cases, buying them with real money) and slotting them into themed collections. A kingdom canвЂ™t function without resources, so you also have to gather enough gold, food, wood, stone and other essential building blocks. To make them go faster, you spend magic gems. To make them work, you simply click on the area you want them to attend to and wait (anywhere from a few seconds to 24 hours). Once your workers are settled into these huts, they can do things for you like planting, harvesting, building, upgrading and clearing rocks and trees. Workers need housing, so the first thing you do is built huts. The point of the game is to rebuild the kingdom, and to do that, youвЂ™ll need workers. For those of you who havenвЂ™t played The Tribez however, IвЂ™ll explain what The Tribez and Castlez is all about.

#THE TRIBEZ AND CASTLE UPGRADE#

They even feature the same annoying break point where youвЂ™re forced to spend money on a warehouse upgrade or stop playing altogether. My suspicions were correct except for one game being set in a rainforest and the other being set in a medieval kingdom, the two are basically the same game.

The whole thing felt so familiar to me in fact, I decided to fire the games up next to one another and play them in tandem. This is where, if youвЂ™ve played The Tribez, deja vu is likely to set in. In another, it causes problems for him since he then needs a significant portion of his kingdom rebuilt.Д«eing magically transformed from a scientist to a mage, you set out to help the Prince and his subjects by building structures, clearing land and collecting resources. In one way, this helps the Prince of the realm since it sends a marauding army of greenskins running. Actually, they donвЂ™t just touch down-they crash land Dorothy-in-Oz-like on top of a magical crystal. The Tribez and Castlez begins with the first gameвЂ™s mad scientist (at least I think itвЂ™s him he seems to have grown some hair since then) and his pretty tribal sidekick Aurora touching down in the middle of a medieval kingdom. Unfortunately, that change in scope is more or less the only way to differentiate the two games, which means Tribez veterans have little in the way of new experiences to enjoy in the sequel. In the new sequel to that game, The Tribez and Castlez, we once again don the scientistвЂ™s lab coat, this time setting our sights on saving a medieval kingdom. In it, we took on the role of an adventurous scientist who helps a primitive tribe rebuild their village. A couple of years ago, Russian game publisher Game Insight brought us the prehistoric village-builder The Tribez.

The tribez and castle