Best Android Games of the Week with NimbleThor
Welcome to this weekly mobile gaming roundup, in which YouTuber NimbleThor summarizes the best Android games of the week. From RPG and strategy games to one-button casual games, you’ll find something here for all your gaming needs.
There’s no escaping it. While we’re all still recovering from the Cyber Monday-craze, it’s time to get to work on some serious mobile gaming – and here are three great games to get you started.
Epic Monster TD Free
At its core, Epic Monster TD is a Tower Defense game, which means we unlock powerful monsters and place them as towers on a map so that they can defeat endless waves of enemies.
As we progress, we start upgrading these monsters in a ton of different ways, including levelling them up and acquiring duplicates of each monster from monster packs that we buy using a currency earned through gameplay. The idle gameplay means our towers continue fighting when the game is offline, which leaves a big bag of currency waiting for us when we open up the game again.
With multiple targeting options and settings for each monster, there’s a lot that can be min-maxed in this game. Not to mention all the technology trees, relics, and artifacts that also make us stronger in various ways. These systems add a lot of depth to the game, which creates a perfect gameplay experience for those who enjoy this type of progression.
Epic Monster TD monetizes through incentivized ads and lots of IAPs for convenience upgrades. Fortunately, the daily missions and achievements provide lots of premium currency, which can be used to acquire some of the convenience upgrades without spending real-life money. The monetization is typical for idle games, and I didn’t find the need to ever buy anything as a free player. If you like tower defense and idle games, it’s definitely worth checking out.
Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells Free
Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells is a high-quality social-focused match 3 game where we play through a campaign of levels that takes us from the first to the last Harry Potter movie.
The core match 3 gameplay experience is spiced up with magic spells, characters, and music straight out of the Harry Potter universe, which creates an immersive experience for fans of the franchise. Between levels, we unlock and level up spells that can be used in some levels, and even acquire pets with unique abilities and power-ups.
The game’s most unique feature though is the Club meta-game system. Together with 29 other wizards, we compete against 19 clubs in a weekly league to earn the most club points by completing levels and events. By the end of every week, the five Clubs with the most points advance to the next tier, which unlocks new advantages for all club members. This system creates a great incentive to continue playing, and the Club chat adds nice social and teamwork elements to the game.
Although it is also earned through normal gameplay, Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells monetizes by selling additional gold through IAPs, and gold is then used to buy single-use power-ups and additional lives. With a total of five lives, our play-session length is somewhat limited, but since we can store 15 lives provided by other club members in an inbox, it takes a while to run out of.
To my big surprise, Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells is one of the most engaging match 3 games I have played, so if you’re a Harry Potter fan, it’s worth checking out if you don’t mind playing it in bursts of 10-15 minutes.
Masketeers Free
Masketeers is an idle RPG where we build a team of four mask-wearing heroes who fight endless waves of enemies and bosses while we gradually improve their stats.
Like most idle games, there are a ton of ways to grow stronger in Masketeers, including character leveling, runes, pets, relics, equipping better masks, and lots more. As we progress, we unlock additional heroes, and each time we reset to be able to progress faster, we get to pick which four heroes we want to use until the next reset.
The game’s most unique feature is that we trigger abilities for each hero by tapping the hero orbs that line up in two rows at the bottom of the screen. There is room for 13 orbs in total, and if multiple of the same orb type stand next to each other, they’ll link together to deal more damage once tapped.
Incentivized ads allow us to progress faster, although their rewards aren’t so big that I felt forced to watch them. There is also a monthly $6.99 subscription for various advantages and IAPs for premium currency used to buy new masks, runes, and pets. The game is entirely singleplayer, so none of the IAPs are ever needed.
Ultimately, while it is a decent idle RPG, nothing truly sets it apart from the rest in any meaningful way. But if you enjoy the genre, you will likely have a great time playing Masketeers.
