Heroes vs. Hordes: Survivor 12+

Testament to human greed

You launch the game. You get surrounded. They are everywhere. They creep and crawl at you as you desperately try to fight them off, but there's always more of them. Of course, I'm talking about the main menu and ads.

With several tabs and screens, each pixel is stuffed with some sort of ad, promo, or "unique 10x value last chance first day opportunity". You can't realistically progress unless you start clicking through all of them, because in between of those ads you may find equipment, talent and hero upgrades, so get used to clicking. All those elements are just a wrapping over a slot machine that this game essentially is. You save resources for a chance to pull a lever, for a chance to roll something usefull. To get you hooked at first they'll let you get some legendary talent, or some epic hat, before rigging odds back in their favour.

You may also find a game in here, no doubt included by an accident by one of junior devs. The game is very simple - a bunch of mobs attack you in a straight line, you dodge them, swing your sword or lay a mine and kill them, before more of them arrive. Ever now and then you save enough exp to level up, pick an upgrade from a slot machine, and continue dodging. Few short rounds before you're back at the main menu with a few more resources and a chore of clicking through every menu element once again to collect your rewards.

Gameplay is extremely simplistic, there were some attempts to spicy things up with arena (an extra large pack of mobs attacks you at once and you have to adapt), or dungeon (see how many mobs you can kill in a short time frame), but devs themselves see those modes as an annoyance - you can't play arena more than 2-3 times in a row, you can't play dungeon more than once in a day and once you reach last tier, they encourage you to just skip remaining play time. "Quit having fun and get back to menu clicking!"

The thing is, I would even consider paying to get at least ads removed, but the greed of developers gets in the way. To remove ads you have to pay 22 euros - a price of a normal PC game. Not direclty, but you may obtain two keys for 1 euro, each key gives an equipment item. To get legendary item you need to combine 27 of the same item. There are 30 different items (6 items grouped in 5 sets), so you do the math of how many keys you'll need to get a full epic set of your liking. Then there are talents - 27 of them, each spin you may choose to upgrade one from 3 randomly dropped. After 95 spins I still have only 1 (from 5) legendary talents, but now each spin costs 187k of in-game currency, or ~4 euros - and the price grows with each spin. Then there are weapons. Hero weapon + 11 shared weapons; for permanent upgrade of one level you need to pay 10-17 euros, there are 5 upgrades per weapon. 50-85 euros to upgrade a weapon, and it's not even guaranteed that you'll be getting it each run (+ you need to draw 4 weapons per run). Or you may try your luck in the arena - you'll need to win 9 arenas withing 3 days once a week to get a single weapon upgrade.

If you do the math, you'll reallize that there's no point in paying for anything - because no matter how much money you throw, it will never be enough.

There was also this weird mistake where you could play the rounds, get orbs and level up your hero for permanent upgrades. A steady stream of rewards not requiring you to pay anything and helping you to overcome challenges. Well, it has been patched now. Now, you need to play through 2 exra hard levels to get enough tokens, to "open a portal", where you'll get another spin of pulling a new token for one of 16 heroes (including locked ones). Now to level up your hero you'll need to get 12 of those new tokens. You didn't even get tokens retroactively for levels you have already conqured, so dive in to grinding hard levels with no new upgrades. Or - pay extra 17 euros for a hero upgrade.

The game is officially a slot machine now, there isn't a single element that isn't a random (rigged) chance. With that I see no point in spending any more time and uninstall. Shame, because core concept of that game there is between those menus could be fun, if devs had more time to work on improving it - instead of everything else.