Puzzles & Survival 12+

You can’t advance without spending money. Even the game moderators admit there are players cheating the system, although they claim those players are being banned on a near-weekly basis. I think I spent about $30 total so far to reach a level where my gains are constantly being attacked by far superior forces that I absolutely cannot retaliate without causing even more losses.

And at this level, everything is a slog just to maintain position. Your buildings don’t generate enough resources to rely solely on what you can produce to advance. You have to constantly hustle and play this game hours per day just to gather enough resources to advance one research project, or one set of units, or upgrade one single building. I have a full time job, I don’t need a game that wants to be another full time job.

After all this, it’s clear this game was written by dudebros for other dudebros, because there’s a lot of big breasted women in various alluring outfits, but of course all the male characters are rugged tough guys or literally a knock off of the Joker. There’s apparently even a G.I. Joe event but I’m not sticking around to see it. This game is going into the “seemed interesting until I downloaded it and actually tried to play” category, and I’m deleting now.

So, I have some complaints. I really like this game, it’s quite fun and I spend a lot of my time playing it and growing and talking with my alliance. But the characters… this is sad but expected. As seen in so many mobile and video games these days, the male characters are strong. They’re covered in muscles and cool gear and rugged beards. But most importantly, they are wearing clothes that you would expect a rational person to wear during a zombie apocalypse. The female characters are not. They are grossly over-sexualized and unrealistic, especially compared to the male characters. They’re wearing short or open clothes, while the male characters are wearing pants and shirts and other layers. No woman or rational person would wear a jacket unbuttoned with an exposed bra and shorts while in a zombie apocalypse. It seems as if this game was not made with the input of other women, and if it was, it was ignored. I’m sad that in this day and age, in a simple game, you still see things that are only made through the male gaze. All in all, this game has good play and strategy, but it’s a good example of normalized misogyny and sexism.

This is fundamentally a good social game, but those with the most might can dominate this game and the only way to build that kind of might is to spend obscene amounts of money. Customer support for this game is simply the worst of any game I have ever played. There is significant lag in the game and you will tap actions you did not intend too because of the lag. Asking customer support to undo that is like sending a message into a black hole. The first response almost always shows no understanding of the issue you raised. I almost think they do it on purpose to get you off their backs. When you persist and clarify, they will send you a canned response that doesn’t address your issue. I have never dealt with customer support for a game that is this poor. I think part of the issue is that many of the support agents do not have a strong grasp of the English language. Not a fan of app developer and don’t think anyone should support them or this game.

This is an update a year later. I have stopped spending money on this game because the customer support is horrendous. They won’t answer your questions and blame you for their poor game design. They publish no guides on how new features work and expect players to figure it out for themselves and share with the community.

If you haven’t started playing this game yet, please avoid the headache - it isn’t worth it.