In Merge Town, you need to tap repeatedly – ten times each, in fact – on a little button to earn new houses. Once they drop, you can open them and then get to matching. As long as you have another one of the same type, two houses can combine and form an even better home.
As you combine up the ranks, the amount of money generated increases because, that’s right, this is actually a money aggregate idler. The purpose isn’t to build a sprawling metropolis, but to increase the amount of money generated.
What do you spend your vast swaths of cash on? Very little, it turns out.[sc name=”quote” text=”What do you spend your vast swaths of cash on? Very little, it turns out.”]
The upgrade system is surprisingly non-existent, offering very little to actually purchase with your cash. The only thing actually useful is the ability to buy any building you’ve unlocked so far, minus one tier. Meaning that once you’ve unlocked the 6th tier of building, you gain the ability to flat out purchase the 5th tier.
This offers the advantage that you can avoid having to match up to that level, but that then renders the actual button mashing to get new homes obsolete.
The amount of thought put into Merge Town seems lacking, instead, it is likely that as much thought as possible has gone into how to make the game addicting. Incremental money increases, flashy visual effects and a variety of presents that drop from the sky, begging you to open them, surely do keep your attention for a little while at least.
Recently, Appolicious reviewed Town Merge (which you can read right here) without actually realizing that Merge Town is the original. While the immediate assumption is that Town Merge is a flagrant copy, a cheap attempt to cash in on the already-popular name, you’d actually be quite surprised as to the differences.
Despite the nearly identical name, the gameplay is quite different. The ascetics of combining homes to make bigger homes and even some of the home designs themselves are very, very similar, but Merge Town is firmly in the category of idlers, whereas Town Merge is far more active grid-puzzle. Would that the creators of Town Merge had made a different name and used their own graphics, so much could have been different.
This is a shame, because Merge Town seems very bent on doing one thing and one thing only: keeping you addicted. There isn’t really any kind of gameplay to keep you properly interested, just vague dopamine injections right into your cerebellum whenever you unlock a new tier.[sc name=”quote” text=”There isn’t really any kind of gameplay to keep you properly interested, just vague dopamine injections right into your cerebellum whenever you unlock a new tier.”]
Merge Town is a game designed to get you hooked right from the get go – it lacks any kind of sophisticated gameplay, nor does it have any kind of intrinsic merit as a mobile game. However, it should be lauded for creating a sophisticated machine to force you to become quickly dependant on it.
When playing Merge Town, you probably won’t be enjoying yourself, but you absolutely won’t be able to stop.
[review pros=”Very addictive, so much so that you won’t be able to put it down.” cons=”Isn’t any actual gameplay. It’s very clear that very little effort has gone into making the game fun – instead, it’s about addiction.” score=3]
[appbox googleplay com.gramgames.mergetown]
[appbox appstore id1232693016]
