Tap! Captain Star is a clicker game blended with action-adventure elements. Clicker games have been a strong genre for years now – the combination of casual gameplay and the ever-constant pursuit of further progress makes it feel both invigorating and addictive. Tap! Captain Star has decided to do something a bit different with the genre, however – no more milking cows or building plantations. You’re fighting monsters!
[sc name=”quote” text=”Tap! Captain Star has decided to do something a bit different with the genre, however – no more milking cows or building plantations. You’re fighting monsters!”]
At the start of the game, you simply tap the screen to fire your laser at monsters, making the game feel like a simplistic action adventure game. However, as you continue to kill enemies and get the strangely glowing currency, you can then get upgrades. At first, the upgrades are focused on your captain, increasing your attacks, but after a while, you can begin buying crew to auto attack for you, as well as the ship itself firing its rockets.
These crew and ship attacks are the only abilities that allow you to put the game down and still progress; every attack by your captain you needs must do yourself. However, the game tries to trick you into thinking you can leave your captain by offering you an auto clicker only once at the beginning of the game. Once it has run out, you are on your own and you are forced to either keep clicking or rely on your little minions.
Tap! Captain Star feels a bit confusing due to this abandonment – it’s like it wants you to think you can do it automatically, but it’s actually extremely active.
[sc name=”quote” text=”Tap! Captain Star feels a bit confusing due to this abandonment – it’s like it wants you to think you can do it automatically, but it’s actually extremely active.”]
A huge problem with Tap! Captain Star is the amount it tries to trick you to spend real life money. In the upgrade menu, you spend the in-game currency to purchase a myriad of different upgrades. However, nestled inside of these upgrades are occasional upgrades that you can only purchase using Gems, the currency you buy with real currency. This means that it is incredibly easy to accidentally click them, wasting your valuable gems.
Additionally, the periodic free points that clicker games will often give you takes the form of a small spacecraft in this game. However, instead of consistent free points, it will occasionally instead give you a popup to try and buy stuff for real money, making it extremely easy to accidentally purchase it when you don’t want to. Even worse? The damn thing beeps for 30 seconds straight to try and get you to click it, so you can’t just ignore it.
What makes this even worse if that you will be bombarded with ads nearly every two minutes just from clicking on the menus, making the entire experience more advertisements than gameplay.
Despite a rather ingenious twist on the clicker genre, Tap! Captain Star is simply too driven towards you miss-clicking and spending money, rather than making an excellent gameplay experience.
[review pros=”New twist on the established clicker genre. ” cons=”So much attention is given to trying to make you miss-click and spend money accidentally. The gameplay gets left behind in placement of more ads.” score=3.5]
[appbox appstore id1439563735]
[appbox googleplay id=com.nanoo.captainstar&hl=en_US]
