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This is not, strictly speaking, a review. We don’t currently have an Android games section (although we might in the future), but that doesn’t mean we don’t play them. I, for one, was an early adopter of the Android platform. I still have my G1 laying around somewhere, and right now my non-PC time is split between my G2 and my Asus Eee Pad Transformer. The latter has replaced my old laptop in terms of reading books, browsing the web and other similar tasks. Of course I also play games on it; in fact earlier you might have seen my tutorial on how to get DOS games to run on Android.
When a representative contacted us with a review request, I felt it was a good idea to take their game for a spin and do a write-up. The game in question is called My Country and it is of the city-building genre. At first glance is it reminiscent of the SimCity games, and I remember thinking that it would make more sense if it was named “My City” instead. I haven’t played that series in a while, but I have a soft spot in my heart for SimCity 2000, which I played growing up. Because of that I found myself pretty eager to dive in and enjoy the experience.
The game is free, and although there are many free offerings in the Android Marketplace – most of them are decidedly sub-par. My Country therefore has the benefit of a pleasant first impression. Naturally, the purpose of the game is to build a large and profitable metropolis, which you try to achieve by placing residential and commercial buildings, roads, parks, et cetera. All of the above costs Game Dollars, and you start off with a substantial amount. A tutorial gets you going and before you know it you are the proud mayor of a few apartment buildings, a business center and a taxi company.
This is where things get different. Each building has multiple levels of upgrades, which cause it to bring in more money. When you purchase a building, it doesn’t immediately appear. Construction takes time (sometimes hours) and may happen in multiple stages. At the end of each stage your input is required in order to begin the next one. Business buildings, such as banks and factories, require professionals to be hired in order to operate. These men and women demand you collect certain items in order for them to work for you. A teacher, for example, needs a Book, some Chalk and an Attache Case. These objects, as well as myriad others, are dropped on a semi-random basis during completion of building upgrades or when you collect profit.
That’s right, collecting profits is a manual task. Apartment buildings bring little money, even when fully upgraded. Businesses can bring a ton of money, but require contracts, which in turn cost Game Dollars. Depending on how far you’ve upgraded any given building you can sign either a short term, a standard, or a long term contract. The length of the contract determines the cost, the money it brings in, and how long it will take to complete. Once a building produces a profit, you have to tap the profit icon, then tap the money icon to collect the money and the XP icon to collect experience, then tap the contract icon to renew the contract, and finally tap an item if one happened to drop. If you neglect to collect the earnings, they will just sit there while the building performs no useful function.
There is also another currency called Country Bucks. It is earned at very slow rate and is realistically meant to be purchased with real money. The purpose of it is to make things easy for you. You can buy items or hire workers, cause a contract to finish immediately, build and/or upgrade instantly, and collect all of the rewards at once.
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It’s great to see some Android love on the site. I currently just own iOS devices, but the only thing I like about my devices are the games. I think I’m ready for an Android phone. Now I just have to avoid paying for some crappy 2 year contract.
“My Country felt like it was purposefully made to be as un-fun and tedious as possible in hopes of extorting money from the players.”
I’ve played a TON of games like this on iOS. My guess is that these games are just people making a game because they have an idea and want to see if they can make the app/game for it. Hopefully they’ll keep learning enough to make a great game one day.
What at first appeared to be a pleasent time waster soon turns to tedium in My Country.
I have to agree that it is about the money.. the frustration in trying to find certain items to hire essential workers is too much. Automatic rent collection costs in-game coin that is very limited which means spending real money.. sure the game maker should be able to make money from their work but for a player to have to pay to stop the frustrations in a game seems like a poor design. To increase the chances of getting the items you need, short term contracts are needed.. which adds to the unmanageable mess very quickly. Finally, to make things worse, many buildings require a facebook account.. I don’t facebook.. why must I be forced to facebook to open up the buildings that would double the chances of dropping essential had to find items?
Gaming on the Android is progressing nicely but care will need to be taken by the game makers on how they implement their freedium model.
I agree…it looked pretty and having loved SimCity (SimTower is still my favorite), I thought it was worth a try…but having to build/destroy things trying to get a specific item…
Didn’t know Facebook opened up new stuff, but I only have Facebook as a service to my wife and a couple of friends…I check it once every week or so…I assume that it would start posting all of the game crap to my Facebook and would probably drive me bonkers…
I don’t know man. I have been playing this game for months. I have expanded five gtimes and never have had to spend any kind of money. I just collect and save untill I have millions. It takes a day before I can build a very big building or expand the territory. If your going to play this game for free its going to take time… A LOT of time. I have had to build a lot of different houses and upgrade all kinds of different things just to get the proper items needed to open buildings. The first thing that has comfused me was hiring a class c electric bus driver. it won’t let me yet I have all of the requirements. Other than that this game totally rocks. I work all day and collect my proffits probably fifteen or twenty times a day. I have so many contract that I’m collecting about 750,000 per collection. The trick is to build more contract buildings (I.e. business centers, municipal buildings, shoe facories, and ect.) To collect big earnings when you do collect. My advise is to collect a couple times a day and collect BIG!!!!!! Upgrade everything that does contracts to the max. Before you launch the contract. After your collect a contract start it again immidiatley. Have seven 150,000 contracts and you will make a half of million dollars everytime you collect. Collect ten times in a day and your effing rich. Just be patient and yoju will have fun. You just have to get past the first couple levels. Trust me this game ROCKS!!!!!!!
I completely agree with your conclusion about this game. At it’s core, it’s really fun, but the games longevity takes a huge hit by the fact that it’s failures are almost exclusively based on the developers schemes to make money. I refuse to spend money on a game where the developers have decided the best course of action to making money is to piss it’s players off. Make players pay for cool looking buildings or additional perks rather making players pay for enjoyment.
I also agree that it seems to just be a cash-in job, the thing that sticks out more than anything for me is that when you unlock the long term contracts the extra time is disproportionate to the financial gain. For example on a small business building a long term contract costs three times as much as a short term one, yields three times more but takes five times as long so it’s actually not worth doing – unless you buy credits to speed things up of course…
I LOVE this game! That being said, I am pissed off that you only get 4 pieces of land to buy with game dollars and then they want you to buy the rest with Country Bucks that are Ridiculously Over Priced! I also don’t understand why you earn a Million things you don’t need like a Teacher but can’t get what you need to open Most Buildings, like a Janitor! Almost every building you put up is Blue so if you want to distinguish between houses and office buildings, you need to paint them, however, the color pallet consists of only 12 colors (2 shades of blue, 2 shades of purple, 2 shades of pink, 1 tan, 1 brown and 4 shades of green). I emailed the makers of the game and asked if they would add more colors and never got an answer. The makers of this game just want to make money and couldn’t care if the players are Happy or Not! If playing on the IPAD, you can’t even add friends! This game would be much better if they just charged you a fee upfront like $6.99!
Ive just deleted My Country. It seemed great, but then I realised I was never going to progress without spending real money. My Island is better, because at least you can earn CountryBucks as well as money. Could have been a really great game if they hadnt been so keen on making money.
The thing is it is so freaking hard to get country bucks and it gets worse when you have to spend 180 country bucks just to expand a square of land which there are 9 teritory left to expand. Imagine how many country bucks you have to spend. Do they really insist us to spend $99 just for a simple game like this??
Everyone is right. You guys are all about the money. Get off your high horse and fix this. If you don’t. your going to give (GameInsight) a bad name. Or is it already to late? Think about it…
This app is a total waste. Who in their right mind would ever pay to get country bucks… Is this a joke??? I personally wouldn’t give these clowns a dollar, good luck.
can’t even add friends or neighbors it just goes to a loading screen that never loads other then a box at the bottoms stating a random list of 8 players who also play the game but no way to ask them to join or neighbor.
i somehow managed to get 1 person from my friend list on my neighbor list without even asking but can’t add “anyone” else
I decided to try out this game app, after I somewhat ignorantly upgraded my PC OS to Windows 8. Previous to playing this game, my only city-building game experience was CityVille, a Zynga product, played on FB. But, that was a long time ago, when I played games on FB and was more active in FB gaming media. I liked CityVille, but the one thing I didn’t like (as is true with most FB games) was the requirement to have many neighbors (most not RL known people), and have to post requests for help to my wall. While I enjoyed connecting with others, helping them, and having them help me, it just became too much.
So, to the game. I do like it, but as SO many have commented on (which I agree with), the game developer does try to lure you into paying cash for game credits – this which some people would do, just to FINALLY get the one item needed to complete a building/task. As with CityVille, in it’s earlier days, the drop rate for needed items is extremely low, requiring you to build, destroy, build other buildings over and over again, wasting time. However, I decided to stick with it and see how things played out. I earned a lot of game dollars from my business buildings, so getting and growing your game money balance isn’t a real issue. It’s pretty simple. After a few weeks, I am now on level 29 and have (I believe) figured out the secrets to getting items, like trash cans, microscopes, wrenches, etc. Items for the gardener guy, required to buy several ecology items, is still a bit of a mystery.
For someone who likes games like this, but also likes solving puzzles (how to get items without having to spend RL cash), it can be enjoyable. It’s my aim to play this game and stick the developers capitalistic, manipulative back at them. Since I’ve gotten this far with it, I’ll take it till the end, but I won’t be paying for in-game credits.
I also have gone as far as I want to go as I do not want to spend any real money. I find waiting for plunger, very frustrating, half my buildings are waiting for this plunger, I was thinking of popping down to homebase, my digital watches are being stolen!!! I cannot set up a school, I have enough teachers to teach every student on a one to one basis, I would swap three teachers for a plunger!!! ANY OFFERS???
FRUSTRATED!!
I’ve been playing for 5 days now and i like to play the game before i go looking for the answers, i found this article 1st… read a couple more and I agree with your opinion.
Just a couple small tweaks and this game could be EASY and Enjoyable. I am just looking for something to play thats fun and allows me to advance at a steady pace, not like a rocket shooting to the top, or a snail in a 10 mile marathon. I will try for a bit longer, maybe an update will come… thnx for your article.
Bo
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