Monopoly Tycoon is a free-to-play city-building game for Android and iOS. Far from the family ending their relationships around the dinner table, this game seems to take the franchise in a new direction. A single-player experience, Monopoly Tycoon features 3 maps (Atlantic City, Paris and London). The player, armed with their start-up capital, must wisely invest and grow their wealth. Rather than the more static development available in other editions of Monopoly, in this game, players can freely build hundreds of different, unique buildings and decorations. It seems the game will feel quite different from the board game adaptation, because you can place buildings freely throughout the city. So, if you like city-builders like SimCity or City Mania, this might just scratch that itch for you.

This isn’t the development team’s first adaptation of a popular franchise to mobile. For instance, Nvizzio Creations launched RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch in 2017, and reviews of that title are excellent. Also, way back in 2001, they launched the original Monopoly Tycoon. All that said, it seems like this project is in good hands.

Key Features of Monopoly Tycoon

Straight from the horse’s mouth, here’s what the developers claim Monopoly Tycoon will feature at launch;

• Discover over a thousand buildings and decorations to collect, build and upgrade
• Compete to acquire properties in the Auction House
• Fulfill the needs from your houses and hotels to maximize rents
• Complete missions to progress and get rewards
• Draw Community Chest and Chance cards to boost your performance
• Pass Go everyday to increase daily rewards
• Resolve City Problems, by playing fun mini-games
• Unlock three famous MONOPOLY board locations: Atlantic City, Paris and London.
• Become the wealthiest real estate tycoon ever!

Additionally, Nvizzio are working closely with Hasbro – the game board giant who owns the original tabletop game. That lends credibility to the game but, above all, we’re hoping it means this title will feel like a proper adaptation, not just a city-builder with the Monopoly branding slapped on.

All in all, we at GamEir can’t wait to get stuck in and see how it feels. Players can download the game for free via iOS and Android, and follow the latest news for MONOPOLY TYCOON via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram!

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A special announcement video was also released featuring a message from Fujita-san. Check it out at the bottom of the article.

Welcome back to the ranch

In celebration of the magical series’ 25th anniversary, Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX brings the wildly popular simulation games to modern hardware. Here players raise their own monsters and train them to compete against other eccentric creatures in combat and tournaments. With hundreds of different monster types, each with their own skills and abilities, every Rancher will be able to raise and train monsters that are a perfect fit for their personality and play style.

The special collection also includes content that was never originally featured in the original Western release. These include additional save slots, Freeze slots, and Monster Hall of Fame slots. New features have also been added to Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX. A memo feature can be used while raising monsters. There are also rankings for random battles, and a high-speed mode to play through the game faster.

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Mini Motorways is a brand new traffic sim game from Dinosaur Polo Club. DPC previously brought us Mini Metro, a similar game about underground train management.

I think it’s fair to say that traffic is rarely something one would associate with relaxation. Quite the opposite, in fact. Traffic is stressful, dirty, loud, and infuriating. Mini Motorways, on the other hand, is delightfully the opposite of all of those things. It’s relaxing, über-clean aesthetically, understated, and calming. It is, in fact, ironically, the perfect game to play to wind down after a stressful commute.

Mini Motorways, Mini Roundabouts, Mini Traffic Lights… Mini Management!

The basic premise of Mini Motorways couldn’t be simpler. There are two kinds of buildings – houses, where cars start, and destinations, where they must reach. These destinations spawn pins – like GPS pins – and once the cars reach the pins, they disappear. It’s up to the player to draw lines of roads connecting those two. Sounds simple, right? And it is! But, like a lot of simple things, it gets more complex the more of it you have.

Every intersection is an obstacle, slowing down traffic. Periodically, the game drops new houses and destinations on the map for you to juggle. Every in-game week, you get more road tiles to place – they’re finite! – and a choice of upgrades, ranging from roundabouts to traffics lights to the eponymous motorways. They’re finite, too. I had great fun trying to optimise my routes. I can’t overstate how satisfying it is to seamlessly integrate new houses and destinations into the network.

Eventually, it becomes impossible to collect all the pins. Too many pins, not enough cars, too much traffic to collect them in time – and then you lose. But losing doesn’t feel bad. It feels… Inevitable, and satisfying in its own way. As a player, your success is measured in the number of journeys completed, and you get to see where you place against other players on a leaderboard. The whole thing is super simple and very digestible in small increments. You sit down – play with traffic for half an hour or so – then you’re done. In an age where so many games demand dozens of hours of your time, Mini Motorways feels refreshingly brief and bite-sized.

Red, Amber & Green Have Nothing on Mini Motorways‘ Pastel Aesthetics

If you played Mini Metro, Mini Motorways‘ art style will feel familiar to it. It’s bright, clean, minimal and colourful – without being noisy. There are no extraneous details. Every line and colour has its own unique purpose. Each map has its own subtly different colour scheme – from Tokyo’s sakura pinks, to Dubai’s desert brown’s to Zurich’s Swiss red. DPC’s artists have done very well to make such minimal changes feel distinct and refreshing.

What’s particularly striking, however, is the audio design. The music is vibrant, modern and minimal. Each new tile placed or removed makes a satisfying pop. Completed journeys let out a bing, blending seamlessly into the soundtrack to make a symphony celebrating your city’s efficiency.

Accessibility! Easy to Ignore, Wonderful to See

I think it’s worth mentioning that Mini Motorways, despite its simplicity, has top-notch accessibility options. There’s a colourblind mode – crucial, as the gameplay is explicitly colour-coded. It has a night mode to save your eyes from strain. The menus have a delightful dynamic transition animation – but for those few for whom that might be overwhelming or difficult to watch, there’s a simple check-box to turn them off. Nobody made Dinosaur Polo Club make their game so accessible, and 99% of players wouldn’t notice if they didn’t. But they did, and that’s worthy of praise.

Mini Motorways is easy to learn, hard to master. It’s simple, pretty, clean, and the attention to detail is very high. It certainly won’t be for everybody, but if drawing efficient routes on minimal maps of world cities is your thing – then you should check it out.

Now available on Apple Arcade and Steam, coming soon to Switch. Sadly, due to contract restrictions, it looks like Android users won’t get to play at any point.

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GWENT: The Witcher Card Game – What kind of tale is Price of Power?

Price of Power is a set consisting of three story-related expansions for GWENT: The Witcher Card Game with the main theme of magic and how different factions seek out, fight for, or exploit its power. The first expansion of the Price of Power set — Once Upon A Pyre — will introduce 26 new cards: 4 cards of different rarities per faction and 2 neutrals.

New abilities and gameplay mechanics will also be making their way into the game, bringing fresh and powerful synergies to take advantage of in battle.

For those who can’t wait for the first expansion’s arrival, players can take advantage of a special, time-limited offer. The Price of Power Expansion Pass grants access to all Price of Power premium cards, with a selection of cards becoming available with the release of each of the set’s three expansions. Also included with the offer is the animated Pyre coin — available to use immediately after purchase of the Expansion Pass.

The trailer itself offers scant details, but CD PROJEKT RED has never let players down when it comes to GWENT related projects anyway.

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Many of you may recognise the name – Mystery Match hit digital shelves way back in 2014 and has become a bit of a classic since then. This is the long-anticipated sequel. Like the first game, the core experience here is a Cluedo / Murder, She Wrote style murder mystery, mixed in with match-3 gameplay. This entry also features hidden object searches and “village restoration”. I’m a sucker for base building, so that sounds great to me!

Besides improved graphical fidelity & better audio, this entry also introduces episodic gameplay. Outplay Entertainment is planning a new episode every 8 weeks – for how long, it’s unclear so far. Seems like they intend to keep gamers happy with new content for some time to come. If that’s too long, Outplay promises great replay value. This includes puzzles increasing in difficulty when you go back to completed levels.

Mo’ Mystery, Mo’ Matching, Mo’ Problems

If you’re a fan of the original game, or the genre, this looks promising. It seems light, engaging, and not too taxing. Perfect for commutes & commodes; easy to pick up and put down as and when you need.

It’s difficult to fault Outplay’s credentials – they have a huge number of highly successful games under their belts. They are, in their own words, “the largest independent mobile developer in the UK”.

If this all sounds like your cup of tea, Mystery Match Village is now available worldwide on the Apple App Store and Google Play. For more information on Outplay Entertainment and Mystery Match Village, follow the organization via its official website here, and on Twitter and Facebook.

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Worry no more! Orwell’s Animal Farm has arrived to seize the means of entertainment. Developer Nerial has taken on the task, creating an interesting if shallow new look at the classic story. Transposing the original narrative into a point and click adventure. The closest point of comparison may be the clever Jules Verne phone adaptation 80 Days or the ingenious Elsinore, the choose-your-own-adventure retelling of Hamlet.

Hogwash!

Animal Farm never meets these creative heights. A disappointingly straightforward affair with minimal interactivity. More choices become available as you progress but it still feels closer to a book report than a gaming experience. Beautifully illustrated scenes tell the story with a charming cartoon style, yet it feels at odds with the severity of the unfolding events. More Walt Disney than Watership Down. A recommended early decision is to turn off the overblown narration. Juxtaposed with the cheery visuals it’s truly pompous and overblown.

Dramatic moments are lost entirely due to limited animation. For example, an early scene in which the tragic foolish horse Boxer accidentally kicks a young man to death is shown from a bird’s eye view. The weight of this moment is delivered solely via dialogue box, accidentally making this weirdly impersonal, especially compared to the original story. If the aim was to bring a classic to life in this form then it has sorely missed the mark.

Orwell’s that ends well?

As a way to engage younger audiences with the book, Orwell’s Animal Farm could be an excellent teaching tool. Older players however will be less enthused. For a brief bit of horsing around the game is entertaining enough but if you want to truly pig out then it’s time to hit the books.

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Bio Inc. Redemption by DryGin Studios is an interesting medical simulation game that plants you in the position of Life or Death. It manages to find a happy medium for people who like to get in-depth with information and those who just like to tap for rewards. It’s a challenging experience even on the starting difficulties and can be hard to find your medical flow. Players are given a patient with a randomized set of symptoms to investigate. Through collecting cells that appear in the many systems of the body, players earn Bio Points. With Bio Points, players can run tests and treatments that may help to save the patient’s life.

Finding the right tests to run essentially comes down to tapping the symptoms and finding the disease where symptoms overlap. Once you have gotten some positive tests back, you spend Bio Points on treatments for the disease. You can spend points on upgrades to your resource collection and a variety of lifestyle changes that will improve your patient’s resistances in certain areas. For example, suggesting yoga improves the patients bone strength, a Mediterranean diet for the digestive system and so on. Getting started can be a little slow, as you need to read the detailed information on the symptoms that your patient has, the tests that you can run and the treatments that are available.

Not a substitute for a medical degree

As time progresses, your patient will develop new symptoms. Existing symptoms worsen over time so players have to be quick in collecting Bio Points and taking test samples. All tests and treatments take time to run, which can really up the intensity when your patient is barely holding on. It can also be one of the more annoying parts of the game as the cells don’t hang around long and you need to constantly be watching. Points can be slow to generate and more valuable cells can disappear within a moment. Actually collecting the resource takes time too as you have to hold down on the cell but this can be upgraded with Bio Points.

Anyone familiar with the studio’s other game, Plague Inc., will grasp the game’s resource mechanic very quickly as they share a lot of similarities. Players essentially wait for points to develop, they spend the points on upgrades and perks and repeat the process until the game ends. There are spontaneous events that happen that can either help or hinder you. If you happen to get one at the right time, it can feel like a miraculous stroke of luck for your doctor.

Medically macabre

If you get tired of saving people’s lives you have the option of playing as Death instead. Naturally, the objective of this mode is to kill the patient by worsening their symptoms. You can also operate on some notable figures like Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. If you’re eager to finally settle which of your friends has the most medical knowledge, you can face off in a multiplayer game. One player acts as the doctor and the other plays as Death.

Bio Inc Redemption‘s graphics are nice to look at but the same aesthetic loses its appeal over multiple games. During games, you have an x-ray of your patient’s various systems which, with my lack of medical expertise, I can only say resembled my Leaving Cert biology books pretty well. Your patient’s figure will engage in a healthier diet, lift weights, do stretches etc. when you make lifestyle changes. They’ll ache with pain in whatever areas are affected. Plus the occasional blood spurt when things are looking bad.

Far, far cheaper than a medical degree

Bio Inc. Redemption has the option of in-game purchases which give you coins and resources. You can choose to upgrade your Doctor/Death abilities or to spend coins on a variety of perks to give you a head start on treating the patient. One downside is that you are only given 36 energy to use before needing to recharge. Treating a patient on Intern difficulty takes 6 energy but the cost rises with the difficulty level.

Casual players shouldn’t need to worry about using all of their energy very quickly. With Lethal being the highest difficulty for each stage with a cost of 24 energy, those looking for a more challenging experience may find themselves out of things pretty quickly. Once your initial rewards are used, rebuilding them naturally can be slow. It can be a drag grinding but there are daily challenges and goals to help you out. Or you can spend a little to get a boost.

So what’s the diagnosis?

Bio Inc. Redemption is free on the App Store and Play Store and costs €12.99 outside of a sale on Steam. It gets tedious swapping between systems and collecting points but the game is a lot of fun to play. I found it a lot more enjoyable to play in short bursts to ease the more tedious issues but there is a lot of replayability to find here. You might also pick up a bit of medical knowledge on the way.

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Replica is an interactive novel from Somi. You may recognise it  – it’s been around since 2016 – but it just recently came to Nintendo Switch. Also, I never got a chance to play it on any other platform, so this review is with fresh eyes. Fabulous. Let’s get right to it!

What’s Replica all about, then?

I’m glad you asked! Replica is a game that puts you in the shoes of a political prisoner. You have been handed the phone of another inmate, and told that you must find evidence of criminal activity by hacking into this phone and reporting back to your captors. The whole thing takes place on a phone screen – it’s a little reminiscent of Unfriended or Searching in form if you’ve seen those.

When I say “hacking”, perhaps you’re thinking of Keanu Reeves slamming raw code into a black & green terminal. No, Replica is more like real lifehacking. It’s mainly in the form of guessing passwords – finding birthdays, special dates, significant phases etc. Over the course of the game’s admittedly short story, you’ll learn bits and pieces of the life of the phone’s owner. Read texts, trawl through photo metadata, and scroll through this guy’s social media account. Yes, it feels as weird as it sounds. In a good way, however.

Authoritarian Surveillance State Nightmare Never Read so Awkwardly

Replica feels pretty good. Other than the pixel art aesthetic, it really does replicate (haha) the experience of using a phone. It truly makes you feel a little icky and invasive reading through this dude’s texts from his mum. That said, the writing left an awful lot to be desired. There’s no real subtlety to any of it.

The agent from Homeland Security is less O’Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four and more Big Bad Government Guy from South Park. Very little in the game is irrelevant or just for flavour. A little disappointing considering Somi is a South Korean developer – just across the border from the most famous surveillance state on the planet.

That may have something to do with the length. You’ll finish Replica in maybe half an hour if you take your time. HowLongToBeat puts a completionist playthrough – all endings – at 3.5 hours, but I think that’s quite generous. Most of that time will be repeating content, too.

The Old Switcheroo

I have to say, I was a little disappointed that Somi didn’t take advantage of the Switch as a platform. There’s no portrait mode – which is weird, as the main play space is explicitly portrait – and you can’t realistically play with touch controls. Touch is an option, it’s unfortunately just implemented very poorly. Also, as a port, it feels rushed, which is sad because this kind of game would be perfect for the Switch’s unique form factor and touchscreen.

All that said, Replica is the price of a pint. It’s pretty unique, standing in the auspicious company of games like Paper’s, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn. If you’re looking for a short game to keep you occupied on a train ride, it’s perfect.

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Double Pug Switch is a challenging and charming sidescrolling platformer and the first game developed by The Polygon Loft. You play as Otis, the pug protagonist as he runs his way through dimensions to stop Mr Whiskers. Otis and Mr Whiskers are sucked into a dimensional portal and dropped in an alternate version of the lab.

Otis is trapped between universes, existing in both at the same time and gains new dimension-hopping powers. Mr Whiskers, however, fractures into the evil Sker, set on dominating our world with a cat army. From there, Otis embarks (sorry but I had to fit in at least one pun) on his interdimensional quest to stop Sker from bringing catastrophe (okay, I’m done) to our world.

Are Two Pugs Better Than One?

The controls are extremely simple to grasp but difficult to master, requiring precise timing and accuracy. You have a jump button which and a dimensional shift button that allows you to pass through obstacles with corresponding colours. The most important command of all, of course, is the dedicated bark button. As you progress through the levels, you will encounter power-ups to let you reach new areas and new pathways. At the end of each dimension, you’ll face off against Sker in a Sonic-style boss encounter as you dodge his attacks during the chase.

The levels are well-designed, charming and colourful. As with most platform-runner games, there are several paths to choose, each with their own obstacles to overcome. This adds to the replayability by offering you a chance to experiment with your route and can give you an alternative if one section is that bit too tricky. Levels are great looking and colour plays a big part in the visuals. You’ll need to use Otis’ dimension shift power to get past certain obstacles like walls and spikes and to land on new platforms.

Charmingly Frustrating

Despite the cute characters and visuals, the game can be quite unforgiving. Jumps and dimensional shifts have to be timed perfectly, which can lead to some very frustrating runs. I found that some of the checkpoint markers are poorly placed, which meant you have to be prepared the moment the level resets. You can also run straight past checkpoints which really amps up the pressure, especially after a particularly challenging section.

The soundtrack is fantastic and it fits the atmosphere of each level very well. It can really help you to find your jumping/shifting rhythm. If you happen to get stuck in a death loop, you will end up hearing the same 3 seconds of the song repeated again and again until you finally reach the next checkpoint. Despite the nightmarish frustration these loops cause, there is a very satisfying feeling from getting past the challenges.

Worth The Challenge

There are 40 levels in total, so the length really depends on your skill level with this genre. If you’re like me, there’s a long and admittedly cute challenge ahead of you. If you’re not, you will likely clear it within a few days. You can unlock a variety of hats for Otis giving a level of replayability in Double Pug Switch for collectors. And pug fans.

While Double Pug Switch does a lot of things right, it doesn’t push boundaries in any way. It feels more like the developers wanted something safe to release as their first title. This is a respectable choice and you can see that the mechanics were chosen with care, opting for the tried and true mechanics that have entertained us for years. You can buy Double Pug Switch for around €8.00 on Mac/PC/PS4/XBONE/Switch and on the App Store.

There’s a lot to like about Double Pug Switch. I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s a mobile game ported to other devices. Considering the fact that the PlayStore and Appstore have hundreds of near-identical games (mostly for free), I really would hesitate to pay any more for it.

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The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores is one of those titles that was clearly designed with both mobile and PC play in mind. Unfortunately, in this game of compromise, it’s the player that loses.

There are certain things that mobile games do well. These are things like a casual pace, ability to pick up where you left off at any time, streamlined graphics etc. There are also things that PC and console games do well; things like complex systems, amped up graphics, and deep immersion. Xigma Games has clearly tried to compromise between the two. Unfortunately, as is often the case, this compromise short-changes all sides.

Like a mobile game, The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores has streamlined graphics and a slow pace. However, it doesn’t hit that same casual, pick-up-put-down feel that great mobile games do. Like many PC games, Bonfire features somewhat complex systems of leveling, AI, and strategy building. Howbeit, it does not have the immersive quality, depth, or replayability of much of the PC gaming market.

Xigma Games have a clear and relatively well executed aesthetic with this title. Regrettably, The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores feels like it doesn’t know where it belongs. I’m going to deliver this review in the traditional manner of someone giving bad news: the s**t sandwich.

Gameplay in The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores

If you’ve ever played a real-time base building game, you’ve played Bonfire. You order the construction of buildings, your little minions busy themselves with erecting them. Certain buildings enable you to gather resources, which you need to construct more buildings. Repeat ad nauseam. There’s a certain meditative quality in this, a sort of repetitive calm – however, Bonfire ultimately does nothing special with its main gameplay loop.

Once you have constructed some buildings, they need people assigned to them to work. This includes the titular bonfire itself – anyone assigned to that becomes a guard. Each character has a mix of Strength, Agility and Intelligence skills, which make them more or less suited for certain tasks, as well as a personality trait. While the game’s Steam page claims that “Every character has unique personality skills”, realistically there are only a handful of traits. By the time you have 20 population or so, you will have seen them all multiple times. The characters are all more or less interchangeable, with equipment being far more impactful than skills or traits.

Bonfire After Dark

At night, everyone but the guards go to sleep, and a random assortment of monsters attack your village. Your guards and the monsters meet and whale on each other. There are no tactics or strategy involved whatsoever. If you have enough guards, with good enough equipment, you’ll win.

Personally, I found the best strategy to be just not to assign guards 80% of the time. Most monsters just arrive, nick some of your stuff (a handful of iron, a few portions of food), and feck off. The risk of losing some of your population just isn’t worth it. The two enemy types that actually attack your buildings (“Minions” and spiders) warrant an armed response, but it’s completely feasible just to assign guards when needed and otherwise keep workers free for more useful things.

The Good: Aesthetics, Atmosphere, Polish

That said, The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores isn’t all bad. The minimal, streamlined art style is gorgeous and distinctive. The buildings mesh well with one another, but each has enough to set it apart that you can easily tell them from one another. Furthermore, the sound design is lovely. The music, SFX and UI sounds blend together in a very pleasing way. Kudos to their art director – they hit the nail on the head with this one.

Moreover, Bonfire in general feels quite polished in most respects. Firstly, The UI, mechanics and atmosphere of the game all tie together very well. Secondly, the tutorials and in-game tips are clear, making Bonfire quite easy to get into. Thirdly, the progression of building unlocks is well-paced and sensible. You tend to unlock buildings as and when you need them, for example, and just as you’re getting bored with the same options. For what they set out to achieve, Xigma has crafted a fairly smooth experience.

The Bad: Shortcuts, Oversights and Mishaps

Unfortunately, The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores also has more than its fair share of shortcomings.

As I mentioned above, a small amount of micro-management of your guard assignments lets you avoid the bulk of danger and, subsequently, challenge in the game. If it’s not 100% necessary to endanger your people, why do it? Consequently, the game starts to feel slow, stale, and unchallenging.

Speaking of your guards – the AI pathfinding in this game is abysmal. Every in-game day, numerous workers get stuck on corners, inside of buildings, or simply stop in the middle of a field. It gets incredibly tiresome to have to go order 4 or 5 people a day to drop what they are carrying to coax them into continuing on their way. Furthermore, more than once my characters got stuck in the middle of structures. At that point, my only options were a) allow them to starve to death or b) destroy the building.

Building structures and gathering resources takes forever. That feels like a choice Xigma made in order to artificially inflate playtime – because once you’ve built everything, there’s nothing really left to do. Additionally, your population grows incredibly slowly, and you can’t control that growth at all – the only way to get new people is for randoms to come out of the forest and offer to join. It took me about 6 hours to get to the “endgame” of The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores, but it would have taken maybe two without these arbitrary timesinks.

Hiccups and Foibles

Additionally, there are a few needless oversights that any amount of QA should have caught. The WASD keys move your perspective, but they are tied to specific, objective directions. That means if you rotate your view, and then press W, you don’t move in the direction you’re looking – you move “north”. Consequently, it’s impractical to leave the camera in any view but the default. Characters assigned to sentry towers – 10 feet in the air up a ladder – can be attacked and damaged by animals on the ground. It’s things like these, for example, that make Bonfire a more frustrating experience than it needs to be. Perhaps Xigma will address these post-launch, but for the game to ship like this bodes poorly.

Above all, The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores feels shallow. If you enjoyed the original game, The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands, you’ll no doubt get a kick out of this, as it introduces numerous improvements. But for the price point, far higher than I’d expect to pay for a game this length and quality, I have to recommend giving Bonfire a miss. Just go replay Age of Empires instead.

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