Android games I’ve enjoyed playing in August! Earth Inc, Pinball Masters, Bowling Ballers 🌍

Pinball? Bowling? What an oddly sports-based month! Don’t worry, there’s a classic incremental that I’ve been spending most of my time on; here’s my August Android games roundup!

#1: Earth Inc

It’s no secret that I love incremental games, and Earth Inc might be one of the most complete Android ones I’ve played!

Review

Whilst there is a vague story around terraforming planets, it’s mostly irrelevant. Instead, you are improving your mining speed, improving your automated miners, and sorting out… stuff.

The game perfectly balances new mechanics, new layers of prestige, and keeps you constantly busy without feeling like you’re wasting your time. This is primarily done through every reward, upgrade, or progression feeling like real progress.

It is a busy game.

By providing useful things to do besides just mindlessly tapping, every action feels like it was worth your time. For example, you might be upgrading your miners, starting long missions to “recruit” workers (that you can then spend on bonus items), tapping passing diamonds / coins, completing quests, earning mission rewards, or even playing a minigame! This variety means repetitive clicking is usually not the best use of your time, but is always an option.

Similarly, prestiging (terraforming a new planet) resets most of your progress, but increases earnings by 10x, letting you zoom through earlier levels. Similarly, the next level of prestiging (moving to a new galaxy) provides a meta-currency that drastically increases earnings even more.

Combining this engaging short-term progress and rewarding long-term progress results in a game that can be played for pretty long sessions without ever “hitting a wall” like with most incrementals. However, there’s also no obligation to leave it open, and checking in occasionally is completely fine too.

Whilst offline earnings do have the usual time limit (a very generous 8 hours!), they’re interestingly also limited by the “heat level”. The further down you mine, the colder it gets, and eventually you’ll hit ice levels. These are bypassed by having enough heat, generated by power upgrades.

The various small features are introduced gradually, but taking a step back makes it quite staggering the sheer quantity. For example there are 70 different material types, 11 types of special artifacts, 5 powerups, 9 types of planet, 20+ supervisors, hundreds of achievements. Additionally, every helper / building / part of your character has cosmetic unlockables, some of which provide minor perks too. You’ll have coins, diamonds, common bux, rare bux, legendary bux, cards, heat, and who knows how many other currencies.

There’s even seasonal events, with unique settings, mechanics, permanent rewards, and everything else you’d expect. As I said, it’s a busy game!

A few days in, Earth Inc definitely has its hooks into me, and the rewarding active gameplay means there’s a pretty good chance I’ll play it whilst watching videos for an hour or two later today!

Monetisation

There is a lot of monetisation, but it is entirely optional.

This means you can watch adverts to double offline earnings, earn rewards, boost earnings, warp time, spawn cash, etc etc etc. However, they are all completely optional, and don’t feel overpowered or required.

There’s also the ability to buy in-game “packs”, with the usual discounted bundles. These aren’t really worth it, neither is the ($20) ad-free upgrade, considering how consistent progress is anyway.

Tips

Set your upgrade buying to “Next”, since that indicates when you’ll get a large increase.
Make sure you’re claiming your sporadic earnings (minigames, free powerup, etc), they’re easy to miss.
If you’re going to be offline for a while, stock up on power to avoid hitting an ice level whilst offline.
Prioritise quests, since the rewards are usually pretty good.
Use up TNTs and similar level-clearing powerups as soon as possible, to progress to more valuable ores.

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 3.3.3:

Main area	Power management	Upgrades	Mining

#2: Pinball Masters

Do you remember playing Space Cadet Pinball as a kid? Well, Pinball Masters is more of that, albeit with more varied themes! It’s a Netflix game, so it’s all free if you have a Netflix subscription.

Review

First things first, I’m no good at pinball. I can do okay, but the ball often just… goes into places the flippers can’t reach. Such is life. Regardless, Pinball Masters lets me have a bit of fun before this inevitably happens 3x and the game is over.

Pinball is, like a lot of games with simple control schemes, something that will always work far better with physical feedback. Failing that, the simple “tap left for left flipper, right for right flipper” control scheme works as well as can be expected on a touchscreen.

There are 7 tables included, covering concepts like Eldritch Horrors, Godzilla, Pacific Rim, and more. How can Godzilla be made into a pinball game you might wonder? Well, it can’t really. The tables are unsurprisingly all quite similar gameplay wise, albeit with different layouts and “quests” / “bonuses” appropriate for their theme.

For example, “Pinball Noir” (my favourite) has a revolver barrel in the middle of the board that can be spun and filled with “bullets” (balls), starting various quests and missions.

That doesn’t mean that the tables feel lazy or poorly implemented, however. They’re all as high quality as possible, featuring their own unique mechanics and minigames. The inclusion of 9 camera angles is a nice feature, although they’re all vaguely similar. Perhaps a pinball fanatic can advise on why one is better!

As a reward for completing each of the 3 score objectives on each table, new cosmetics will be unlocked. Although these are mostly pointless, they do show up on the global leaderboard which may be an incentive for some.

Monetisation

As a Netflix game (see previous post) it’s completely free if you have a Netflix subscription, with no adverts or ability to pay for anything.

Tips

It’s just pinball!

Try and aim the ball wherever various flashing arrows point, and try firing the ball from different parts of the paddle to see where it goes.

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.0.7:

Board select	Wrath of the Elder Gods board	Pacific Rim board

#3: Bowling Ballers

It’s another Netflix game! This time it’s an extremely simple game that looks like half the game adverts you see, but luckily without any monetisation.

Review

This is a very simple game. Guide your ball down the track to the end, collecting coins & other items, without hitting any obstacles. That’s it.

There’s plenty of variety between levels, with various themes (e.g. I’ve unlocked movies, sports, and candy), mechanics (e.g. ramps, rockets, skateboard), and obstacles (static objects, swinging objects, transforming objects, etc). Despite the identical overall gameplay, each level does have a slightly different feel, essential when working through a few hundred of them.

Whilst the levels start laughably easy, by around 15-20 levels into each theme they’ll be genuinely challenging. I suspect this increase in difficulty was initially intended to work alongside some sort of “energy” system, which luckily doesn’t exist!

Each level rewards you with coins, used to buy spins on a wheel of tens of unlockable ball designs. These are surprisingly diverse, with different shapes, transparencies, and trail effects. It’s a small, but appreciated detail.

Monetisation

There’s none, it’s a Netflix game!

Tips

There’s not really many tips to give, since it’s primarily a game about responding quickly to what’s coming up on the track. The only tip would be make sure you go fully to the edge of the track when avoiding obstacles, it’s easy to accidentally hit one!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.0.8:

Cinema theme	Sports theme	Candy theme