4 Play Pass game reviews: 🤠 Bounty Of One, 🫁 Homo Machina, ⚔️ MERGE KITCHEN, 🦜 Bird Alone

I’m still in my Google Play Pass month, so here are 4 more games!

#1: Bounty Of One

You know Vampire Survivors? This is an okay-ish mobile port of a wild west themed copycat!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.0.202:

Combat	Mineshaft	Upgrades

Review

I’ve got mixed feelings about Bounty Of One. On the one hand, the dopamine rush of mowing down hundreds of zombies(?) and picking upgrades and perks is undeniably satisfying. On the other hand, there’s not much depth or difficulty despite all the perks and upgrades and gamemodes, and everything outside of the main game is awkward on mobile.

This isn’t a particularly hard game if you’ve spent any time in bullet hell games, or those with the concept of “kiting” enemies. Keep moving and briefly stand still to autoshoot, avoid getting trapped by a horde, then circle back around and collect your loot. Repeat until you run out of life or kill enough bosses to win. The only slight quirk is having a “dash” skill that moves you forward, helping to escape particularly bad situations.

Whilst I do appreciate the 4 included game modes, they’re all ultimately the same. Regular mode, regular mode with a time incentive, a horizontal only mode, and a small area mode. The gameplay doesn’t change, only the (bland, empty) arena. The coins dropped by enemies give you XP, used to gain upgrades. Killing a harder enemy drops a chest, which has an object containing a choice of a few unique perks.

The upgrades and perks are primarily simple things like extra life, attack speed, move speed, damage, etc. Luckily, there’s a solid mixture of interesting perks. They vary from projectile modifiers like bounce and penetration ot area changers like slowing enemies near you and damage amplifying lenses, to game changers like tripling your shots or firing behind you.

In addition to these, there are 12 characters to choose from, each starting with a significant perk (that can also be unlocked during a run). For example, “ROB3RT 0.3” has a constant turret but halved attack speed, whilst Tara has a small companion that collects coins to charge a high damage lazer. Unlocking these requires completing slightly challenging feats such as not moving for 60 seconds or winning at a certain difficulty.

The boss battles are decent, with multi-stage bosses requiring dodging attacks and tactical movements. However, once you’ve killed the 3-4 different bosses once they’re not a challenge, with a no-damage kill being pretty easy next time you encounter them.

Outside the actual gameplay, the UI is clearly not made for mobile. Text is genuinely hard to see, requiring peering very closely to read the tiny characters, and presumably unreadable on smaller screens. Luckily, you won’t spend much of your time in these other menus (such as a simple permanent perk shop), since there’s not much there.

After a few playthroughs you’ll generally know which of these perks works well with your style of gameplay, and typically win every game. There’s an “infamy level” system (harder rules, but higher score) but this doesn’t have a major impact if you have strong object synergy.

I’ve played perhaps 7-8 runs, winning 5, experienced every enemy and most objects, unlocked 11/12 characters and around half the achievements. Each of these runs takes around 15 minutes of gameplay, so within a few hours I’ve unfortunately seen everything the game has to offer (according to the in-game encyclopedia). Fun, but perhaps not for too long.

Monetisation

I played this as part of Google Play Pass, I believe it is around $5 otherwise (with extra for DLCs that are included in Play Pass).

Tips

Move in a wide circle if you can, stopping in sync with your attack, so you can deal constant damage and also collect all the coins.
When picking an upgrade, higher quality colours (e.g. legendary yellow) are almost always the correct choice.
Health is all that ultimately matters. As such, I try to get up to around 8 max health, and focus on anything that offers passive healing or vampire healing. After that, I focus on attack speed to avoid getting cornered.
Make sure you keep your damage upgraded enough to one-hit standard enemies. Without this, you’ll be swarmed quite badly.
Personally, I found the mineshaft gamemode the most fun, with the horizontal-only gameplay forcing a bit of challenge into a playthrough. The “dynamite bombardment” event was the highest challenge experience I had in the game, and I’d have loved to see more of this.

#2: Homo Machina

This is an educational game about your body, but more game than education!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.6.38:

Nose	Ear	About

Review

Humanising your body as being controlled by smaller sentient beings is nothing new, I read tons of it in comics as a kid! However, Homo Machina provides a very sleek internal experience of a typical day, starting with waking up, and ending with a date.

Every step of the day, from smelling coffee and identifying it, to focusing on the date partner opposite, is presented as a standalone level. These involve solving a small puzzle to make the body part work, such as figuring out how to focus the eye’s lens, or responding to nervous system triggers.

None of these are challenging, but they are all animated very well, and it’s clear a lot of effort has been put into presentation. Whilst you’re unlikely to learn anything knew from Homo Machina, it is a reasonable “first glance” introduction to some of the human body’s parts, and could interest a younger audience in the topic.

A playthrough won’t take more than half hour, with no replayability, but I’m glad educational experiences like this still get funded, despite it almost inevitably not gaining a large audience or making much revenue. Instead, it’s a fun little experience for anyone who stumbles across it and decided to pay up.

Monetisation

One-off payment of £2.49 (~$3.49), currently £1.49 (~$1.99).

Tips

No need for tips, just solve each puzzle!

#3: MERGE KITCHEN

This Japanese merge / wave-defense game is a short and repetitive item merging experience made trivial by Google Play Pass, but I can’t deny there’s something enjoyable about it!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.203:

Map	Combat	Combat 2	Challenge mode

Review

MERGE KITCHEN is one of those games where you’ll see pretty much the entire thing within the first 120 seconds.

Wait for items to spawn in your grid, merge them to create units, send them into a realtime battle against a flood of enemies alongside occasional special attacks (Healer, Wizard, etc). Win the level, earn currency to upgrade, play a harder level. And repeat.

The upgrades available are fairly typical for a merge game. Unlocking higher merge tiers, increasing unit strength, and decreasing the 2-hour timer to gain free currency. Interestingly, due to Google Play Pass providing all bonuses, you’ll gain a ton of resources per level win and rarely have to retry. This means you can upgrade enough between each level to beat the next level, removing any sense of progression or difficulty.

As the spawn timer for tile begins as soon as it is empty, you are incentivised to instantly merge whenever possible to maximise your items. This means you’ll spend your time ignoring the top half of the screen and just blindly merging identical items until they hit max level, then throwing them into the battle. With a level typically lasting 2-3 minutes, you’ll be “in the zone” and suddenly interrupted by the level complete screen!

There are 50 levels, organised into packs of 5, so a full playthrough will take around 1.5-2 hours. After game completion there’s a “challenge mode” which plays like a time-limited version of the entire game, offering upgrades in-level after enough kills. This is a nice addition, but the gameplay is still almost identical to the main game so doesn’t provide much incentive unless you’re already a massive fan.

Visuals are consistently high quality throughout, although there’s not much variety in enemies. Essentially everything walks forward and melee attacks, with your units luckily having more variety with range units (witch) staying behind the battle frontline.

MERGE KITCHEN does have a story, told via short cutscenes every few levels, but it’s fairly skippable. Whilst not as cliché as other games, it features a fairly melodramatic (and sometimes clunky) writing style revealing the creator’s Japanese origin. Similarly, a few phrases in the app will display in Japanese, as will the app name, but this doesn’t hinder gameplay.

Monetisation

It’s hard to say! It’s free through Play Pass, but I believe there would be a fair amount of grinding otherwise unless purchasing the Ad-Free pack for an unknown price.

Tips

You can drag to merge without slowing down, so a single swipe can upgrade multiple tiers.
Item respawn timers still count whilst a special unit animation is playing, so use these as soon as they spawn to gain extra items.
Unlocking new tiers of unit will mean it takes longer for your (stronger) units to enter the battlefield. Make sure you don’t unlock too many tiers at once.
Similarly, if the enemy is getting close to your base throw out any units you have, even if under max level, to buy some time.

#4: Bird Alone

Want a friend AND a bird, without any of the hassle or commitment? Here’s Bird Alone!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 4.3:

Making music	Conversation	Poems

Review

I’m hesitant to call Bird Alone game. It’s more of an art experience / tamagotchi / story combination.

Once you’ve introduced yourself and named your bird, you’ll spend 1-2 minutes with it daily over a 3-4 week period. In these sessions, your bird will ask to talk to you. It will then ask to make music together, finish a poem, draw some art, plant flowers, or answer philosophical questions.

Whilst these can start off pretty easy, asking how your day was, they quickly escalate into love, death, change, and genuinely thoughtful comments. The writing is mature and intelligent enough to overcome the fact that it is coming from a stylised parrot. At times it can overstep slightly (e.g. declaring love) or perhaps be a bit too intense, but this is always a risk with anything philosophical.

Bird Alone is more of a thought of the day app than a game, and whilst this can be enjoyable, it scratches a different itch. Without spoilers, your bird will grow older and mature, and dwell on what that means.

It’s worth a playthrough if you have any interest in philosophy or more mature themes, and is fairly well-made (if a little simple).

Monetisation

I played Bird Alone as part of Google Play Pass, I believe it is $2.99 otherwise.

Tips

None needed, this is a linear experience.