>Clean, cute aesthetics>Excellent game design>Hassle-free multiplayer>Outstanding synergy-strategy mechanics>Completely bug-free>Zero ads>No gacha bullshit>No pay-to-win>Optional purchases to unlock new content ONLY>Well-balanced difficulty>Tons of replayabilityWhy exactly isn't this game more popular? It's been around for years at this point but never seems to be able to break through into that top-tier of popularity.Is it really true a game can't be super-profitable without resorting to the psychological tricks of lesser games?
>millions of downloads on Google Play, Steam, Itch, etc.>still played four years after launch>still earned 8K last month on Google Play alone>not popularThis is just about the biggest success story such a basic fotm could hope for.
>>1957072but you still refer to it as fotm, and that's kinda my pointthough I will admit my primary reason for posting this thread is pic related - 1m downloads over 4 years isn't much, but it's the rating that really gets me. A bunch of 1-star reviews whining the game is 'rigged' and 'pay-to-win', when the game literally doesn't work that way, you get zero benefit from unlocking content because you're only ever matched up against people using the same pack.I can't help but wonder if there's some kind of beef people have with this game, because I can't make any sense of this otherwise.
>>1957158I see both legitimate complaints and sore losers in the reviews. Honestly I had a problem with it myself, it made my phone run way too hot for what it was, which is why I would rather not play it.Anyway 1M+ isn't a bad result when there are good free or pay-once games without ads with only 500+ downloads. The dev must've shilled the crap out of it to get this popular - and multiplatform games have it easier.Clearly because Google would rather show you something full of ads like Coin Master and hide the good stuff to make it hard to find even when searching for it specifically. Seriously the only way to browse in this muck is to use a third party service like MiniReview.
>>1957191I've had a really hard time finding even a handful of games as good as SAP, that are free from ads, gacha and aggressive IAPs. I know there are a few one-time payment options, I just don't like to go that route unless I'm sure it's gonna be worth it, because 99.9% of all mobile gaming is absolute trash slop. I paid to remove ads from Rogue Adventure because it was worth it, and I'm tempted to unlock full edition of Slice&Dice, but honestly I've found maybe 5 games over the last 10 years that are actually worth my time/money.
