Friday 5 December 2014

App Review No. 74 Billionaire.

Strong Points:
Lots of buildings
Lots of things to do at the start
Nice risk and reward gameplay
Nice graphics 
Nice sound effects 
Tap to speed up is a helpful mechanic
Lots of people to beat on the leaderboard

Weak Points:
No confirmation button when you use crystals (the premium currency) 
Big gap of nothing to do at about halfway through and at the end of the game 
Lots of buildings have high threat 
Threat level under 0 isn't displayed
Nothing to do once you've gotten to the top of the leaderboard
Upgrades are very expensive (both money and time-wise) and are pretty much useless

Rating: 68%


In-depth Review:

Release Dates:
World Wide: 21 August, 2014

Controls:
Tap to collect money, speed things up and select businesses to buy.

Billionaire. is a game of billionaires (as the title suggests) although it will take you a while to get there. A thousand will take you a minute, one hundred thousand might take an hour. You'll have a million by the end of the day, even. But a billion, a billion takes a while longer.

This is due to the pacing of the game or, rather, the lack of it. At the beginning, you'll storm through it, buying up properties left, right and center. However, once you've reached about a million or so, it becomes a bit harder. This is because the buildings start to rise from 500,000 to 1.5 million to 5 million to 7.5 million to 15 million. This is also the point at which the risk and reward system doesn't work due to there being very little low threat buildings that give a reasonable amount of money in a reasonable amount of time (especially as you can only buy one of each building). And so the game forces you to wait (although the ability to be able to speed up the buildings and upgrades is a nice, and helpful, touch).

You manage your properties, money and threat levels carefully (each building carries a maximum amount of money it can hold, money per minute and a threat level) and take more risks, thereby getting convicted more (the higher your total threat level, the higher the risk of conviction) and, either wasting time or your premium cash. Then you, eventually, get more 0% threat buildings (relatively low output buildings that, obviously, carry no threat and include buildings such as gift wrapper booths and fast food restaurants) and buy some properties that actually decrease your threat (and give you no money. These include buildings such as Museums of Science and Noah's Ark). And you break through and get into a more comfortable, and profitable, position. Perhaps you'll even get a negative chance of threat (!) - not that you'll be able to tell without doing some maths as the threat counter stops at 0. This isn't too much of a problem but it would be nice to know how far you are under zero so that you know whether to attempt some of the higher risk buildings (such as Absolute Dictator and the Ballistic Armoury).

You will get randomly convicted (as long as you have some threat level) and, when you are, you are given three options. Either, wait for your sentence to end (and, therefore waste precious time and money), pay with crystals (the premium currency) or pay £0.69. There used to be the option to pay with in game cash or by letting the police seize a business but I think that this feature is gone as of one of the updates (if this is not true then please comment!). I think that it's rather wrong for the developers to ask for two types of premium payment so that you can play more of their game!

As well as this, you have also climbed up the virtual leaderboard and will have a net profit somewhere between JK Rowling and Harry Styles. Or between your cousin Pete and grandma Joesphene - if you've connected up to Facebook that is as it's not linked to your Game Center friends.

Overall, Billionaire. is a nice build em up with good graphics and a hint of strategic thinking and business tactics but is let down by a lack of pacing and no way to compete against non-Facebook friends besides actually talking to them (and who does that!).

Goodbye for now, Harry 

Update: new buildings and global leaderboards. In addition, you can now use sorcery to speed up building work and secure your businesses from authorities.

Update: new buildings and country leaderboards. In addition, you can now generate more Crystal in order to buy and upgrade Power Ups. Finally, there has been some Level Balancing.

Update: you can now keep track of/share your progress by accessing your portfolio. Furthermore, a daily reward has been introduced as well as more buildings. In addition, you can now challenge unearthly beings in order to be the richest man/woman/creature in the universe. Finally, there is a lot of behind the scene improvements.

Update:
Halloween update
iOS 9 support
Cloud Save and Sync across iOS devices - you can now manually save your progress and sync the save data on another device
You can now rearrange the order of your buildings by tapping and holding on the main game screen
New, limited edition, collectible buildings that hold hidden power
In game events, promotions, several bug fixes and minor tweaks

Update:
Holiday update
A new, limited edition, collectible building
Several bug fixes and tweaks

Update: bug fixes

Update: bug fixes

Update:
Billionaires Challenge: complete a series of tasks and achieve the ultimate reward to expand your business empire
Utilize your fortune from being number 1 to build more exotic establishments
Earning Rate Multiplier

Update:
Revamped stats page
Can now buy a Permanent Multiplier
Invite your friends to unlock a Special Building

2 comments:

  1. So my best friend was on my phone playing Billionaire. and the cops came and arrested her for 4 hours because of my threat level, then she changed the time on my phone to skip the sentence, and when she went back, I had to wait 7.900 days, approximately 21 years, which is absolutely ridiculous.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh no! It must be to stop cheating, much like Animal Crossing, if you change the time to avoid waiting. Have you tried changing the time back?

      Delete