Review: 10,000,000

This is the first game published by EightyEightGames,  “10,000,000” felt like a warm fuzzy step back into my old MS-DOS gaming. The game mechanic was simple to understand, fusing basic puzzle game strategies with RPG elements, to achieve the godly “10,000,000” point score at which point your pixelated protagonist gains their freedom.  During the dungeon run you must break tiles in your puzzle box to use or collect items.  These range from using your sword or magical staff to attack monsters, breaking open backpacks to find new instant items, or collecting wood and stone to rebuild the castle you are trying to escape from.  To break these tiles you must link 3 or more tiles in a row of the same type, by dragging the whole row or column to the correct position, simple!

The gameplay is instantly addictive with multiple enemies for each level.  An achievement system, and weapon and armour upgrading systems, allow you to progress further into the dungeon.  Even if these simple enemies and weapon upgrades don’t captivate you enough to reach freedom, the achievement quota you need to complete will keep you preoccupied until the next stage in the game. You may end up dying before getting to 70,000 points in the first few rounds, however all through the game the tiles give you a choice; either focus on getting further through each dungeon run, or focus on collecting more stone, wood, money or experience to rebuild the castle. 

Every time you rebuild a new area, you can use that area to upgrade more of your attributes. These new workshops will let you to promote your special abilities, sword materials, magic damage, etc. that will slowly give you a higher chance of reaching the target of 10,000,000 points.  Gathering enough stone and wood will open new areas and improve your workmanship giving you access to higher upgrade systems.

The Workshops

There are 6 areas that will gain you access to higher level equipment and better quality materials.  These are the Staffmaker, Blacksmith, Trainer, Shieldmaker, Alchemist, and Armorer.  Each area will let your develop your character.

Staffmaker:

-   Upgrades your staff gem for added damage.

-   Upgrades your staff material for a higher chance of Special Effects.

-   Upgrades your staff quality for both the above effects such as turning monsters to stone, poisoning them and freezing them

Blacksmith:

-   Upgrades your weapon type for added damage.

-   Upgrades your weapon material for higher chance to Critical Hit.

-   Upgrades your weapon sharpness for both the above effects.

Trainer: 

This area will train you to have many new attributes that range from having higher chances of critically hitting the enemy, to reducing the cost of the next weapon upgrade.  They get progressively better the higher the level of the trainer.

Shieldmaker:

-   Upgrades your shield type that increases the number of shields you start with per run.

-   Upgrade your shield material to increase the maximum number of shields you may carry per run.

-   Upgrade the shield size to have the same effect as improving shield material.

Alchemist: 

This area will let you activate certain potions that will affect the abilities of your hero.  As you gain higher titles from Rookie to Wayfarer, Vagabond and so on, you can unlock new potions that will give you different attributes. 

Armourer:  This final area will allow you to upgrade your armour’s type, material and hardness to decrease the damage you take per enemy hit and to cause your enemies to delay their attacks.

This game has also been released on the iPhone, earlier in 2012 and is looking at coming out on Android soon.  The app features all the same abilities and gameplay with a slightly altered user interface during the dungeon runs.  I would say this game is primarily based for iPhone users as the sliding puzzle movements to complete the moves or objectives are a lot more intuitive with a finger rather than a mouse; however the gameplay is highly addictive and great fun nonetheless.

Overall this game was defiantly worth the money, and will go into my favourite’s folder so that I can play this while procrastinating over writing my next article.

Tell us what you think of the iPhone App or the PC version in the comment section below.

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