A game is no fun when you become omnipotent. Sure, it’s fun at first when you use a cheat code and can go rampaging without concern, but that gets dull after awhile (and maybe that only works when you’re killing things). I basically killed my interest in San Juan after I created Condado, especially playing my own game on Android. The problem was that in addition to game rules, I knew exactly how the AI worked (since I made it). It’s like watching a movie that you’ve seen many times before. I can’t get myself to pay attention to it anymore.
Last month, I’ve been playing Card Wars and the game (potentially) takes a lot of time. You can craft cards but you need to get loot for the materials. You can only get a maximum of 3 loot per game, and maximum 1 loot per round when you kill an opponent creature (and often times you get cash or nothing instead). Add to the fact that loot is random and you end up with a time sink to build a strong deck (i.e., multiple copies of certain cards). I even ended up writing a quick Android app to help the griding in Card Wars – Adventure Time.
I ended up getting about 40% through the game (50 out of 120 levels) and replying most of the levels to get 3 stars. Then I started poking around some more at the game files and figured out how to modify your card box – basically akin to cheating. I could give myself any card and as many copies of that card as I wanted. There was no need for me to grind for materials anymore.
But knowing this info, even if I didn’t use it, killed the game for me. I knew if I ever truly got stuck, I could just alter reality and give me a better deck for a rematch. Instead of trying to get/collect cards, the game transformed into building decks (with any possible card). The problem with that was that I was still so far from the end that if I were to build a deck, it would demolish the AI (which is unfortunate, and why limit myself to common cards if I could use Algebraic Rare cards in my deck?)
So now I’m grinding, but in a different way. Playing my way further into the game so I will actually have a challenge again. It’s no fun, but hopefully there will be some fun later.
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