Get Paid to Play Games

Recently i have published the game Monopoly Millionaire Deal Mini, a game mimicking the original Monopoly Millionaire Deal Card Game.


The thing is, i am taking for granted that most of the players know this game well, including the cards and the rules, until i receive 1-star ratings these few days... Ouch...

Alright, this post is to tell what are the differences between this 2 card games: Monopoly Deal VS Monopoly Millionaire Deal. And to emphasize, these 2 card games are different from the original Monopoly Millionaire (without a deal) in which you are playing with dice.


Heres the table: *Images are obtained from search engine

	Monopoly Deal Card Game	Monopoly Millionaire Deal Card Game
Image
How to Win?	Own 3 sets of property cards on the table	Own $1 Million of cash on the table
Total Cards	106 + 4 rule cards	106 + 4 rule cards
Card differences	Has House + Hotel Action cards Has Cash Values on Action cards Cash cards range from 1M to 10M No Gold Properties No Race Ahead Action card	No House + Hotel Action cards No Cash Values on Action cards Cash cards are either $50k or $100k Has Gold Properties + Rent Has Race Ahead Action cards

Basically, the rules of these 2 card games are almost the same - Request the Rents from your opponents, perform Actions (eg: swap, sly, deal breaker, birthday, etc) on your opponents. Just that, the prerequisite to win is different. One is owning properties and another one is accumulating sufficient cash.

With this understanding, hope you wont mess up with the original Monopoly Millionaire game.

I have published both the card games. You may try it out and give some feedback.

Ah, nothing but quality games out of these guys.

Wait...my mistake, they were the exact opposite of what I just said! Ha ha ha, how did I mess that up? No, I was talking actually about Square (or Square-Enix now).

Or Squaresoft...you know what? Whatever.

Anyway, Square(soft) was pretty freaking great back in the day. Aside from making 3D World Runner, which I love, they also made tons of RPGs on the side I guess? And now you know Im just messin with ya. Lets get on with the sprites. 

Suck it, Garland!

The first picture is a bit zoomed out, but you get the point. Garland is the first boss in FF1, and thus I figured wed have our team fight against him. Its worth noting that this ISNT the team I usually pick; Id have a fighter in there and probably no thief. 

A wizard did it!

Fighter and Black Mage are instead confronting Sarda in a tribute to 8-bit theater. Seriously, that comic is hilarious (and actually ended, which is amazing).

I have a lot of pictures of these, so bear with me.

I LOVE Final Fantasy 6s sprite work. From the characters that convey so much emotion despite being so small to the absolutely gorgeous enemies, this is probably my favorite game in terms of pixel art. While Ill admit it isnt as straight up artistic as games like Chrono Trigger or the later Secret of Mana games, it has a style I just love, and making the sprites was fun.

Emperor, Kefka, and Magitech armor.

The Magitech armor was tricky because, again, we didnt have the proper colors. I ended up ditching the original brown/tan scheme for a sort of gray/cream variant. This was because if I didnt there wouldnt be any contrast between the soldier and the armor he was in. Kefkas hair was also tricky (I switched out the colors probably six or seven times before finally coming to that conclusion) but it boiled down to the gray/blonde colors available didnt blend well and thus made the sprite look bad, so I ended up with a darker brown. Took ten years off Kefka, let me tell ya. 

Esper Terra, Cid, Leo, and Banon.

This is sort of the "Misc" group (and will be with the Chocobo when I finally get around to doing it). Esper Terra is probably my favorite sprite out of the bunch, despite being the simplest. She just looks...badass. I never really cared for Cid so I made him dull, and Leo didnt really have a lot of poses. Banon, again, should probably have grayer hair but whatever...blame Perler. 

Terra, Locke, Edgar, Sabin, Celes, Interceptor and Shadow, Cyan, Gau, Setzer, Strago, Relm, Mog, Umaro, Gogo.

A "dud" version that I eventually recolored.

First off, thats SIX perler trays, so you get a sense of size here. Second, he is VERY tricky to do. Remember when I said I do outlines first and then go from there? Look at the black beads on this guy. Theres no rhyme or reason behind it. Its super tricky!

After I fixed him.

I took out all the dark purples and replaced them with dark grays. Every. Single. One. With tweezers, one at a time, while staying true to the original sprite. I then replaced all the light purples with dark purples. I also experimented on the tentacle to try and find a better color mix and it ended up being much better. Just to point out: Ultros has something like six shades of purple, and I have only two shades of beads (and only three that really work well together). Because of that, some colors had to do double duty, so the sprite isnt as color detailed. It basically boils down to what shades best and still looks like the original sprite, which Id like to say my background in actual pixel art helps in deciding. 

I love his teeth. Sorry this one is blurry.

So you can see I used considerably less purples here. I also had to compensate for lack of teeth colors as well, as theres really only two shades of yellow and an off-color "creme" that I never use for anything. 

All finished!

I ended up shading the purple into a purple-pink and then to a pink and to a white because it seemed to blend best. The pink still "pops" a little much, but its the best you can get. The dark grays were actually dark purples in the sprite, but they really just make the shadows a little deeper when Im fine with. I think he ended up looking really good, and an accurate representation of the original sprite. 

The famous opera scene.

And this is him finished on the wall, with Maria/Celes. I really like the Celes sprite too. Ultros is pretty dang big, about as long as my forearm, and I had to use some clear on the curving back tentacle. He was also a mess to try to iron but my wife managed to pull it off. From a distance, he looks fantastic!

View of the wall leading to the video game room pt 1...

And from a slightly different angle.

The Short

Pros
- The free sequel to the smash hit Plants vs Zombies
- Did I mention its free? Thats a pretty big plus
- Despite having microtransactions, the entire game can be beaten and is still fun without spending a cent
- New plants, levels, and time periods are great
- Tons of new challenges for each level, not to mention unlockable minigames and rewards
- Plant food was an excellent idea to give you something to do in the downtime
- Graphics seem marginally improved and look great on iPad
- Cone-head zombies in Egypt have little pharaoh hats. But still cones. Thats pretty great.

Cons
- Currently exclusive to iOS
- Some plants can only be gotten through purchasing, and theyre quite overpriced
- Missing an actual ending to the "story," which I assume will be unlocked later
- Challenges become repetitive quite quickly
- Hunting for randomly dropped keys is a chore
- Wheres the zen garden?
- Doesnt quite have the same magic as the first game

Burn them all.

The Long

Crazy Dave: Zombie Expert.

Theres sort of a plot to this one. Sort of. Crazy Dave finally eats the magic taco you gave him back in PvZ, and he likes it so much he wants to travel back in time in his talking, time-travelling motor home to eat it again. Of course, it all goes wrong and youre slammed back into various time periods, specifically ancient egypt, a pirate "era," and the wild west. It seems zombies were around then, too, and in spades (this is seriously the worst world to live in), so plant your zombies on the tile floors and get killin!

The map is very "Mario World"esque.

Another major change is the story mode, or rather, how its presented. Ditching the linear level progression from the first game, it instead ops for a more similar approach to how it was done in its Facebook game, Plants vs Zombies: Adventures. You progress down a fairly straight path, Mario World style, until you reach the Stargate (tm) at the end of each level. Along the way theres various doors that can be unlocked with keys. Behind these unlocks are new plants, powerups (such as getting a refund when digging up a plant) and the minigame portion of the game. All gated doors are some sort of minigame, and all require keys specific to that world to unlock.

Key get!

The gameplay itself is identical to the original game, down to the grid layout. Egypt gives you a full plot, with later levels popping up destroyable gravestones to slow you down a bit. The pirate level mixes it up with a gangplank over water on the right side, with pirates swinging in on ropes for the shorter lanes. Wild west has probably the best new addition: minecarts. You can plant only a single plant per track, but you can move it freely and at any time up and down. Its a neat trick and makes me wish each level before it had possessed as clever an idea. 

Fire at will!

The other addition is payable powerups. These are also used during matches, and can only be obtained by spending coin. You have three: a "pinch" move that kills all the zombies you pinch, a "flick" move that launches them back (or off screen), and a "hold" move that electrocutes them. They all have a limited timer and (in some levels) can only be bought a set number of times. Again, these cost coins.

THIS is the stuff I dont like.

I think Id better finish off the microtransactions talk by talking about the part I dont like: the store. Now, let me say this: you get tons of plants as part of the game, and even more by unlocking doors. This includes a variety of new plants. While the count isnt quite as high as PvZ, they do seem to have streamlined their purposes down a bit better (there are no "upgrades" anymore; double headed suns are just their own plant, for instance) and the arsenal they give you is more than well enough equipped to destroy just about anything in your path.

Snow Pea, I love you, but not $4 worth.

The Texas flag with a brain on it is a nice touch.

All in all, Plants vs Zombies 2: Its About Time is a great game thats store leaves a bit of a sour taste in your mouth. However, if you can look past the microtransactions and repetitive star-hunt that ends each world, theres a lot to love here. Its almost everything one could ask for: more zombies, more plants, more levels, more tricks, and more ways to play. Honestly, if it werent for the iOS exclusivity and the overpriced DLC, Id say this game very nearly surpassed its predecessor.