MergeCrafter

This was your big moment.

You had the golden opportunity to bring one of the very few gems of the puzzle genre from the realm of mobile gaming to the coveted platform of Steam. Just imagine the look on the faces of those fresh-faced PC gamers, their eyes widening as they discover something truly new on Steam. You even managed to sprinkle in some delightful additions, like pilfering Minecraft's beloved crafting concept, weaving a story arc, enhancing the visuals, and tossing in a few extra goodies.

This game was poised to captivate and reel in hordes of players.

You could have gone down in history as the only folks who dared to take this puzzle genre and transform it into a bona fide, full-fledged game – free from the shackles of cash grabs and time gates!

But, alas, what did you do?

You went ahead and added "Energy" and a cash shop, as if we were all stuck in the pesky confines of the Google Play Store.

Keep your grubby, money-hungry paws off our Steam sanctuary. My thumbs are so far down, they've burrowed to the Earth's core.

Game does has annoying little things, but this is literally the best merge game you can currently find on market. It is cheapest, most unique, has interesting events and allows to play for free without spending $ at all. Majority if not all negative reviewers are stating obvious things like microtransactions, but you find them in ANY free mobile game, so i don't understand those boys and girls.

Positives

- Huge world to unlock (even big zone that unlocks slowly for completing events), you won't find larger merge game;
- 3D grapchics with camera rotation, 60 fps, no lags, no bugs, no crashes, good saves system;
- Story, characters, monologues — the only merge game with these (most of them only have some talk during tutorial if any);
- Interraction of items: smelter can turn one resource into another, water bucket grows trees in planters and cools drills etc;
- Tools, a unique mechanic - you can upgrade them, enchant with magic and merge;
- No annoying "workers" (dragons / creatures);
- Crafting.

Negatives

- Has craft timer of 15m, then 1 hour which is annoying as hell and prevents from playing how you want, i would rather play 3-4 hours straight than visiting game 16 times every 15 minutes.
- Annoying popups, even if you close them, they will appear after some time and every day you login for the first time;
- Boring repetative dungeons - the only way to get more resources and progress game.

But those negatives are present in every other merge game, while none of the positive do.

I'd rather have paid 10 bucks for this game and gotten everything than for "free" with constant pop-ups nagging me to spend money on purple in-game currency gems.

The good:
- Fun if you're the kind of person who likes exploration and match 3, which I do, hence why I've spent way too many hours playing it

The bad:
- Punishingly long waits for crafting to finish (if you aren't spending cash on the purple stuff)
- Punishingly huge demands for XP goals to be met to enter very small additional areas
- XP containers hold only enough to get part way towards each goal, and in odd amounts, which means grinding like mad just to acquire a few more squares of space and items
- Punishingly huge gold coin demands from brigands to enter, yet again, a very small additional area, which either take forever to save up or require selling of pretty much everything and starting all over again
- All of the above are meant to make the player go bananas and pay real cash, and it's a slippery slope from five bucks for some extras to opening a Visa bill and realizing you've somehow spent more than the GNP of Yugoslavia
- YOU WILL NEVER FIND ENOUGH COAL

This is a good game with an evil business model, so if you're not very rich or very patient, you should avoid it.

EDIT: With patience, I have cleared and opened up all currently available terrain, I have maximum levels on my tools and crafting machinery, and now I'm just endlessly upgrading my trees and drills while building more XP bins (currently at 30,000+). So, while I still don't recommend this for normals who don't have money, spergs like me will most likely enjoy it immensely. I wish we had a proper rating system instead of just "yes/no." I enjoy playing it while watching vids