Magical Pet Shop

I'd like to apologize for replying on an old game, but I cannot let this little gem go unreviewed.

Quite a shame that this game has been abandoned. It's one of the rare Android games to be ported to desktop, is *quite* long and can take up a lot of time. There was a lot of effort put into development by the team and if this was their first game, I wish them success in their career.

In spite of the tags, this is neither an idle game nor an incremental game; it plays fully offline (which is great) but does not go automatic and requires player input. The game design document (available from the developers) explains the mechanics in detail, but the tutorial itself is more than enough to get the hang of it.

The player earns money by creating magical pets in a laboratory with elemental essences (which are upgradable to 300 each in the current endgame) and selling them to customers who come into the shop once every 20-30 seconds. They level up by unlocking new creature tiers (there is a total of six for each element) and from the third tier, additional materials are required to create pets, which can be obtained from expeditions. The player will need a team of up to six pets, and it is recommended to bring in legendary creatures as those cannot die.

The gameplay is addictive but can be quite stressful if you try to fulfill all requests. It's relatively easy to earn money; however, getting an entire team of legendaries for your packs is no small feat and you'll generally want to progress slowly and stock up on materials so you don't end up playing and selling all day.

The lack of a warning when you sell high rarity items can be a problem as accidents can easily happen (fortunately, you are warned when creatures are required to make another one). The game makes it unclear how much attack power is required to be successful at an expedition, though it does give a rough idea with emotes - green emotes meaning a guaranteed success, yellow emotes meaning a low chance and red emotes meaning an almost guaranteed failure.

Game balance could be improved with some more testing, but it is pretty much playable, especially as you make more and more creatures of the same kind and the essence and material costs are reduced (including the removal of a sacrifice for higher tiers).

A few bugs and glitches:

- The display only shows three digits when showing attack power (e.g. 480 instead of 4800).

- Two events triggering at the same time (unlocking a new discount/improvement for a creature and getting a rare one) will only show up the first one.

- Refusing to sell a creature will usually cause customers to ask for it over and over again, even if you can't craft it yet.

- Getting a full list of artifacts will hide the name of the bottom ones.

I would still recommend this little game to both aspiring developers and players as it is a nice way to spend time and will keep you busy for quite a while.

Gets very slow very fast.  But also one of the most addictive.  Especially earlier on though.  If there was some mini game people could play to have a chance (skill based chance might be best) to speed up the expedition timer or merger timers, that could help a lot. It's ok for a game to be this slow after an hour but it needs to let people come back in a few hours.  Expeditions do not keep happening, animals are not crafted. Too slow to focus on. But requires too much focus to leave. It's like a 5 minute clicker. Click once every five minutes. Some automation could fix it. Hire some helpers to keep crafting or expeditioning. Or give us a way to speed those things up.  Should we stay or should we go? This game, though more addicting than most idle games due to its enchanting-ness, leaves the player in an awkward place between going and staying.