Heroes vs Hordes: Survival RPG

Vampire Survivors on a phone. You stand in a field, things come at you in waves, you dodge and your character shoots automatically, and every few levels you pick an upgrade. It is a good format and this is a good version of it.

The art is genuinely nice. Clean character design, readable enemies even when there are two hundred of them on screen, animation that holds together in the chaos. Somebody cared about this game. That is not always true of what turns up on an offerwall.

The economics are where it falls apart for me. It is slow. Each run takes its time, and between runs there are ads. Chapters are six waves each. The first reward tier worth anything sits at around fifteen chapters, which is ninety waves, and reaching it pays roughly a dollar.

I want to be precise about why I stopped, because it was not the money on its own. I was not enjoying it. That is the real answer. The loop that makes this genre work on PC is fast runs and quick restarts, and here the pace is stretched out to fit ad breaks and progression gates. The good art is still there. The thing the art is wrapped around got slower.

Once the fun goes, the money has to carry the whole thing. A dollar for that many waves does not carry it. If I had been having a good time I would have played it anyway and taken the dollar as a bonus, and I would probably still be playing. That is the test I apply to every game on this list now: would I open this if nobody paid me. Here the answer was no, and the payment was not enough to cover the difference.

Worth installing if you like the genre and want something free on your phone. Not worth installing for the offer.