Crowd Evolution! (Android) review "Hey, there's a game you can play between all these ads!"

I play a ton of "free" mobile games. You'd think I'd review more of them, but I typically don't for two reasons: 1) I'd spend the rest of my life reviewing nothing but phone-based shovelware, and 2) I can pretty much type out three or four review templates to copy and paste for hundreds of games.

That's the thing with the mobile platform: it's overwhelmingly flooded by copycats of popular releases, and they're almost all indistinguishable. For instance, if you've played Candy Crush Saga, then you already know what to expect from Toy Blast, Simon's Cat: Crunch Time, and Cookie Jam. Because of this phenomenon, you can pretty much use a review of any one of those games to stand in for the others. Granted, each title on that list comes with differences, but they're so slight they barely matter.

Admittedly, I can understand developers' desires to copy Candy Crush because it's a simple, popular, and addictive title that progressively adds enough fresh features throughout its lengthy campaign to combat staleness. Plus, it's hugely successful, so why not copy that setup? There are numerous clones I can't wrap my head around, though, involving designs that haven't been tremendous hits. Seriously, think back on all of the game ads you've seen that involve a basic character model running along a featureless pathway, avoiding stock obstacles while rushing through gates that either help or hinder them. I don't think there's a name for this sub-genre, but I've just been referring to them as "gate runners." I've seen a plethora of these bad boys advertised, but I can't pinpoint a single one that was such a runaway success that it warranted innumerable knockoffs.

Out of the myriad gate runners out there, I've played Crowd Evolution! extensively. That's not a major feat when you consider its repetition and severe lack of content. I know it's cliche to call a game incomplete or skeletal, but I can think of no better way to describe this one. For starters, it's completely silent. No music booms from your phone speakers, and no sound effects play regardless of whether someone shoots, perishes, or levels up. And it's eerie, watching your miniature army march forward and cut loose enough bullets to make Rambo sweat, all while hearing not a peep from your device.

As you might've gleaned from the info above, you start this game with a single, nondescript character model who automatically charges down a similarly nondescript road floating in a drab, abstract dimension. Your hero automatically throws projectiles, taking out basic red humanoids that only stand in place. As you advance, you find gates to pass through that offer either a reward or a disadvantage. Some of the boons you receive include additional troops to join your entourage, usually presented as "+X People." These power-ups spread your fire out, allowing you to assault adversaries without pinpoint precision. They also serve as your hit points, as your friends fall any time they sustain damage.

Other gates add amounts of time in days, weeks, or years to your party, which is crucial. Basically, time acts like experience, and your group transforms after so many centuries. You go from a vapid blue dude who throws axes to indigenous folk armed with bows, grim reapers tossing scythes, modern infantry packing machine guns, or even stereotypical Martians wielding laser rifles.

That's not all: at the beginning and end of each stage, you can permanently upgrade your company. As you progress through levels, you earn money by assassinating reds or killing the area boss. You then use the cash to improve your damage rating or rate of fire when the shebang ends. As the next onslaught starts, the game gives you the option to forever boost your starting headcount and year, making each level fly by without effort at all.

I think you can see what I'm getting at here...

Stage designs only vary so much. You mosey along a straightaway, annihilating the same enemies while occasionally dodging an unoriginal trap, such as a pit, a saw blade, or a spinning bludgeon. Outside of those small details, subsequent levels provide no standout details and require no advanced skills to complete. Basically, you hold your thumb down on the screen and only pay attention to gates through which your pass. Even that aspect offers no real challenge because benefits are highlighted blue, while damning effects give off a red tint. Granted, you sometimes encounter two red gates standing side by side, but the choice they present isn't difficult. One might say, "-300 years" and the other reads, "-50 days." There's never really a more difficult decision than that. Hell, some even divide one of your numbers by one, doing nothing at all while disguising itself as a deficit.

None of this info even covers the game's worst attraction, though: ads. At the end of just about every affair, you watch an ad. If you run out of money but still want to upgrade your stats, then your only option is to watch another full-length trailer for a different game. You can also sit through commercials to increase your cash supply greatly, which grows tiresome quickly. The combination of Crowd's mindless and shallow mechanics with its incessant demand to twist your arm into suffering through adverts only solidifies the title's status as F2P shovelware.

Good news, though: you can pay to remove ads. Bad news, however: the cost only removes the endorsements between levels, as you're still forced to tolerate the ones that crop up whenever you want to upgrade without money.



There are a couple of types of bonus "challenges" that attempt to break the tedium, but fail miserably, mostly thanks to the aforementioned issues. One sends you down an alternate road, where you liberate extra troops by destroying pillars they sit on. Meanwhile, you earn beaucoup bucks by blasting money bags and watching another promo when the whole thing ends.

There's also a part of the screen you can tap that sends you to a simulation mini-game, where you spend a different type of currency to build fortresses and send troops to destroy someone else's village. However, you quickly run out of bread here, and therefore spend most of your time watching advertisements again so you can erect buildings without spending cash. Worse, there's no strategy involved in invasion segments. Each house you craft generates troops that you can eventually send to raid another player's place, which you accomplish by...

---GET THIS---

...watching a commercial each time you wish to vaporize a piece of your opponent's architecture.

It becomes clear what this app is trying to accomplish: ad revenue. Crowd seems to be put here just to get you to watch promotionals for other games that are only put here to get you to watch promotionals for other games that... Yes, it's the vicious mobile app cycle.

Crowd Evolution! offers a quick, simple fix for run 'n gun content that only remains fresh for about twenty minutes. After that, it's nearly impossible to see it as anything more than an incomplete game marketed as a means to convince you to watch ads for titles that similarly lack the flesh that premium-paid products provide. Believe me when I say you're missing absolutely nothing by skipping this one, even if you play entirely for free.

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (September 26, 2022) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.