iOS Universal, Android •
Earlier this week my wife and two eldest children left on a trip to Spain to spend time with an exchange student who had lived with us during the last school year. Now, normally, my wife and kids leaving me home alone for an extended period of time would be cause for celebration–I usually wouldn’t even shower until they came back–but this time she left me with a very energetic 6 year-old, and I’m lost. How do you keep a kid busy when he’s used to having two brothers to annoy all day long? I have no idea, but I found out quickly that they don’t appreciate Twilight Struggle. So, I’m kind of having a bummer week, but then a new title arrived in the App Store, Miracle Merchant from Tinytouchtales, and now all is right in the world.
Miracle Merchant is the latest high score chaser from our German friends at Tinytouchtales, and it continues their hit string of great time wasters on the App Store. Like Card Crawl, Miracle Merchant is a quick and easy game to pick up and even win. The hard part comes in trying to squeeze as much gold as you can out of each customer.
You play as an alchemist with a long line of fat-pursed customers, each wanting a specific ingredient in their concoction. You have four decks of different suited cards to mix and match to make them happy. There are icons on each card which can increase the cost of other cards in the mix, and using these icons to pump the value of each potion up is the trick. There are also spoiled ingredients in each deck which will decrease the value of the potion, and trying to mitigate the loss of coin is a big part of the game. If you create a potion whose cost is less than a single gold piece or create a potion that doesn’t include your current customer’s essential ingredient, it’s game over.
Miracle Merchant is the perfect game for those “standing in line” moments, when you just need a distraction for a few minutes. Games are very quick and satisfying, as is seeing your name at the top of the leaderboards.
Miracle Merchant is available for both iOS Universal and Android and runs $2.
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