Fake Go Games

何かあった、Team Myosudeku？

I'm really tired. In fact,

Myosudeku is brought to you by a massive bowl of gyudon and three glasses of tea.

So, remember a month ago, when I said that this would be out in a week and a half?

Well, I was working on a giant project at work but was almost done.

So, I was drafting this blog and almost finished that.

Two days before I was supposed to post it,

80% or so of my project became gone. (Is that natural English? I can never remember and the tiredness doesn't help)

So, three weeks (that felt like three years) later, I had redone the project and made 4 backups.

And now, I'm finally writing this.

Let's go, now!

[MONSTER GO]

This first one is Monster Go, the simplest of the fakes.

By the look of the attached screenshots on the Google Play page, it looks like it would be a great game.

I mean it makes it seem like it has a map and these extremely generic monsters.

It's powered by Unity, which, as many of you know, is a very popular multi-platform 3D and AR Game engine.

First thing I notice,

THE MAP IS A LIE.

Yep, there is no map in this game whatsoever, despite the attached image clearly showing a map.

Well, moving on from the letdown,

It's a game that uses the camera as the background (eerily similar to the Original Pokémon Go Trailer), and the concept is to tap each monster as they appear.

Lovely, right? Look, it even has a nice catching animation.

So, walking around, waiting for more Monsters to appear.

Oh, come on, there's only 10 seconds left! There's got to be another monster about to spawn.

5 seconds. Nothing,
4 seconds. Nothing,
3 seconds. Nothing,
2 seconds. Nothing,
1 second. Nothing,
0 seconds. Nothing!

OKAY, WHO FORGOT THE LOOP?

Yeah, there is no loop. It spawns a monster at the runtime, and never does so again.

It says something about viewing ads in exchange for a "radar", but I was too lazy to test that.

NEXT!

[POKÉBALL GO: MONSTER CATCHER]

This is some random game I found, and I guess I'll play it.

So, same concept as the last one, tap on the monster as it shows up.

Although this one uses very odd background images, which appear to be stock photos and not illustrated.

The monsters still seem pretty generic, but hey, at least it has levels which seem OK, although a little simple.

Tap on as many monsters as you can, earn enough points, get coins.

And yes, you can spend your coins on various power-ups.
Increase Pokéball Holder size, Increase points per catch and slow down Monsters.

It seems to have twelve levels plus another mode called "Safari Mode", so maybe like a Free Play Mode, that's unlocked after Level 5.

Or does it?

They may have pulled a bit of a Smash TV on us and not have made the full game, rather opting to make a level unbeatable so that they can use that as a placeholder.

Level 5 seems to be unbeatable by having too high a minimum score, therefore preventing you from accessing any further levels and the Safari Mode.

Fix that, and a truly lovely game.

[MARCIANITO GO]

Okay, this is the best.

As friend [GamerTamer] explains,

It's the "El Marcianito 100% Real No Fake" meme, "Little Martian 100% Real No Fake", a meme that became popular a few months ago.

As for the game itself, I'm addicted.

So, basically, the game is the catching part of Pokémon Go made into its own game.

Tap on a little button at the bottom at the correct time, a battle sequence starts.

But it does have some basic mechanics to make the game interesting, like 16 types with various likeliness to occur, plus two stats, Realness and PC (Puntos de Cumbia (Points of Dancing)).

That's what the description meant by "100% Real Marcianitos have been Spotted!", huh?

So, anyway, it uses very similar ball throwing physics to the original game, and the realness dictates how hard they are to catch and how much time you have before they disappear.

Nice touch in the new update, different types cause different remixes of the same track to play during the catching sequence, although it's still really generic, stereotypical "Latin-American" music remixed to different genres.

Dancing Points don't seem to be doing anything, but could be well implemented into something in the future. Dance-offs for battles, anyone?

[POKÉMON GO PRACTICE]

From the best to worst, this next game is so awful.

It's basically like the battle sequence from the last game but stripped of all interesting things.

So, you have to use your PokéBall points to earn plays. The problem is that once you run out of plays, you have to watch ads to cover get more plays.

Yeah, did I mention that this game is covered in ads. Banner ads, Pop up Ads, Choose an offer to complete ads, Video ads, Every type of electronic ad under the sun.

You know what? This would be intriguing to hack open.

I'm cringing already!

First thing, I notice the package name.

com.pokemongo.minicraft

A: That's the wrong format, it should be com.minicraft.pokemongo

B: How more blatant can the be? Having pokemongo in the package name.

What? Sprites in /res/drawable?

So, if you don't know, there are two places to store images in Android apps.

/res/drawable is used for when you want to put custom images on buttons instead of or in addition to text. You also put your app's icon in this folder.

/assets is pretty much where everything related to your game's A/V else goes. If you're making a game, you put your sprites, music, sound effects, etc. in this folder (under different subfolders, of course)

Which is why I am shocked to see that this developer, who ever they are, has put their assets in the drawable folder.

And the cherry on top, Loosely typed layouts and Values?

So, to explain,

<myosudeku>"Cool"
LOOSELY TYPED (BAD)

<myosudeku>"Cool"</myosudeku>
STRONGLY TYPED (GOOD)

JUST NO! YOU FAILED THE TEST! F!

Well, those games were something.

I have nothing else, though.

What a totally not abrupt ending.

Well,

I need to rest, so have a good day (or night)

Myosudeku, Signing Out! ^‿^