I actually downloaded the game just to see what it was about, and why I quickly noticed is that the “skill” element in the game (smashing the gems, the candy crush part) seems... Well... Faked.
If the game “wants” you to win, all sorts of “lucky” combinations of gems pop up out of nowhere.
Conversely, when the game “wants” you to lose, there’s nothing you can do and all those possible 4 and 5 gem combos are impossible to find/get.
(Mostly speculating here, but the purpose of losing a match would be to make you spend some cash and level up a fighter. Winning the following match would then give the player sense of accomplishment and a little endorphin boost.)
I’d love to see the source code, but the “skill” part def. seems rigged.
Welcome to a predatory (relatively) unregulated sphere of gambling. As long as the concept of value exists, insidious ways to take that value from others will, too.
The weird part is that it’s a pretty shitty game. I don’t understand why people play it, and this is coming from someone who’ve put their fair share of hundreds of dollars into mobile games.
Like, if you like the candy crush element, there are lots of games that do that better. Games that don’t rip you off, mind you.
If you like the collecting element or wrestling, again, there are other games that do that better. Like, card collecting games such as WWE Smash or whatever it’s called.
But this game? It’s just a subpar mashup that does one thing extremely well: Fishing hundreds and thousands of dollars out of the pockets of suckers.
There's something tricky about that pricing. Feels like they're trying to make the "Baller" pack read like it's $34.99. The tokens in the illustration increase linearly but the prices step up by an order of magnitude!
It’s not so much that as it is an old marketing trick. You put an obscenely high price up there, to make the 25$ package seem cheaper.
If it just had the medium price option up there, many players would go: “Woah! 25$ is kind of a lot!”. But by putting it next to 135$ it seems cheaper and folks select the more moderately priced package they might not otherwise consider.