Monstermind (city-building)

I started playing Monstermind by Bossa Studios again. I don't know why I had stopped before because the game is pretty fun. Monstermind is available on both Facebook and on Kongregate.

Monstermind is a city-building game where the player develops a city. Like most city-building games, the player builds up the local population, which is a requirement to build up businesses, which generate money to build more stuff, like more population. It is a typical city-building game where the player may visit friends and help them out by dropping a few monsters to level the place.

Other than housing for population, there are commercial and defense buildings, of which, population is a requirement. Commercial buildings generates money to be collected over time. Defense buildings welcome the monsters sent to the player's cities by helpful friends, converting them into experience and money.

Building city.

Of course, the player may visit other cities and drop monsters on them. The fun part is figuring out how to take out the other city's defenses in order to cash in on the loot, with commercial buildings giving the most. Housing also gives loot, but a lot less.

Helpfully, for players with few friends, it is possible to attack random players. However, in order to do so, the player has to open his/her city to attack by random players. It is only fair.

Helping a random player.

The other fun part of the game is designing a city to best welcome the monsters that helpful friends and random players drop in. This requires some balancing.

If there are too little defenses in the city, there will be too little welcome for the monsters, thus generating little or no experience and reward money. On the other hand, too much defenses and random players will ignore the city since it is too difficult. Commercial buildings will make the city more attractive to random players. As mentioned earlier, commercial buildings give the most loot.

Repairing the city is free, so that is less a consideration when dealing with the visits of random players. The only drawback is that the commercial buildings will pause production if destroyed or cut off from its supply of population.

There are also set scenario cities available for the player to drop monsters on. These cities are accessed through the circular button at the top left of the screen (for those who had not noticed). Defeating a scenario city for the first time awards the player with experience, money and occasionally, a building.

Challenging a scenario.

In order to challenge one of these scenarios, the player must have the required monsters available as specified by the scenario.

The game is not very difficult to learn. There are hints and tips in the loading screen to teach tricks.

The big guy's eyes will follow the cursor.

Overall, Monstermind is an interesting game where there is the challenge is to design a city attractive enough to grab the attention other players while strong enough to welcome the monsters sent to attack. In addition, there is also the fun of figuring out how to best attack another player's city.

The game is pretty addictive in the early levels. However, in the mid-levels, other players tend to build cities that are heavy in defense but little in reward. There is still the rare city that is fun to level but those are hard to find.

Time to examine the wreckage and see where my defenses need improving.