Game Review: Merge Town! (Mobile – Free to Play)

Be warned, you’re going to get a sore thumb when playing Merge Town. Seriously, is this what passes for a game now?

This review is for version 1.8.0.

Merge Town gives you a plot of land where it’s up to you to develop it into a town. You do this by merging buildings of the same style to create bigger ones. Every so often you’re gifted a new building & every house you have on your land will earn money. Bigger houses mean more money earned which can be spent on more houses.

As you grow you’ll level up & get new plots of land to build on. Eventually you’ll even unlock new towns to develop.

Initially very addictive, that quickly wears off. When the realisation sinks in that all you’re doing is tapping over & over again to get houses to merge. Add the constant ads that pop up almost every time you go into a menu & you’ll quickly become frustrated with the game.

Not playing it will see you still earn money. It always make me laugh that this is a selling point of many of these games. This can be doubled by watching a 30 second video ad. Considering the high cost of buildings, you’ll be doing this a lot.

Not really an issue though as it’s a free to play game. Ads are to be expected but it does over-do it a little.

Being free to play there are in-app purchases but Merge Town uses a little imagination here. There are 4 all costing £1.99 & they offer varying results. You can increase the permanent speed of house deliveries, you can increase the chance of gaining mystery houses & change the level of the houses delivered.

You can also remove ads for the same price but in a decent showing by the developer any actual purchase will automatically remove ads too. The purchases are never thrown at you & other than the small icon in the corner you would never even know a shop existed!

Regardless the prices aren’t worth it as the game just doesn’t have enough content or re-playability. It’s fun for an hour & in that time the developer will have certainly got their ad revenue out of you!