Idle Frontier: Western Tapper

I have been playing this game for several years and overall it’s my favorite idle game that I’ve found. I have noticed improvements to the events such as you can generally get to 2nd or 3rd stage and have one normal business and the two transport businesses running. And then certain events the managers stay at Level 1 and it’s just higher cost to upgrade them. I personally would prefer this style every time or at least more frequently. I spend more time playing the game when it’s like that. Overall happy with events and enjoy playing them each week. The problem is that I have progressed far enough in the main game that it takes too long to finish. I’ve been in the same town for about 6 months or so and based on the progress it will probably take me a year or more just to get the last crate. One crate is earn 50AE and the max I could get off one haul is about 2AD, but the average haul is more like 100AB given how stores have varying speeds. After 6 months I’ve earned 13AE. The other two crates are even less attainable. The main game has pretty much become worthless and my experience playing the game has just shifted to events which only run for 5 days.

With all that follows, it may not seem so awesome, but it is absolutely awesome. I love the theme, the layout, the idea, the game play, and the events. I am not a paying customer, but I watch enough ads to say they are making money off of me. I am used to that and happy to watch them. I have had no problem with the main game. It runs slow, but it does keep progressing. The cloud covers up the next towns which makes me assume that I will never reach Providence, but I will have fun never getting there. Now for the events. When they first started, I finished them all, but not now. It’s next to impossible. I made it through town 6 this last event (of 9). I have 3 issues: 1) Although I am used to tapping games, I don’t find it enjoyable to have to tap for countless hours and hours and hours. 2) And I am having to do that because there no cards to automate me businesses. And if I can’t automate the bottom 3 businesses, I’m sunk. I have to tap and keep tapping and keep tapping 3) the higher towns are virtually completely out of reach because although you might have had a manager at level 5 now they want him at level 8. Why the huge jump? And where are the cards to make it possible? For the game to flow, I shouldn’t have to raise a manager to level 8 if I am in town 5. It doesn’t make sense. When you first started, I noticed that no matter what town I was in, there was always a way to get something automated. I loved it, because it added a variety so it wasn’t the same carbon copy. Not now. Unfortunately. I assume those who are able to finish the game events are paying good money to do so. I would like to be able to finish, but for now I will have to settle for town 5 or 6, but I am not going to tap all day long to do so like I did this last one (in space). I play games to enjoy them. This is certainly one of the top games I play and enjoy. Thank you.

I wanted to love this game so much. The regular gameplay flowed ok as far as being able to level up my managers and still meet the goals to be able to move to the next town. I play TPB and Bud Farm so I compared it to those. I feel like those games are on the right track to finding balance. This game wasn’t quite on that level but with some tweaks and updates it could be. However, after starting the 2nd event this week I was officially turned off and deleted the app from my phone. I understand that you can’t make these events so easy that everyone will conquer them but to make them so challenging to the point where you really make no progress after the first milestone is ridiculous. Keep in mind that you aren’t collecting a lot of food and cards to level up/hire your managers to work while you’re offline. When you begin your 2nd journey your manager now needs to be level 3 or 4 in order to work automatically or else you need to sit there and manually collect everything. You need at least 3 managers working at all times to continue making progress while offline. No one has that much time to dedicate to a game. And I hate having to spend money off the bat to make progress on something. That was going to be the only way to get at least get all of the required managers leveled up so that I still made progress while the app was closed. I’ll pass. There are other games that have the algorithm right and are not stressful so I will stick with those.