Pocket Ages Review

Developer: 505 Games (US), Inc.
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 0.0.4
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Overall Rating:

Pocket Ages involves a ton of busywork, which can be fine sometimes. Here though, it feels quite dull and simply a way in which to keep you busy if not interested.

It’s a town building game at heart, starting you at the bottom so to speak, during the stone age, and working your way upwards. At first, it’ll all be about placing fires and discovering new pieces of knowledge, with your progression reflecting how we evolved as humans. There’s a steady stream of missions guiding you through the paces but you’ll notice there are a lot of steps for getting anywhere.

Each mission tends to require you to go back a few steps and complete earlier tasks in order to eventually get to the end goal. It’s a concept that’s far from unusual in town building sims, slowing your progress down through timers, but Pocket Ages has done so in a way that feels more restrictive than usual. It feels like everything takes a number of steps to get anywhere.

Maybe it’s because you need to accomplish so much in order to evolve, but it doesn’t make for a fun experience. It just feels like you’re negotiating your way through menu after menu, scraping up resources in order to make a further small step forward. There’s no combat here either, so there’s no real deviation from the typical busywork that the genre is so closely associated with.

Pocket Ages looks fairly charming with some cute visuals, but it’s also a little fiddly. Picking up resources is often awkward, leaving you to fumble or mistap and grab the wrong thing. Combine that with the tedious missions and you’re left with few reasons to consider Pocket Ages over so many other superior offerings.