Now I know why Territories isn't in the main missions... I made a "quickmatch" which dragged on for a whole hour and got 5317 credits at the end of it.
This is one of the games where "Hard mode unlocked" means I can already feel my fingers hurting, and it took me a whole 20 minutes just to get out of the first circle on hard mode. But I really liked Normal level 11 - just for that brief moment when you notice the smiley face, everything doesn't seem so bad.
So the real storyline is: Zombie tries to save rats from humans so he can finally get that 5 bounce combo. (Alternative: Zombie with mild gambling addiction is on a quest to prove that the slot machine is rigged)
The game is more than grindy enough, but it gets much much worse if you buy the upgrades in the "wrong" order and miss a cabin upgrade. There's enough stars in total, but the distribution is horrible. (and they're completely worthless once everything is unlocked). By the time I got to the final rocket upgrade, I had enough crystals (iron?) to buy 20 of them and get a cloud of rockets.
And the final upgrades are so limited: the longest range possible is 5 (and a half) squares, which means weapons in the back two rows are useless. Shields, being unlockable early on, get so fragile on the last few levels. Fuel tanks are practically unnecessary, and damage and drop buffs don't seem to stack. (And the only way to know that is to waste a bunch of ore buying multiples.)
Not being able to replay a level once completed avoids/forces grinding, but it would be nice to at least replay the boss fights. Having access to the endless mode earlier would also be good.
I agree that the "introduction" to electrified water is a bit tough, not because the spark timing is tight, but because the timing of the jumps needed to escape the water needs to be very accurate. Thankfully electrified water only occurs once, if all you want to do is clear the levels. Interestingly, having keys reset their position on death worked out in my favor in the last level, where an unexpected death after getting the star allowed me to reuse the key to complete the level.
Forget the puzzles, there should be a badge just for completely understanding the game mechanics. Without any sound effects to clarify the gameplay, I assumed for 17 whole levels that all the trails had to be drawn within 0.3 seconds. The difficulty varies all over, and with the number of times I managed to get a trail passing through black holes and circles without any effect, I ended up cursing this game as Stupid Pen.
It's like Upbot without the upbots? But the puzzle design is more interesting I guess. The minimalistic graphics are surprisingly easy to interpret, but it would be nice to have customizable elements like different block colors/designs and a choice of backgrounds.
I'd say that this game is difficult, not in the normal sense, but it is very grindy at the start, making it difficult for beginners to test different strategies. I might be doing this wrong, but after 140 battles I still have trouble beating half of the level 2 opponents. The good things about the game are that there's no actual luck-based grinding in the form of opening different tiers of packs or anything like that, and that there's no excessive focus on PvP. There's no strict sequence of "leveling up", just a gradual feeling of improvement. The emphasis on luck, while being a core aspect of the game, is also a minor issue - there might have been some extra depth in the game if the player could build decks to test against specific typed enemies, and the full-health bonus mechanism sometimes conflicts with the player's main goal of winning.
There needs to be a word to describe when you can't finish a game in one sitting and hope it will still be fun instead of ragequitty when you next pick it up.
The irony is that getting 25 big diamonds is the easiest trophy in its row, and the hard badge basically requires me to keep refreshing the page until I get all the others. It's frustrating, but at least there's a "Laugh" option on the menu!
I could have been done with this 5 levels ago, but the only reason why I have to grind is because my cats can't jump to save their lives. In a game that's exactly about that. Once the lag sets in you can forget about all those pretty keys too.
I totally don't remember picking up the badge when I played this years ago, but apparently I did and the savefile just got lost when changing computers. But hey look at that, a game from 2008, still glorious in 2014 with its relaxing gameplay, simple design and excessively bassy music.
 "Steam King")
 "Slimey's Quest")
 "Raze 3")
 "circloO")
 "Just Type This")
 "Back to Zombieland")
 "Hook")
 "Galaxy-Siege2")
 "Vex 3")
 "Smart Pen")
 "Simple Squares: The Game about Squares")
 "Clockwords: Prelude")
 "Kick The Critter")
 "Elements")
 "SkullFace"){kind=icon}
 "MegaDrill")
 "StrikeForce Kitty")
 "loops of zen")
 "Papa's Wingeria")