What Are Freemium (or, Free to Play) Games?

If you have been living under a rock for the past several years, like me, you may not be up to date on the popular format of games these days: freemium. (Also knows as “free to play” or “f2p”)

What is this “freemium” game format?

A LOUSY RIPOFF, is what it is.

The Simpsons Tapped Out Mayan Calendar Part 4

(If you aren’t familiar with mobile gaming, this post is entirely about games played on – in my case – the IPod Touch.)

If you are playing The Simpsons: Tapped Out and are stuck on the Mayan Calendar task (have all the pieces in a completed circle but it claims you need another), try this:

First, load everything into Inventory (use the orange arrow to access inventory, then click each piece and press the box icon).

Once all pieces are loaded into inventory, go back into your inventory and take them back out one by one.
As you remove them from inventory, put them back together but do not rotate them.

For good measure, start with the longest block. Apparently this made a difference for some people stuck on this issue.

Once done, you should see the Mayan dude and he will ask you a question. The answer (for a costume and 10 free donuts!) is: The Zune

Despite having gotten stuck on (and baffled by) this error, I really enjoy this game. I am not generally one to play these games that require actions over the course of several hours unless you want go use a special item to speed them up (donuts in this case).

I had previously played Crime City and originally I was quite intrigued by it. However, once I got past the initial introduction it became monotonous and very dull unless you paid gold blocks to speed things up. You could get all sorts of money doing missions but you couldn’t earn gold blocks for anything. You had to buy them with actual real cash. Not only that, but at the highest level through normal play, your equipment would be good to an extent. But you had to reach a certain level for that. OR, you could buy gold bars and buy some insane equipment at the beginning of the game that outshines anything you could work your way up to. Not just a little better but ridiculously better.

I have also played The Sims (the free version) which works the same way – many things take hours to complete unless you pay in a special currency (I forget what that was). At least in The Sims, you could earn that special currency. Granted earning it was slow, but nevertheless you could.

The Simpsons: Tapped Out works more like The Sims in that you do get opportunities to earn donuts. It isn’t fast and they could go quickly, but at least the option exists. You can also buy donuts of course, but the game is fun enough and has enough characters with quick task options to avoid it if you really don’t wanna shell out some dough. I should have said “If you really do NUT want to shell out some DOUGH.” Get it??? Har, har, har.