Bloons Blitz

App Store Editors’ Notes

Solid Survival Roguelike

To Preface this Review; I have been a fan of the Bloons I.P. from the days back in my school’s computer lab where I could play the original Bloons Tower Defense back on “Cool Math Games” and have played NinjaKiwi’s games through BTD6 to this very day. Seeing NinjaKiwi expand the Rogue Legends idea from BTD6 by implementing it into a top-down survival roguelike has been really cool to see. Growing up with these games and watching all of their games and company grow into something much more has been such a joy to witness . Even if I put my biases aside, the game launched in a good state - no major bugs, no cap on the number of times you can play in a given time, and still providing player progression to the user and supplying a simple and easy UI to navigate through - I have no real complaints but more so impatience to get new towers added like the Druid, Super Monkey and even the Engineer(would be cool to see if you could incorporate the turrets) as well as see new Heroes like Sauda, Adora, Churchill, etc. TL;DR - if you want a cozy and casual survival roguelike experience - Bloons Blitz has some wheels and the potential to grow and be genre defining. Truly a solid start thus far and I look forward to seeing how updates unfold and improve the user experience!

Fun despite huge issues

In case this is all you read from me, I want to start with one issue I haven’t seen anyone else mention. You can give your monkeys stat boosts for specific upgrades. For example, your boomerang monkey can get double the pierce for his glaives OR extra damage and pierce for his scraparangs. One or the other. This is atrocious. It incentivizes you to start using only one of the monkey’s upgrade paths since the other two will have significantly worse stats. Naturally, the game’s replayability suffers immensely as you use the same upgrades over and over, and the devs who worked hard on making a variety of upgrade paths should justifiably be outraged at their work going to waste. Getting to the rest of my review, I’m enjoying the game in spite of the issues. The music is amazing as always, the gameplay is fun, it’s satisfying to gain permanent stat boosts for your heroes and monkeys, I think there’s a good amount of new upgrades for monkeys mixed in with familiar upgrades from previous bloons games, and the different game modes are surprisingly effective at varying the gameplay. Still, the game balance is nonsensical, strategy is limited (I have yet to see any bloons with resistances like leads), and there’s a number of other smaller issues that add up over time. Also, I want to spend some money on the game, but I can’t find anything to buy that seems worth it. For example, I can spend $7 to skip some grinding/RNG and get a single extra sticker square for one of my heros, but I hope it’s obvious how small of a benefit that is.

Honest early review

I’ve played the different Bloons and survivor-type games out there, and this game is pretty much the ideal combination of those two types of games. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with it the past three days of its release, and feel like it’s exactly what it needs to be. The artstyle is pleasant, the Bloons pops and music are good, and the overall handling and performance is top notch. I also quite like the upgrading mechanics with the different collectible stickers and plushies. A very enjoyable time indeed. My criticisms are minor. Sometimes it’s hard to track your hotbox because it’s only on your hero, but there are other monkeys on your team so it feel much bigger, along with the perspective sometimes messing with distance. My major issue right now is the lack of heroes and team monkeys, but I get that this game just released so they’ll hopefully be adding more soon and further on. Overall, I recommend. It’s caters more to survivor-type game enjoyers more than Bloons I feel, but it’s absolutely worthy the try regardless.

Good, Room to Improve

Gameplay loop is typical, if you like survivor-likes, and Bloons, you’ll like this. It’s easy to learn, simple to understand. I really like having to puzzle my stickers in. Otherwise my review is going to seem negative, but I have no complaints about the game outside of these. A good 7/10 overall. A tad aggressive on the pop ups. No I’m not wasting 50 bloontonium on the perfect setup, nor will I ever. The percentage discount on the big packs of stickers/toys is minimal compared to the medium packs, and if hunting the rarest items the medium packs are more efficient. The gameplay loop is pretty stale long term. it really could benefit from some more complex mechanics. At the moment it’s just “get one of 6 towers, upgrade them or yourself, pop bloons, don’t get hit” And as upgrading yourself in game goes, you can only upgrade popping power. No utility or defensive upgrades. No merging, no secondary items. No evolution. Needs endless mode. I want to break the builds, get the full upgrades. I’m getting all the medals, I’m around level 6 medal 3 now, but the highest in game level my hero has been is 12. I want to max out my upgrade paths on all three monkeys, and my hero. That’s one of the most fun things to do in a game like this.

Lots of potential, not fully realized

TLDR: Good game with no ads or bugs, but it has a repetitive gameplay loop and feels a bit “grindy”. Bloons Blitz is similar to any other survivor games I’ve played: clear levels to get gold and loot boxes that allow you to upgrade towers and heroes. However, after a while it seems like gold is a rare commodity, and leveling up towers becomes harder and harder if you don’t pay real money. Would I prefer the game have ads over this? Probably not, but it’s something to consider. A second note is the repetitive gameplay and lack of content. I’m sure NinjaKiwi will add more towers and heroes soon, but right now the gameplay loop is so sparse that I had to comment on it. Mechanically, however, the game is great. Everything is intuitive and there’s no crazy bugs that I’ve seen so far. You can definitely create some awesome builds already with the limited tower selection, and the game provides power-ups to help with that (banish, pin, reroll etc.). It’s a good game with potential to become great!

Very disappointed

The gameplay itself is very fun. Picking up blops, leveling up, thinking up builds. All very fun. Unfortunately that’s about all the good it has going. This isnt like vampire survivor or survivor IO or any other survivor like out there. It’s completely stripped down to a much simpler version almost a casual one. Want to make a super complex build combining all the cross paths from btd6? You can’t each tower only gets 5 total upgrades. You want to push your build to its absolute limits? Good luck with that, there is no endless/survival mode. The longest run I’ve had was like 6 minutes and I barely finished leveling up a single tower completely. Want to play as all the heroes and towers from btd6? Nope, There are only 3 heroes and 6 monkeys as I’m writing this. Want to see the characters you play evolve and get stronger between missions? The progression is painfully slow and is most likely done that way on purpose. Just got a new high tier upgrade after grinding through said terrible progression? Good luck even seeing it in game since the rounds last about 4-5 minutes on average. Can’t wait to get to the new area and see what’s new? Every map has the same terrain, same few random encounters and abilities. Can’t wait to test your new skills against the next boss? I’ve fought the same 3 bosses on repeat for the past 16 missions. I have more stuff I could nitpick but i don’t feel like typing more. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement especially when compared to other games in the genre. I want this game to succeed so badly and I hope that they update this game because the potential is there. I hope at some point I can update this review with an apology but right now I’ve played for less than a day and im already bored of the same 3 bosses.

Good game, Needs tweaks

Overall the game is really enjoyable already. The currency earning rates feel fair and the monetized options feel like shortcuts rather than ways to clear unnecessary hurdles. With a few balancing tweaks and some more variety I think the game will have a lot of great runway. There are a couple items in the UI that feel a bit clunky. 1) The merge button on the stickers feels weirdly placed and too small. Not sure why there is not a “merge all” button because there is little incentive to not immediately combine them all. Sometimes I’m holding the button and it stops merging randomly. 2) The sticker system is a cool idea. Actually working around the blocked spaces gets a little too complicated. Having a smaller starting area (like 6x6) that can be grown with upgrades might be a little easier to manage. Maybe even allowing the player to “design” the sticker space a bit could add an interesting level of customization. I just end up not messing with the stickers too often cause I don’t feel like reshuffling everything. 3) It feels like I should be able to swipe between heroes on the hero select screen In terms of heroes, Gwen feels a little weak compared to the other 2. Not sure if I need to get deeper into the upgrade path before she feels as effective as the other two. I feel like her damage doesn’t scale nearly fast enough to keep up even at stages 15-16. The mortar tower also feels like it doesn’t keep up with the others. I have basically stopped using it due to its lack luster AOE. Feels like it should fire just as slow but should actually take out a good amount of bloons.

Frustrating

Game is way too hard and annoying. I’m on stage 32 now and I’ve lost like 13 times. The base level bloons are too strong so I can’t really collect any blops, which makes the bloon rush impossible. Which then makes the boss impossible. When I search for a vacuum all I find are chests back to back like 4 times. All I want are the Quincy upgrades but I get like the arrow storm which is bad, and I get like the worst sniper upgrades. Wizard and tack are useless . Also the hero prioritizes the boss so little bloons just sneak up on you which is so frustrating because it relying on my guys to kill the bloons next to me but they just won’t. I watched many guides that say just use the faster firing sniper and fire mortar and upgrade Quincy but it doesn’t work some how. Also I didn’t know this but stickers stack if you have multiple of the same type which is much better than merging stickers I wish the game hadn’t told me to do that because now I just have a bunch of mid stickers. Honestly merging does not really make them that much better.