When comparing Circle Rush vs Merchant, the Slant community recommends Merchant for most people. In the question“What are the best Android games without in-app purchases/paywalls?” Merchant is ranked 94th while Circle Rush is ranked 132nd. The most important reason people chose Merchant is:
The game has a nice retro pixel art style. From the menus to the dungeons or shop there is a very familiar aesthetic to the overall design that would have fit in quite well on consoles in the 80's.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Creative gameplay mechanic
Creative idea with super simple controls. Easy to pick up, hard to master. The gameplay consists of the players white ball dodging all red balls in the two outline circles. By tapping the screen the player can slow down or speed up their white ball.
Pro Beautiful, minimalistic design
The graphics are simple yet hold to a true minimalistic design.
Pro Local multiplayer for two players on the same device
Play with a friend on the same device and choose how many games to play.
Pro Runs smoothly
Being that there is not much graphics to push the game runs very smoothly on all devices.
Pro Ads are opt-in
Advertisements are not on by default, user need to turn them on in the settings. This allows the user to decide if they want to contribute to the dev, which is a remarkably clever way to go about allowing users to support a free app.
Pro Pixel art
The game has a nice retro pixel art style. From the menus to the dungeons or shop there is a very familiar aesthetic to the overall design that would have fit in quite well on consoles in the 80's.
Pro Fun resource management mechanic
The player can sell their loot (gathered from a dungeon) for in game money, to then be spent on needed equipment or can equip their loot to try harder dungeons to get better loot to sell for new equipment. Each action is a gamble and may or may not pay off for the player.
Pro In active development
Merchant is still in a very active development phase, which means there will be plenty of bug fixes and new features and tweaks to the gameplay added.
Pro Dedicated subreddit
Merchant has a dedicated subreddit page where users can discuss the game, strategies and bugs.
Pro Completely free and zero permissions
Merchant is a completely free game that also has zero permissions.
Cons
Con Advertisements can slow down the game
The optional advertisements, when turned on do slow the game down a little bit, which can detract from the gameplay.
Con Current version has both ads and in-app purchases
Con Wait times
There are wait times in the game for both crafting and adventuring. This makes it impossible to sit and play for any length of time and makes the user have to come back to the game often in order to make any significant progress.
Con Lag/delay of action
When pressing buttons in the menus there is a noticeable delay until the requested action actually takes place.