Game: Rip Them Off
Genre: Puzzle, Simulation, Strategy
System: Nintendo Switch (Xbox, Windows, Mac, Linux and iOS)
Developer|Publisher: Lozange Lab
Age Rating: EU 3+ | USA E (Everyone)
Price: US $8.99 | UK £6.69 | EU € 7,39
Release Date: March 25th 2021
Review code used, with many thanks to Lozange Lab
Rip Them Off is a tower defence puzzler game, with a 1950’s-styled graphics, laced with satirical humour. In this simplistic looking game, which is anything but simple, I have only been able to beat the base levels. Rip Them Off has beaten me.
On The Right Track
Within the tutorial, you will learn what variables are used in this quirky tower defence puzzler game. Such as, the different ‘towers’ you can build, as seen in the picture above. Each of the shapes have their own price, speed, income and space, starting with the cheapest in the top left growing more expensive as you go down and across. For example, the square tower costs 6000, it can hold up to four people at a time, it will cost each user 180 coins and it takes 12.12 seconds for the user to be done shopping. The more expensive the tower, the better the intake should be, in any of its variables.
Another variable is the colour of the bubble at the beginning of the street, there are four different colours available. In order of frequency, it goes green < orange < blue < purple, the higher the frequency, the more shoppers will be in that level. But two of the colours have specific stores that they like, we are told that green shoppers likes the ■ square shop, while purple shoppers likes the – line shop.
Rip Them Off Efficiently
To really get into this game, figuring out which tower needs to go where is a must. It’s also something that appears to be quite difficult to figure out, for me anyway. Perhaps I’ve not quite grasped the nuance of Rip Them Off so it seems much harder than it is supposed to be to me.
Placing a right mixture of towers on any level is important, balancing coin intake with shop space with time spent in a shop to bring in the target profit over the amount of days available. Apparently each level has multiple ways to complete them, so it’s just me not figuring it out. Personally, this game is too much like hard maths homework for me to enjoy fully.
Jazz It Up
I did enjoy the soundtrack though, you know those films that portray a ‘20s – ‘50s jazz bar? That’s what the music reminds me of and I love it. Jazz is such a great genre of music that it makes me happy when it gets incorporated into games like this.
The satirical humour is hilarious! Using The Board as the mean, capitalist Boss is fantastic, the quips and jibes really sums up how I feel about it too. Reading the humour laced in between levels really lightened the mood whilst playing, so that helped.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, the difficulty and not grasping it fully means I probably won’t be touching this game again. However, I’m sure there are people that will get it and will enjoy it, I’m just not one of them.
To check out the Rip Them Off website, click here.
Final Verdict: I’m not Sure
