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12 IAPs that are worse value than Monument Valley: Forgotten Shores

What can you get if £1.49 is burning a hole in your virtual pocket?

12 IAPs that are worse value than Monument Valley: Forgotten Shores
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| Monument Valley

Last week, developer ustwo had the temerity to suggest that Monument Valley fans ought to pay £1.49 / $1.99 for the new Forgotten Shores levels.

Many believed, having paid for the original, that they should get the update for free. And they set up such an outcry that you'd be forgiven for thinking ustwo asked for a pound and a half of flesh, rather than just of Sterling.

Here at Pocket Gamer we're generally in support of the idea that talented studios should be paid for their work, if only because we have no idea how on earth they're supposed to carry on making games without money.

But money and mobile games have an odd relationship.While the premium games have been suffering the effects of price depression ever since the App Store opened its doors, free to play games like Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga are rolling in cash acquired through in-app purchases.

So we thought we'd try to put Forgotten Shores in context by comparing it with a few of the most popular in-app purchases in free to play games.

A Hearthstone booster

It costs £2 to buy five random cards for Blizzard's digital card game, and people are buying them in droves: the game has apparently "far exceeded" profit expectations.

Yet these gamers are spending in defiance of all sense because you can earn the cards in game for free.

If you can afford to drop money on stuff you can earn for nothing, you can afford to pay for Forgotten Shores.

55,000 Rollercoaster Tycoon coins

A small in-game fortune in what many regard to be the worst free to play game ever made costs twice as much as the extra levels for ustwo's classic.

But it's still the number one in-app purchase for this game. Which is mind-boggling, when you consider that all it achieves is letting you build things that'll cost even more coins to maintain.

About 30 minutes ofAdventure Time: Card Wars

Adventure Time is a great cartoon that rightly attracts love and veneration.

Not so this game based on the cartoon, since it demands that you pay more than £1.49 to purchase it and then limits your play with an energy timer that costs more than £1.49 to extend.

Unlike Forgotten Shores, which is all new content, this really does look like paying again to play something you already bought.

A new head and hody in Jetpack Joyride

Jetpack Joyride is joyous proof that a game can be free, fun, fair, and lucrative.

It does so mostly by charging for cosmetic upgrades like ninja outfits and shark head jetpacks, which are all very lovely and help keep Halfbrick in an profit, but don't really seem quite as good value for your hard earned cash than actual gameplay.

3 extra lives in Candy Crush Saga

One of the most popular and profitable games in the world makes money by selling you extra lives if you fail a level.

People buy these in their millions, over and over again. Yet it seems to occur to none of them that they could drop the same amount on a premium match three title and never pay again.

Alternatively, they could drop the same on Monument Valley and its IAP, never pay again, and enjoy a puzzler that isn't approximately the same as every other matching puzzler in existence.

Seeing something built in Dungeon Keeper

This mobile reboot of a much beloved franchise attracted immense scorn for the long timers it imposed when doing, well, pretty much anything.

Want to train an Imp? Wait ages. Want to construct a trap? Wait ages. Want to dig out one measly square of dirt? Ages and ages. Unless you pay up, of course, over and over again.

Say what you like about Monument Valley, but at least it doesn't make "putting your phone down and doing something else for several hours" a gameplay feature.

Winning races in Angry Birds Go!

If you're struggling to win races in Angry Birds Go!, it's probably because you're using a substandard free cart.

If you want to get anywhere, you'll need to buy a premium cart, with capabilities tied directly to the cost, all the way up to £35.

Unlike many entries on this list, you do only have to pay once. But what you're paying for is one of the worst-value things you can have: a competition-distorting advantage in a game about competing.

3 random characters in Final Fantasy: All the Bravest

Who doesn't love Final Fantasy? Who, at least, doesn't feel some connection to its biggest and brightest stars?

So if you were going to play a free generic card-battler based on the series, no-one would complain if you had to stump up to buy your favourite characters for your party.

Except, perhaps, if you got a random selection rather than picking the ones you wanted. Whatever you think of paying for Forgotten Shores, at least doing so doesn't land you with ustwo's Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime.

Beat aTales of Phantasia boss

Final Fantasy isn't the only JRPG series to have a mobile instalment with egregious in-app purchases.

Tales of Phantasia also went down that route but in very different fashion. It left most of the core game intact, merely elevating the difficulty level of all the bosses so you couldn't beat them without purchased buffs.

While taking out one of these bad boys might boost some egos, we think you're better off trading in for some well-balanced gameplay instead.

Unlock Jake Tucker in Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff

For a mere fifty clams, the premium currency in this game, you can add a new character with an upside down head.

You can even get him to ... wait for it ... hold onto your sides ... eat an upside down meal!

That's got to be worth real-world cash, right? Well, given that he'll just add another set of tedious grinding loops to a game that consists entirely of tedious grinding loops, we don't think so.

And yes, we know Jake isn't in the screenshot, but we just marked out him as bad value, so we've hardly paid for him ourselves.

A Soviet KV-5 in World of Tanks: Blitz

Wargaming's popular free to play franchise has made a triumphant move to mobile, funded by things like premium tanks.

One that you can buy is the KV-5, an early war Soviet behemoth that would have stopped the Germans dead if the Russians had only made more than about ten of them.

Which is probably more than you'll see playing the game, given the outrageous price tag. The free tanks are just as much fun, and might leave you with enough pocket lint to help keep smaller studios like ustwo in business.

Real life energy

The best stuff to eat is obviously some combination of chocolate with salted nuts. Because that way you get to eat all of the things that are bad for you at the same time.

How much of your choice of poison you can get for about £2 varies with what you buy and where, but we reckon you should get about six helpings.

Health concious gamers can instead imagine the gargantuan quantity of celery obtainable for the same amount.

Matt Thrower
Matt Thrower
Matt is a freelance arranger of words concerning boardgames and video games. He's appeared on IGN, PC Gamer, Gamezebo, and others.