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[Vactor]

The Story:

Several of my employees are hooked on Candy Crush, which while not a bad game, falls into the standard foul social networking/micropayment money making scheme that I personally dislike.

I've been trying to encourage them to not be nickled and dimed in this way, and have been somewhat successful, introducing one of them to plants vs. zombies instead.

The Problem:

She is almost done with PvZ, and my knowledge of good, cheap iPad games is very lacking.  I'm looking for suggestions, as I want to help prevent her from falling back into the Candy Crush bear trap.

I believe she has already played some of the more obvious games like angry birds and temple run.  Although she enjoys PvZ, I don't think she'd enjoy the more traditional tower defense games, or War based strategy games.

[Levi]

I don't know a lot about mobile games, but you could always send them this short story which might make them feel uncomfortable playing those games. 

[Vector]

I've heard really good stuff about Super Hexagon.  There's also all kinds of cheap, cute little iOS platformers she might like.

[Trif]

Super Hexagon is really amazing, but takes some serious skill. It can be pretty addictive, but I'm not sure if it'll appeal to her.

You could try Ridiculous Fishing, or Super Crate Box. World of Goo is out for iPad too, that's always a recommendation.

And if everything else fails, there's always Puzzle Quest. Your default match-3 game but with some sort of story, RPG mechanics and most importantly without evil money tricks.

[Vector]

Oh yeah, Fantastic Contraption, the predecessor to World of Goo, was amazing.  Thumbs up for World of Goo.

I can vouch for Puzzle Quest as well.  I own it, I've played a lot of it, it's pretty fun.  Not especially deep, but it is better than Bejeweled.

[BigD145]

Several of my employees are hooked on Candy Crush, which while not a bad game, falls into the standard foul social networking/micropayment money making scheme that I personally dislike.

They are bad games.

Get new employees. Yours sound like they don't know how to manage money, just lose it. They are attracted to shiny things and instant gratification and are willing to throw money at those things.

The iOS has the more expensive games amongst the not-a-console/desktop/laptop devices. Some of them are free or cheaper on Android. Humble has had a few Android bundles.

[Knirisk]

Several of my employees are hooked on Candy Crush, which while not a bad game, falls into the standard foul social networking/micropayment money making scheme that I personally dislike.

They are bad games.

Get new employees. Yours sound like they don't know how to manage money, just lose it. They are attracted to shiny things and instant gratification and are willing to throw money at those things.

Not necessarily. Good employees can be hard to come by. Not to mention that even good employees can fall into psychological traps. These games are designed around addiction. It's a snap judgment to make about someone's employees, especially since you do not know them yourself.

[Aoi]

Not quite as valid for iOS, but I tend to toss people to the online Flash game sites (Kongregate's my personal pick).

There's a lot of cruft to sort through if you have more unusual testes, but if you stick to the top recommendations/most played lists, it's a pretty safe bet that it's something well done. They're mostly free; a few might push micropay, but those are the ones that tend to have a multiplayer element to them, like collectible card games or pseudo-MMO.

Several of my employees are hooked on Candy Crush, which while not a bad game, falls into the standard foul social networking/micropayment money making scheme that I personally dislike.

They are bad games.

Get new employees. Yours sound like they don't know how to manage money, just lose it. They are attracted to shiny things and instant gratification and are willing to throw money at those things.

Not necessarily. Good employees can be hard to come by. Not to mention that even good employees can fall into psychological traps. These games are designed around addiction. It's a snap judgment to make about someone's employees, especially since you do not know them yourself.

An inability to manage money doesn't mean they're a bad employee. Just, well, they can't manage their finances. And who knows, maybe they do budget for things like that.

I tend to shock the people I'm with when I buy in for 5-10k at a casino, but I work it into my budget. (And I have a positive lifetime balance, which makes it slightly easier to self-justify...) Does my penchant for gambling say anything about the quality of work I produce? Well, maybe if it was something where I had to make risk assessments, but no.

[PrimusRibbus]

Get new employees. Yours sound like they don't know how to manage money, just lose it. They are attracted to shiny things and instant gratification and are willing to throw money at those things.

Also get rid of anyone who goes out to eat. Clearly they can't manage money because they choose the instant gratification of prepared food over cost-effective homecooked food.

While you're at it, let's get rid of any employee that plays video games at all because they're escapists that don't have their heads in the game.

[Slayerhero90]

Perhaps you could slowly shift them away from the game using a less-money-spendy game in the same genre? The Last Stand: Dead Zone can be played entirely without once requiring a payment while still being fun. The currency that can be bought with money? Both found AND created at your base. The only thing that would actually require any payment is the upgrade to make mission times instant, which is so expensive that you'd need to have some serious fucking dedication to see it as a good idea. And even then, any money spent goes to the like four-or-so people working on it. You know Con Artist Games? They made Juggerdome, Sin Mark, Crush the Castle, Warfare 1944/ Warfare 1917, and The Last Stand, all good, completely free games. Hope this helps.

[Vactor]

Employees are not the topic.

Having seen a few "free" games in my time Candy Crush is far more benign than most.  There is at least an interesting puzzle game there that can offer some real challenge, unlike the "click the cow" type games, and it appears to allow around 30 min - 1 hour of play between interrupts

I'm trying to show them how much better the world would be by paying for the development of games upfront with an initial sale price, rather than striving to avoid payment on a monetized free game.

I'm thinking World of Goo might play well to this crowd, as it has the right aesthetic, I've never played puzzle quest, but the original is free, and it looks like it would fill the same niche as candy crush.

**Edit and just for the curious, i think between all of them they've sunk about $6.00 into the game

[Djohaal]

Bejewled is a good candy crush replacement.

And unexpectedly, Tetris by EA (yes) is also very good. While they managed to add microtransactions to tetris (don't ask me the rationale behind that  ) where you can buy a special "subscription" that gives twice the in-game currency, and currency itself (that you can also get without paying, one coin per line you clean, or more if they are multiple lines cleaned in a single move), you can get by without giving them a cent. I have 12k tetris points banked up atm. The interface is slick, the one-tap solution to piloting the tetrominos is very smart, and it has a cool puzzle mode spin-off

Briquid is quite good too, but it it's limited to 100 levels.

[Toaster]

There's a lot of cruft to sort through if you have more unusual testes

!

[Mephisto]

There's a lot of cruft to sort through if you have more unusual testes

!

Maybe it's just late, but that was probably way more funny than it should have been.

[Shadowgandor]

I've been playing candy crush for a while now myself, nearly reached level 200 but I haven't paid a single dollar. I don't really see why candy crush is one of the evil games to be honest.