Parents' Guide to Heroes vs. Hordes: Survival

In most horde survival games, it's the encroaching swarms of seemingly endless minions that spell your doom. While that's still true in Heroes vs. Hordes: Survival, it's also the crushing weight of in-game ads and monetization that bring things to a, sometimes literal, crashing halt. It's bad enough that there's a constant stream of prompts pushing players to watch ads, but it's even worse when watching those ads causes the app to crash. Adding insult to injury, the game continues to remind players that for a pricey one-time fee, they can supposedly drop the ads altogether. It's almost as if you have to pay the fee to have a consistently working game. The monetization doesn't stop there though, because regardless of whether you have ads or not, the in-game shop is filled with bundles and other purchase options that seem inflated for what you actually get.

Although some monetization and ad issues might balance out in time, it doesn't change the fact that these problems are stacked on a foundation of mediocre gameplay at best. The tutorial walks players through the absolute minimum of explanations, like prompting players to use gold to unlock random "talents" without ever explaining how they work. Things don't get much better in actual matches. While each class has its own basic attacks, they generally feel useless against the hordes. Meanwhile, players have no control over when or where basic and special attacks trigger. Mages toss spells around haphazardly with no way to aim. Knights periodically swing their sword, but that requires getting uncomfortably close to mobs. It's not that most enemies are particularly difficult to beat, but it's that you get quickly overrun. The only real way to play is to avoid as many foes as possible while crossing your fingers in hopes that the computer controlled attacks might work in your favor this time. It all adds up to make Heroes vs. Hordes: Survival a repetitive grind that lacks any feeling of accomplishment or payoff.