Bullet Survivor - TD Shooter

I lost at 32% and the game asked if I had 100 diamonds

The first level of Bullet Survivor went very smoothly. I'd been shooting for about three minutes when the monsters started pouring down much faster, and my hero fell right in front of the fence. At that moment a small panel popped up saying I still had 67% to go to finish the level, then asked whether I wanted to spend 100 diamonds to get back up and keep fighting.

I had exactly 200 diamonds in my pocket, which means a new player's entire savings covers just two revives. I gave up, and the reward for the whole run was a mere 40 gold and three stray weapon shards.

A level here is a giant worm crawling down to your fence

Your hero stands in one spot behind a wooden fence at the bottom of the screen and shoots automatically, so you don't have to aim or dodge anything. What crawls down at you is a long purple worm, each segment carrying its own health number, and your job is to whittle all those numbers away before they reach the fence.

The game doesn't score you on winning or losing but on how far you get, as a percentage. On my first level I stopped at 33%, and right under the play button there are three chests that unlock at 25%, 50% and 100%, so you always know how much you still have to go.

The deeper you go, the bigger the numbers on the worm get, from a few hundred health at the start of the level to more than six thousand later on. By then the screen is almost solid purple, and you can see you're losing well before the fence breaks. The results screen after the battle even spells out three ways to get stronger: hero level, weapon level and a higher difficulty.

Mid-battle the game makes you pick cards, and that's the most fun part

Every few dozen seconds the battle pauses and offers three cards for you to pick one. Some cards raise damage outright, some add more bullets to each volley, and some unlock a whole new weapon such as AP Rocket, Power Glove or Forest Stinger.

Under the three cards are two buttons, Refresh and Get All, each free to use exactly once per battle. From the second time onwards, the button that takes all three cards costs 100 diamonds, exactly the price of one revive.

Above the three cards there are also four coloured tags, Yellow, Purple, Blue and Green, matching four different weapon branches. Every so often a card glows with a purple border; that's a rare card the game calls Elite Affixes. Pick those well and the run changes completely, while if you miss them you watch the fence break sooner than usual.

Outside battle, two upgrade boards that eat two different currencies

Back in the lobby, you have two places to get stronger. The hero board spends gold on three lines, damage, critical chance and cooldown, while the weapon board spends shards and never touches gold.

You carry eight weapons at once, and each one levels up with its very own type of shard. I collected enough shards for the Cyclone and pushed it from level 0 to level 1; its damage went from 55 to 60 and it gained an extra line adding 30% critical chance.

The armory also has a long row of locked weapons, each with its own unlock condition. The Tactical Dagger waits for your hero to reach level 20, the Hunting Knife waits for you to clear level 6, and the Burst Mine needs 30 shards.

The game also hangs a chain of main quests right next to the play button, and each completed milestone can be claimed on the spot. The first milestone only asks you to reach level 1 and pays 500 gold, enough to raise your damage by one notch. It's the fastest source of gold for newcomers, but the chain dries up fairly early.

And here's where the game starts asking for your money

The first hero damage upgrade costs 300 gold, the second already 350, and it keeps climbing from there. Meanwhile a lost run pays just 40 gold, so you can picture how many runs you'd have to grind for a single upgrade.

Every level you enter also eats 5 energy, and the energy bar holds only 30 at most. If you want more, 50 diamonds buy 20 energy, and the game only lets you do that up to ten times a day.

The shop is tiered pretty clearly. Diamond packs run from $0.99 for 250 diamonds up to $99.99 for 45,000, and if you want to swap diamonds for gold, even the smallest bag is 500 diamonds for 2,500 gold.

To be fair, the game does give some things away, and they're all in the Daily Shop. Every day you get 100 free diamonds plus a bag of 500 gold, with no strings attached. The counter also sells weapon shards very cheaply; five Cyclone shards, for example, cost just 5 diamonds. The whole counter refreshes every twelve hours, so it's the first place worth checking each time you open the game.

The mod removes exactly the button that asks for real money

The mod here has just one switch, called Free purchases, and you turn it on in the MOD menu, the red sign-shaped button on the left edge of the screen. Once it's on, tap the price of any pack in the shop and the goods arrive straight away, with no payment panel at all.

I tapped the Starter Pack once and my diamonds jumped from 200 to 400; a few more taps added 1,200 gold, and both slots of the pack got a green tick. For the cheapest diamond pack, one tap gave 196 diamonds that day.

What matters more than the number in the status bar is spending it. I exchanged 500 of my new diamonds for 2,500 gold, spent 50 diamonds on energy, bought shards and really upgraded a weapon, and after closing and reopening the game every number was still there.

• What you receive is the reward of the pack's watch-an-ad version, so it's usually smaller than the label on the paid button; with big packs, tap a few more times and it keeps adding up. The server decides these amounts and changes them over time: a later check got 98 diamonds from the cheapest pack instead of 196.
• The bigger the diamond pack, the more taps it takes: the $4.99 pack needs 2 taps, the $9.99 pack 4 taps, and the biggest pack as many as 20. Taps short of that only pay 100 gold; once you reach the count, the diamonds arrive in one lump.
• Time-limited packs, such as the Starter Gear Pack or the SMG Pack, don't react however often you tap them.

The MOD menu has one more line that hides the sign button so it's out of your way, and the button comes back the next time you open the game. You can turn the switch off right in the middle of playing; slide it left and packs go back to their original price. One thing to remember: turn the switch on first and then open the game, because if you turn it on late the mod won't load in time.

How it feels after a real session

What I like most is that the game doesn't make you sign up for anything: tap Guest and you're in a level within about ten seconds. The loop suits idle moments, too, because you only need to choose your cards wisely rather than time your taps or keep a rhythm.

There are two minus points. The game requires an internet connection; I tried cutting the network and it sat at 0% and couldn't even reach the lobby. And the settings only offer English and Chinese for now.

On the app store the game has 4.6 stars from 248 ratings and more than 10,000 downloads, meaning it's still fairly new and the community is small. On the plus side, there's very little text in the game and it's all familiar words.

The graphics are what you'd expect from a light casual game, with rounded lines and very bright colours. Even weak phones run it smoothly, since the whole level is just one worm and one hero standing still. The sound repeats a bit too much, so in long sessions I usually switched the music off in settings. Overall it's the kind of game that fits short gaps in your day better than long grinding sessions.

So who should download it

If you like auto-shooting monsters and picking upgrade cards mid-battle, and want a game you can open for ten minutes and then put down, Bullet Survivor is a pretty sensible pick for those moments of waiting.

And if you've downloaded this game before and quit because you kept losing at a few dozen percent and didn't want to pay, the mod removes exactly that obstacle. You'll have enough diamonds to revive, to take all three cards, and to exchange for upgrade gold instead of waiting day after day for energy to refill.