The Bronze Age Review (PS5) – Annoying Alloy
Another threadbare clicker from Webnetic, The Bronze Age is short, empty and thoroughly disappointing. The Finger Guns Review.
It’s Groundhog Day and I’m Bill Murray. That’s the only explanation for it. That has the only logical explanation behind how I’ve now played 4 games from Webnetic – Santa’s Workshop, Tomato Story, Wine Story and now The Bronze Age – and they’ve all been mechanically identical, each with just a different coat of paint. It couldn’t possibly be that a developer has regurgitated the same exact game 4 times with very minimal effort to do anything original with them in order to make a quick buck by praying on trophy hunting gamers. No… I couldn’t possibly be that. *Look at the camera just like Jim Halpert*.
The Bronze Age is a clicker incremental game, according to the PlayStation store listing. Part of the description is true. You’ll certainly click. I dispute the ‘incremental’ aspect of that description however.
Pick Axed
Much like all of Webnetic’s clicker games, The Bronze Age is broken down into 2 screens. On one screen you collect resources and on the other, you process them. In this instance, one screen is a mine where you collect nuggets and the other is a smelting furnace. While on the screen with a mine, you can click X and a pickaxe will animatedly hit the ground, granting you a nugget of earth metal. Once you’ve collected a hand full of these, you can take them to the furnace and click X to fill a mould for an ingot. Click X enough time and you’ll finalise the ingot and start another.
To give it its dues, The Bronze Age is very mildly different than the usual Webnetic clicker. Usually, when clicking on the X to process your raw ingredients into something (like turning grapes into wine for example), you’re rewarded with cash. Here, you simply collect the completed ingots. This actually makes the game even shallower than the other games from this developer, but at least it’s a slight change.
The ingots can be reinvested to make the process more efficient, the core mechanic of any good incremental clicker game. Unfortunately, the ‘incremental’ here is a bit of a misnomer because in actual fact, there are only two upgrades you can purchase. One improves the output of the furnace while the other automatically progresses the build of an ingot while you’re not on the screen.
A minute rather than an Age
Both of these unlocks, much like the rest of the content in this game, can be unlocked in a matter of minutes. While the best in the clicker genre have hours of unlocks, building on the last increment and giving you goals to aim for, that’s completely absent in The Bronze Age. In terms of content, it’s incredibly shallow.
Once again, I suspect the existence of this game is purely to pry a quick payday out of PlayStation trophy hunters. The platinum trophy takes a matter of minutes to unlock and requires nothing but a few clicks on the X button.
The Bronze Age can’t even lay claim to being one of these clicker games that offers a cathartic or relaxing experiences. The visuals are rudimentary, the background music is moody but hardly engaging and the sound effects are passable. In summary, it’s a passable if uninspiring clicker experience.
A Stone Aged Experience
The Bronze Age is once again a missed opportunity by the developer to do something worthwhile with their game. It’s just so brazenly shallow and poorly thought out. For example, Bronze is a combination of copper and tin but in this game, you’re simply digging out chunks of earth and feeding it into the ingot making mould. This could have been an opportunity to show the making of Bronze, demonstrating the need for more copper than tin and having each follow a different mining path. Instead, it’s just “press X here, then press X here, watch as trophies unlock”.
For the 4th time, I find myself writing the same criticisms of a Webnetic clicker game. There’s obviously money to be made from these games as they wouldn’t continue to get made. Artistically though, there’s little to no reason to play them. They’re thoroughly uninteresting and mercifully short. I pray that The Bronze Age is the last Webnetic clicker that I have to play that follows this exact same formula. I doubt it will be.
A dry, poorly thought out and mercifully short clicker game, The Bronze Age is yet another “trophy bait” title from Webnetic. Without a single redeeming feature, the only people who will find any enjoyment here are shameless PlayStation trophy collectors that want to see a number go up.
The Bronze Age is available now on PlayStation 5 (review version) and PlayStation 4.
Developer: Webnetic
Publisher: Webnetic
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we purchased a copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.
Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Spotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.
