Covens

★★★★★ I do love this game but I can't give it five stars yet. I want people to give this a shot, so I will lead with the pros. The most important thing is how on the ball the developers are. If there is a problem, they have given their players every reason to believe that they will fix it. More personally, this is the first game that I have played that has surpassed the aesthetic benchmark established by Shadow Cities, Geomon, and Strange Creatures Locator. It's a combination of rich, well-researched lore, great music, great sound design, pretty graphics, and the all-important je ne sais quoi, and the result is that rare sense of a dark world where magic and spirits are swirling around you just beyond what is visible with the naked eye. Ingress couldn't do it, Maguss isn't doing it, and Paraversume isn't doing it (and I say that while fully admitting how dear to my heart that game's origins are). My main problem is how slow and unresponsive Covens can be, under circumstances that I haven't really been able to figure out. Right now, I blame OpenStreetMap, based on little more than the fact that the other game I've played that utilizes OSM is identically hostile to my device's performance. I don't know what solution there could be to this problem, but it is occasionally game-breakingly bad, and always at least something of an issue. I'm aware that OSM runs almost fully well on Safari browsers, but while an iOS version would be great, abandoning Android would not be a solution and isn't an option. Again, though, I believe that the developers will figure this out. My other problems are small and very specific: I wish that the tutorial was more robust (though great care needs to be taken to ensure that it is neither overwhelming); there is a lot in the game that I simply haven't tried yet because my hand wasn't held to experiment with it, and the first issue I mentioned led me to doubt whether I could reliably discern what, if anything, had resulted from independent experimentation. Also related to the first issue is that the game isn't spectacular at following you if you're on a train or something. More than half of the time I go somewhere that entities on my screen aren't already loaded, I need to restart the entire app just to see what's around me in this new space. It's definitely a First World Problem, but it drives me nuts that the location game with measurably the most potential isn't keeping up with any of its competitors in this one key aspect. Even bearing in mind my criticisms, I find myself unable to comfortably go more than a few days without checking into the game to see if there are any interesting new things around me, or just because I like the top-notch ambience of the game even if I'm not really doing anything. I'm very excited to see where this game is headed, and I think that anyone with any patience for this kind of game should definitely give it a chance.

★★★★★ I just created an account last night I was playing and everything was working just fine I casted a spell and I picked up a gem. Apparently you collect four of them and turn them in for silver. I was playing the game again this morning and I casted several spells and I found another gem. However when I tried to pick the gem up it disappeared and did not appear on my gem bar. The game is great, a little laggy but that could be my service. I just want my gem so I can continue to explore the game. Side note, I just realized that it is under maintenance now. The chat log is working fine and I'm not getting glitches now!!

★★☆☆☆ I really want to play this game, but it freezes/doesn't acknowledge touch after it opens. Got through the tutorial just fine, but once it got to the actual real world gameplay, it doesn't work. Bummer. Hope it gets fixed so I can try it!

★★☆☆☆ Its been two days now and I can't log in the game it keeps saying that is under maintenance and to come back shortly but its a lie. There is not much to do on this game and the ingredients you collect can't know what they are til you have them the symbol for the ingredients are all the same so is hard to only collect what you need. Can't do much but just look and click around. I thought this game would have better things to do and it would be more interesting. Many complain on the chat that they have no idea what they are supposed to do on the game. What made me more upset is the current maintenance issue that I can't get in the game I wanted to try to see if I could get a familiar on the location I was.