You can download Roads of Rome: Portals Collector's Edition here.



As always, please remember to come back and tell us what you think.

Happy gaming!

Thanks Marian!

Thursdays used to be the day you could count on for a HOPA and HUGE/DEAL sale but I guess not anymore. This is the 2nd (recent) Thursday that I know of that is not a HOPA, and of course the sales changed long ago.

Thanks Marian.

Oldbroad, the coupon code ROME today actually works as a BOGO for any two Collector's Editions that you put into your cart; your two games do not have to include Roads of Rome. I discovered this a while back when they were running the same kind of offer. Try it and see.

There are more HOPAs coming, but it has definitely been a slow period for them the past few weeks.

According to what I'm reading you have to put the Roads of Rome game into your cart and then select any other game. It doesn't matter really to me. It was just an observation of even more change with the casual games and Big Fish.

By the way, I did NOT keep my membership going. I bought a bunch of games in that one month and then I cancelled. There are still games I want but not enough to be a member.

Yes, that is what it says. I was giving you an insider tip in case you wanted to take advantage of BOGO prices, because the code will work on any two CEs. Someone else took my advice and got two CEs this morning for the price of one - and neither of them was Roads of Rome.

As a Game Club member, I have not seen any change in the the frequency of sales or in the amount of the discounts. However, as I have commented before, the number of HOPAs is decreasing. Will they continue on into next year? I really do not know.

Yes, I figured that was an "insider tip".

I also know that the sales have changed only for non-members (which is understandable) but now the lack of HOPAs is making people not want to be members. I really never wanted to anyway since they did have good sales for non-members, but now I still don't.

I do hope HOPAs aren't becoming a thing of the past (even though I have enough to last longer than my life will). I wonder if developers just ran out of ideas and read too many comments about all the games being the same or "cookie cutters".

Oldbroad, what happened to most of the HOPA developers is that HOPAs cost more money to make, which in turn made developers decide to get into mobile games instead where they could make more money. Bottom line is that it is always going to be about what is most profitable. Also, many HOPA developers were bought out and in turn the company that absorbed them also wanted to stick with what could make the most money (mobile games).

I never thought that mobile gaming would end up with such a large market share. Unfortunately it's captured a big part of the buying market now.

Playrix is a good example. About ten years ago, they were turning out match 3 games (Fishdom), some HOPs and HOPAs, and some really good time management games, all for the PC. Years ago they came out with a PC version of Gardenscapes, which I purchased and enjoyed.

Gardenscapes has since become a mobile juggernaut in terms of earnings. By the end of 2019, Gardenscapes alone had generated 1.5 billion in revenue as a result of its downloads and in-game purchases. I learned all this from reading about Playrix in Wikipedia.

And in the last couple of years they have acquired (among other companies) Alawar, Eipix, and Boolat (another excellent former HOPA developer), thereby taking away more good HOPA developers.

If we don't want to see HOPAs disappear completely (I for one do not), what we can do is support the developers who are still producing them including regularly priced HOPAs (an example being the recent release of Iselin Saga). We need to send a message to Big Fish and developers that there is still a sizable number of people who want to play them.

Thanks for all that info Marian. I always forget about the mobile part of the story since I don't use my mobile even for calling people. I guess it's true what they say: Money Talks!

You mentioned Gardenscapes and Iselin Saga. Do you know if Gardenscapes runs on Win 10 or at least Win 7? I ran across those somewhere and thought they looked good and put them on my wishlist. Iselin Saga is also on my wishlist.

Thanks, Marian!

Gardenscapes runs fine on my Windows 7 computer, ob. I do get black bars on each side of the screen and haven't messed around with screen resolutions to see if there is a way around that. That sort of thing doesn't really bother me so in general I don't tend to fool around with it as long as the game runs okay. I haven't tried the game on Windows 10.

Thanks Marian. Black bars on the sides wouldn't bother me either.