Video Game / Cradle Of Empires

Cradle of Empires is a Match-Three Game produced by Awem Studios and released on iOS and Android systems on 2014. The game has heavy city-building elements and light adventure elements, and tasks the player with assisting in the reconstruction of a devastated city vaguely situated in ancient Egypt, which is accomplished by playing match-three levels to gather resources and materials that are used for repairing and upgrading buildings and interacting with the townspeople. Along the way, the player must contend with the machinations of Menes, an Evil Sorcerer in the service of the God of Evil Amrun, who has put a lot of effort in keeping the city in shambles and its people oppressed under his so-called rule and is less than pleased with you for undoing all of his hard work.

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Tropes:

• Allegedly Free Game: It's technically possible to obtain gems (the game's premium currency) and items such as bonuses, spells, and chargers just by playing the game, but it's slow going, so Bribing Your Way to Victory is heavily encouraged.
• Anti-Frustration Features: While you are never told about this, the game mostly doesn't consider you to be "committed" to playing a level until you make your first move, which has two key benefits; the clock in timed levels does not start until you make your first move, and if you feel that the level will be impossibly difficult to complete with the initial board setup, you can restart it at no cost or penalty as long as you haven't made any moves^note however, exiting out of the level entirely and returning to the city will not refund any resources you paid to enter the level, so you are committed to playing the level in that sense. ^note However, this trick does not work in Genie levels; since you are required to clear levels consecutively to progress in these events, the game does not even give you the option to restart (not even in the first level of a chain).
• Achievement System: The game tracks your progress at various things and will reward you with gems for reaching various milestones.
  • Achievement Mockery: One of the achievement series tracks how many times you fail levels. ^note You are still rewarded for reaching this achievement series's milestones, and exiting out of a level or restarting it before you actually run out of moves or time does not count, so this achievement series also serves as a mild form of Anti-Rage Quitting.
• Anti Poop-Socking: You have limited energy to play match-three levels, and can only replenish it by waiting for it to refill on its own (which takes roughly four minutes per point unless you use certain spells to accelerate it), using potions that are bought from the shop (or occasionally rewarded from collections, the Sphinx, and events), completing the daily quest, or gaining an experience level. Your maximum energy rises with your experience level, but the cost of playing levels in a building rises with its upgrade level.
• Caps Lock: For some reason, everyone consistently says certain words, such as "BEER", in all capital letters.
• Experience Points: You earn experience points by winning match-three levels and completing quests. Gain enough and your level will rise, increasing your maximum energy and resource caps and allowing you to construct and upgrade additional buildings. There are certain spells and events (such as "Lucky Hour") that temporarily increase how much experience you earn.
• Evil Is Petty: Menes will occasionally show up to cast curses that interfere with your efforts to rebuild the city, forcing you to assemble certain collections and undertake quests so you can turn the curses aside and get back to work on the rebuilding. Menes's main motivation for engaging in these acts of sabotage is heavily implied to be sheer spite and rage at you for having the audacity to give the townspeople hope of living happy and productive lives... until the special event that revealed his backstory showed that he's Brainwashed and Crazy and is not attacking the city of his own free will, so it's really Amrun who fits this trope.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Menes's backstory was revealed in an event that ran from July 14 to 19th, 2020, and it is explicitly spelled out that Menes fits the bill — he started out as a mere dockworker before a chance encounter with Nimiru in their childhood started a chain of events that led to Menes being trained in the priesthood and eventually employed by Amrun. Said backstory also drops some hints that this trope is true of Amrun as well.
• God of Evil: Amrun is a classic example, employing Menes as his high priest and having imprisoned the other Egyptian gods in order to remove any potential opposition to his plans. However, the hints in Menes's backstory that the Chief and Minkah personally know Amrun and that the latter even trained him in the arts of magic long ago opens the possibility that Amrun is merely an exceptionally powerful, talented, and experienced mortal magician (who may still have a god complex). On the other hand, the fact that Amrun was able to imprison the gods several years before he met Menes (though, by Amrun's own admission, casting that spell utterly exhausted him to the point where he had to spend several years recovering from the effort) and that he does not appear to be egregiously elderly when Menes encounters him is a strong hint that, if Amrun started out as a mortal, he has since transcended that status.
• Have You Seen My God?: Menes has trashed idols to all of the Egyptian gods by the start of the game while his master Amrun has somehow tricked them into going to the underworld and then trapped them there. To release the gods and win their assistance in the fight against Menes and Amrun, you must restore their idols by claiming collection items related to them.
• Interface Screw: Night Mode and Faded Mode both revolve around this trope, but they utilize it in different ways.
  • Night Mode heavily darkens the screen outside of a small spotlight that can be freely moved around, preventing the player from viewing the entire level at once.
  • Faded Mode merely reduces the game's color saturation, making the chips less visually distinct. However, the shapes of the chips are generally different enough that they can still be easily told apart.
• Play Every Day: In addition to the Anti Poop-Socking energy system, Cradle of Empires gives you a single free spin of its standard roulette wheel each day, giving you a means to gain extra resources, gems, and items for free, as well as a series of achievements for playing the game for up to 365 days in a row. Once you have built The Sphinx, it also provides a single level per day that you earn rewards for completing, though after completing a certain number of Sphinx levels, you will be locked out of playing more until you upgrade it.
• Random Drops: In addition to the fixed experience reward and performance-based resource reward that you gain for completing a level in one of the main buildings^note not the Ship, Cave, Pyramid, Sphinx, Portal of Worlds, Genie, or special events, you are randomly awarded with chargers and collection items (or just a partial energy refund). Some chargers and collection items are frustratingly hard to come by, but there are certain spells and occasional "Lucky Hour" events that you can use to raise your odds of obtaining quest-critical collection items (and the majority of collection items are considered "quest-critical" when the game initially makes them available), while chargers can be bought with gems.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Menes and Nimiru fit this trope; they were childhood friends, but when they tried to take their relationship to the next level, Nimiru's father objected. Sternly. Sadly, this ended up driving Menes into Amrun's clutches and kick-starting the events of the game proper.
• Timed Mission: The Timed and Blitz level modes replace the standard moves limit with a time limit. The only difference between the two is that Timed Mode gives you a decent amount of time to work with relative to the level's complexity, while Blitz Mode gives you a hilariously small amount of time to start with and allows you to extend the time limit by clearing special chips.^note Blitz Mode is the Timed Mission equivalent of Step-By-Step Mode, which gives you a very small number of moves to begin with and allows you to earn more moves by matching special chips. Notably, Blitz Mode is the only special mode to be a Timed Mission equivalent of another special mode; the Skulls, Night, and Faded mode lack such equivalents.