Transformers: Earth Wars is a free-to-play mobile phone game developed by Space Ape and Hasbro. Basically, the game is Transformers meets Clash of Clans.
The game's small story mode is written by Simon Furman.
Transformers: Earth Wars provides examples of:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: You gain access to combiners on the final SP level set. It's also a Bait-and-Switch, as you only can only use them in a few single player levels. You'll need to unlock 3 star (or 4 for an extra weapon) of all the component bots to actually unlock them permanently.
- Allegedly Free Game: Internet commentator Jim of the Jimquisition once did a story on someone who spent several thousand dollars on this game trying to unlock particular characters.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: When you first unlock Optimus Prime or Megatron, they will likely be much more powerful than your other robots at that point, as your starting bots will be of weakest one star variety and the given leader will be a two star version, and leaders have slightly higher stats than other same-level characters. Downplayed later, when you start unlocking three star characters, who can eventually reach higher levels.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The combiners are only summoned for a brief period of time during which a player will attempt to do as much damage to the enemy base and defenders as possible. However, depending on how many stars the player has unlocked for the component Transformers, they might be torn to shreds by the base defenses before being able to do much.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Not a surprise given the game genre. Crystals are purchasable as consumables and are required to unlock new characters. The game does give you a free crystal every 8 hours (although the characters unlocked this way are almost always of one or two star varieties with a three star version being extremely rare, there are also a large number of boosts and currency in the reward pool for these crystals), and getting good scores in events usually grants a free character crystal.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Starscream's plotting never ends well for him, as is usual for the franchise. After all, he's the Trope Namer for The Starscream.
- Fans of Ultra Magnus and Star Saber may be annoyed by their portrayal here, as Magnus is treated as being insanely jealous that Hot Rod inherited the Matrix and became Rodimus Prime while Star Saber (initially The Ghost and mentioned as being an instructor at the Autobot war academy) is introduced as a pompous parody of a Hot-Blooded hero who the other Autobots treat as a joke, despite him actually being quite powerful.
- Character Class System: Unlocked bots come in a few varieties:
- Warrior - High hit points, (relatively) low damage who operate in melee.
- Gunner - Standard Glass cannon, long range shots but can't take a hit.
- Air - Characters who specialise in air strikes.
- Medics - Healers and Support Bots.
- Special - The class given to bots who don't fall into the standard categories. They range from Summoners, snipers to scouts (low damage, but with the ability to dodge cannon and mortar fire) and the leader characters.
- Composite Character: Characters with multiple well-known designs tend to have some amount of amalgamation done to them.
- Leozack is characterized similar to his original self from Victory, but is based on a mixture of his Timelines design and Deathsaurus's Combiner Wars figure as the sole torso component of Liokaiser.
- Barricade has the personality of his G1 self, but uses a designore evocative of his Film incarnation.
- Cosmetically Different Sides: In the same vein as the toys, with a single exception whenever an Autobot is introduced with a new ability expect a Decepticon to have access to the same.
- Crossover:
- Storyline events starting April 2017 start a storyline involving Optimus Primal and the other Megatron from Beast Wars to join what has otherwise been a fairly pure Generation 1 Roster.
- The October 2019 update adds a new story involving G.I. Joe and Cobra teaming up with the 'Bots and 'Cons.
- Later events add Transformers Armada Megatron and Generation 2 Optimus as playable characters.
- Dangerous Deserter: Both Straxus and Deathsaurus are portrayed as this, being solo Decepticons who rival Megatron in terms of raw power. Straxus is later brainwashed into thinking he's a loyal follower, while Deathsaurus tags along with the Decepticons for his own amusement.
- Early-Bird Cameo: The final upgrades for base buildings are Metroplex for Autobots and Trypticon for Decepticons. Eventually the actual titans themselves make their way into the story.
- Excuse Plot:
- There's a minor plot involving a MacGuffin that allows combiners to combine. The main gameplay becomes from raiding other player camps.
- The weekly events tend to be full of these moving the story along from one MacGuffin to the next. With each storyline chunk lasting 3-6 weeks, usually ending with an event usually rewarding the bot at the centre of the current plot.
- Godzilla Threshold: Metroplex and Trypticon are treated this way. Despite everything they've done to advantage their side over the other, both Autobots and Decepticons are very hesitant to awaken their respective titans. Only when Unicron comes within a hair of possessing Cybertron itself, do they bring them online. The very next storyline and gameplay feature is about putting them back under.
- Good Colors, Evil Colors: Autobot base machinery is yellow and Decepticon bases focus on purple. Additionally, Autobot bases will always be on a green grassy area, while Decepticon bases are on a barren Desert.
- Green Aesop: The Helio Harvester was introduced with a questline dedicated to the Autobots and Decepticons fighting over Shockwave's prototype for sustainable solar energy after seeing that their typical Energon mining facilities are accelerating the Earth's global warming effects, as well as causing the same energy crisis that forced their exodus from Cybertron to begin with. In the end, Optimus and Megatron agree to a temporary truce so they can pool their resources to assemble one for each faction due to seeing firsthand that making one incorrectly can have catastrophic consequences.
- The Medic: Several Transformers are this such as Ratchet and Hook who can shoot Energon Grenades to heal allies in a big area.
- The Mole: Melody and Luca turn out to be this for G.I. Joe and COBRA respectively. The Autobots and Decepticons found out after walking in on their respective members making reports to their bosses.
- Mirror Universe: Shattered Glass characters were introduced in 2022. They're still treated as their regular factions so SG Megatron and Shockwave are part of the villainous Decepticons and SG Optimus Prime is part of the heroic Autobots.
- Mutually Exclusive Party Members: At the start, you need to choose between Autobots and Decepticons. Originally, you'd be stuck to your chosen faction, but a patch added unlockable opponents after you upgrade your HQ to level 8. You cannot put both factions to the same squad, and you cannot assemble combiners for the faction you didn't start as.
- Mythology Gag:
- There are at least two Furmanisms
in the game. - Lugnut's ability is the Punch of Kill Everything.
- There are at least two Furmanisms
- Orcus on His Throne: Deathsaurus' bio specifically paints him as one of these, being perfectly content to just sit back and let others do the fighting. It's explicitly mentioned that the main reason he does this is because he's absolutely secure in his power and fighting prowess, and so doesn't see the need to demonstrate that Asskicking Leads to Leadership. If he actually decides to fight, he's extremely dangerous to the point Megatron simply prefers to humour him rather than get on his bad side.
- Original Generation: This is the case for the twins Sentius Magnus and Sentius Malus, guardians of light and darkness respectively, who each wield half of the Sword of Balance.
- Ramming Always Works: Several characters' special abilities involve transforming and then ramming whatever's in their way.
- Rate-Limited Perpetual Resource: Alloy and energon, as well as omega energon, can be mined indefinitely. But there's only so much your harvesters can actually hold before the harvesters stop working. You can transfer the resources to the appropriate storage building, but they also have limited space determined by their level. If you try to transfer more of a resource than your silos have room remaining for, the excess is lost.
- Temporary Online Content: Haven't played the game in a while? Sorry, there's no way to catch up on events you've missed, meaning a player can be absolutely lost when characters mention events that occurred in previous events. For example, HISS Soundwave and Vamp Hound (who both transform into vehicles from the G.I. Joe franchise) were rebuilt after going MIA in a previous event by Cobra and G.I. Joe respectively. If you missed that event, then their new forms may result in confusion.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge explicitly come from the future, and so are careful not to muck about too much in case they accidentally erase themselves from the timeline. While it's possible they're from an alternate timeline and won't be affected by any changes they make, they wisely decide not to take the chance.
