Ikariam vs Shop Heroes
Ikariam
Ikariam is an online empire-building MMO strategy game that partly resembles games like The Settlers Online and Sparta: War of Empires, and yet manages to offer something else that's entirely unique. In this game, you play the role of a leader of a Greek polis (city) and it is your sacred duty to develop your polis' infrasructure and economy, build up an army to defend said polis and attack other poleis, as well as to bring about new technological discoveries that will aid the growth of your empire.Ikariam may feel like every other browser-based MMO strategy game, but once you get into the game, you'll quickly realize how much more depth this game has and how exciting it is to play the game. It's definitely not easy to succeed in Ikariam - only the best leaders and strategists will manage to get to the top... Are you among these few?
Shop Heroes
Shop Heroes is an incredibly fun and addictive, medieval/fantasy shop simulation that has some RPG elements. In this game, you play as a shopkeeper with a newly established shop that provides various types of RPG adventurers with their weapons, armor, and accessories. As opposed to only selling them, you will also need to hire crafters to craft the said items, and each crafter has their own sets of skills while each item will require certain sets of skills to craft. Thankfully, you can hire more than one crafter (eventually) and hence, you will be able to produce more than a few selected categories of items later down the road.These items can then be sold to the RPG adventurers who approach you at your shop. Selling to them, however, usually means that you'll be selling at market price, though you are given the option to lower your prices to earn Hearts or use Hearts to inflate your prices. Since most adventurers would want a very specific item to buy, which you may not have available, you can also use Hearts to change their minds. Naturally, trying to suggest a closer alternative to buy would cost you fewer Hearts.
The game also has RPG elements where you can recruit and send adventurers into various dungeons to earn special crafting materials that these dungeons only provide. There's PvP as well, where you can assemble a team of 5 to battle a randomly selected player's team of your bracket. Not to mention, you can even group up with other shopkeepers via guilds and work together on weekly challenges to win freebies, in addition to cooperatively building up the guild facilities so as to obtain a better guild-wide buff.
Shop Heroes is a game that is one of its kind because it not only managed to flawlessly merge both shop simulation and RPG into a fun and exciting package, but also to provide its game completely free. You can advance, albeit at a slower pace, in this game without spending a single cent if you like, but of course, if you enjoyed playing the game, you might want to spend some cash just to show your support.