Videogame Guardians
TL;DR: A middle of the pack incremental game. Feels like a reskin of Endless Frontier. It pulls in some mechanics from other games but just ends up feeling more complicated rather than more interesting.
I love me a good incremental game, and so I wanted to like Videogame Guardians, but from the start we had a bunch of problems. Firstly there's a VERY verbose (though admittedly kinda funny) intro sequence that takes a long time to skip through and you have to wade through before starting the game. This always puts me off in a game, I get teaching the game but it was VERY HARD to just start mashing buttons.
Too Many Systems
Once I got into the game though I understood why they needed to have the tutorial. There's a ton of systems going on here, multiple currencies, different ways to level up your characters, money to collect and characters to evolve. Unfortunately this feels like someone just took all of the F2P mechanics which tend to be successful and tried to log them all into one game.
There's nothing wrong with Videogame Guardians, there's just nothing it knocks out of the park. It has an interesting Research metagame progression which awards you progress at a more or less fixed rate, but because of the ability to collect and evolve such a diverse range of characters everything just gets muddy.
If you like hero collection, I'd suggest playing a hero collector game, and if you like incrementals, you should probably just play another incremental. Almost A Hero has many of the same advancement mechanics with a much simpler and cleaner interface and interaction.
The Good Parts
Though in the same vein as Endless Frontier you don't have to do a ton of clicking (which is the worst part of any incremental). This alone makes it worth considering (though again Almost A Hero solves this better with different rings to allow different behaviors from the player on this part).
I wound up putting in a few hours over a few days. As with all idlers this feels good to come back to, and one of my favorite features they implement is actually the vault, where rather than just dumping all your coins in your account you have a number of charges you can apply to give you your current bounty of coins. This lets you boost your production and get a higher payout which you can't normally do and feels pretty good. This was the only unique feature that came through compared to most incrementals however.
Monetization
The game is free to play and the monetization doesn't feel too invasive. You can watch ads for minor bonuses or spend gems to guarantee adding rare creatures to your team, though at a somewhat shockingly high price (One hero guaranteed recruit ~$10). The game doesn't feel like you HAVE to monetize which is good, but the choices there if you want to spend also don't look that great (I never felt the urge to get out my wallet).
The Verdict
Generally speaking, I'd say skip this one unless video game theming or the humorous interludes are a large draw for you.
Reviewed Version: 1.3.1
AppStore Rating at time of review: #39 in Adventure (4.5 Stars, 420 Reviews)