Diamond Valley
I've recently learned better than to allow myself to be sucked into little promotional games like this because I know I'll make myself review them. My resolve broke down for Diamond Valley because it offered sweepstakes, and I love myself a good prize. Each of the drawings has an entry fee, which you pay with currency earned by playing the game. With more Google Play Points, new phones, and Duolingo merch available, I nearly completed the game, earning all but two of the thousands of gems available to me and entering most of the drawings I was interested in. I'm still waiting to hear back about all my sweet winnings, but I'll tell you for free that I didn't have an ounce of fun earning those gems.
Diamond Valley is a basic, unfortunately janky, puzzle platformer. There's a bit of a mystery to uncover in the story, but it's revealed exclusively through lengthy exposition and is barely engaging. The diamonds remain the only real draw and kept me playing long after the lousy controls, frustrating puzzles, and capitalist schlock made me want to run far away. Said schlock is especially overdone, forcing reminders down your throat that this is, in fact, just a promotion for an app store rewards program.
The first major area you are directed to in the game's introductory sequence is a cluster of three skyscrapers. Each houses multiple floors of actual real-life advertising, trying to sell you on garbage big-name games available on Google Play. While still entirely stupid, they'd be easier to overlook if they weren't each tied to a full sweepstakes entry's worth of gems. Instead, I started my playthrough of Diamond Valley walking through in-game advertisements for a dozen games other than the one I was actually playing. To add insult to injury, the other side of the map holds a locked door that you can only pass as a platinum or diamond member of the real-life rewards program, which would cost me anywhere from $500 to $2000 to achieve right now. While I don't know what that door hides gameplay-wise, the event screen shows how many gems you're missing out on by not being able to access it, taunting me that I can't earn one last raffle entry for a green plush owl without selling one of my kidneys.
I was actually pretty excited to start playing this game before it released. I refreshed my browser dozens of times on launch day just to see what it was like. Now I know that not all of Google's games are made with the heart that I've come to expect. I can't resist a good sweepstakes, even though the biggest giveaway I've ever won was on a Twitch stream of 30 people, so I'm not surprised that I played Diamond Valley to near-completion. However, I would absolutely not recommend that to anyone else. I don't know if the game will still be available after the drawings conclude, but at that point, the only value to playing it is from a preservation mindset, so you probably don't need to waste your time. Hopefully, when Google releases another game that catches my interest, I'll have a little better discernment about whether it's worth my attention.
The game is available online here (as of 7/2/24): https://diamondvalley.withgoogle.com/intl/ALL_us/game/
