Age of Solitaire : Build City

I had obviously played solitaire before. Who hasn’t? But after I saw this game advertised a few times I said why not? There’s nothing to lose. Well I am very glad I did because this game is very engaging. You wouldn’t think that simply adding on the concept that you could build something for winning would really change the game, but it definitely did for me. It provides more of a motivation to keep playing and/or go back to playing if you had to stop. The only problem is too many ads. Now I know that people say that about a lot of games but I never really cared that much before. But here you’ll get to a new level or something and you have to watch an ad. And then when the game looks like it’s starting again - oh no! Here comes yet another ad. That’s not fair. Doubling up on commercials just sounds greedy. So please stop it. But that’s my only complaint which means it really is a good game.

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I’ve played a ton of this game. It’s a nice way to zone out. But there are a few bugs with ads that make it really frustrating. Ads sometimes pause other audio (like podcasts or music) and then the podcast fails to restart after the ad is done. When you restart the podcast yourself, when you come back to the game you are immediately bombarded with another ad which pauses the background podcast again. They game can get stuck in this cycle. It seems dependent on what ad service is being called. Some ads are ok. Some ads have no sound enabled (the best). This happens with the phone set to silent and the in-game audio set to silent. I have very much enjoyed this game and would pay a small amount of money to take ads away forever. Another bug with ads is sometimes you can accidentally suspend the app on iPhone X depending on where you rest your hand while playing. This causes ads to spam as the game thinks you have re-opened the app after suspending it. An example is accidentally swiping any native apple menu from the top or bottom of the screen. I would change my review to 5 stars if the app consistently played nicely with background audio and didn’t get stuck in ad loops after suspending the app.

...for a couple things. First, I don’t mind paying for an ad free experience but $4.99 for a solitaire game (with one variation only at that) is a tad steep. Throw in a few different variations. Make the difficulty match the number of points you get to upgrade the village (e.g. Klondike only nets you a hundred or so points while Spider nets you double that) Still, the ad free version is far more enjoyable to play and I’m old school and love Klondike. Second, why is it so difficult for companies to implement syncing of game data through Game Center? Yes, you technically can sync your game through Game Center...manually...every time you switch devices (e.g. iPhone to iPad and back again). Why not sync data up after each game and down in first load? Make this a pro feature—no ads AND automatic sync—if you must but please make this a feature. Third, iPads still exist and I’m assuming many people, like myself, use them in landscape more, especially when charging. A lot of apps seem to forget this and this one is no exception. Please provide a landscape mode for this game.

This is a really fun take on the normal solitaire apps! I find myself addicted to wondering what I will unlock next on the map. The app is free to play but does have ads, however the majority of the time you click on them to get things like extra shuffles or redo. For a free game I really found the ads unobtrusive, and since I know they help the developer stay in the business of making games I don’t mind. My only suggestion would be to make the menu with the retry button more visible? Right now the menu is hidden in the pause button up in the right hand corner and for a while I had no idea it was there. Because of that the gameplay was a little awkward in the beginning.

Game is very fun with a touch of challenge compared to some of the other solitaire games out there. Love the shuffle and undo features. For those who are complaining about not being able to earn the boosts (shuffle, undo and hint), if you are able to spend the 1.99 to remove adds, you can earn them! Once the adds are removed a group of balloons will pop up on the map (level) and if you click it before it goes away you can watch an add, anywhere between 10 and 30 seconds and you will earn random boosts. You'll have several opportunities each game to earn the boosts so keep an eye out for the balloons! Have fun!