Tents and Trees Puzzles

The game itself is excellent, almost like a combination of sudoku and minesweeper and it’s wonderfully addicting. That said, the star system for unlocking packs is a little stupid. You eventually get to a point where even if you beat every level in the preceding pack, you either have to buy stars to unlock the next pack or check in every 6 hours for a couple of days until you get enough free stars to unlock the pack. Then you play for half an hour and you’re out of levels again. I get it, you want to make money off the game. So just do 15 second ads after each level with a pay option of $1.99 or whatever. Like literally every other game available. It’s great, I’d pay it. But the current progression model is just plain dumb and for that it loses a star.

This game is great and a lot of fun. The big downside is the ads. I know that ads are necessary. I get it. But 1) the ads appear cut off on my iPad. 2) you need to watch all the ads and play the game at a moderate to slow pace not to have to pay to unlock the levels. 3) often times, the same ad plays for the entire block of levels. 4) there are ads by Playrix all over the place that are misleading ads.

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I'm not upset that a developer wants to get paid for their work. I'm baffled they seem so clueless as to how to do that. I'd be more than happy to view an ad after every puzzle or to just pay $1 or $2 outright. But they give just enough of the game away that I'm satisfied with abandoning it once I hit the paywall. Their pay structure is nonsensical. Why are there coins at all? Just give away the levels you do for free and then sell packages of later, more difficult levels for $1/piece or something. It's like a programmer and artist designed a beautiful game, then handed it to their boss who ruined the consumer experience with a pay-to-play system that is utter nonsense. You make your users feel like they've been swindled with such an odd, unclear coin system, so many just turn away. And that's what I will be doing.

Great game - simple and fun and challenging, but by the time you get to 9x9 you still only get 2 points per board but need 100 points to unlock next grouping. You can only get 40 by playing the board, so they’re making you either buy next points or literally wait days while remembering to trigger the extra stars button. It’s deeply annoying. I’d rather pay a fee for the game and get no ads and/or higher point earnings each board. Even re-upping lives so that you can play after a few hours - like all the other games!

Love the logical mechanics of the game. It’s challenging and fun. But the game is ridiculously expensive if you don’t want to be constantly watching ads. Even if you do watch ads, you still can’t earn enough coins to unlock all the levels. This is an extremely simple game, but I’d still be happy to just pay $3 to unlock all the levels from the beginning. To buy enough coins to do that, you’d have to spend upwards of $30-$40. Yikes! And no thanks. When my coins run out, I’ll stop playing.