Age of 2048™

The problem is that I am unable to purchase ad removal. There is a button to remove ads BUT there is NO option to purchase ad removal. I get receive a message telling me that removing ads will remove ads BUT there is NO button that allows me to PURCHASE it. Therefore, I am STUCK with watching ads every time which is annoying during a game where I have to wait at least 5 seconds to remove it. I am removing this app after realizing I cannot play ad-free even if I want to pay for it! The game itself is good and challenging.

I do not understand how this game passed Apple App Store’s quality control and standards. It is not wrong for a developer to want to make money from their product. But it is very wrong to do it dishonestly and to resort to trickery. What NLABSOFT does is it misleads or plain tricks you into clicking on the screen item which then causes either an ad to play or to show an IAP offer. I’ll give a couple examples. You play the game then see a hot air balloon float across the screen. It offers “help” buy it interrupts the whole game. Another example is the restart button/feature. You can choose to restart the game and level. Ok. You press on it. It asks if you really want to do this. You press yes. You see an ad play. BUT THEN you get another panel after the ad which asks: “do you want to start the level with building Lvl#x?” The options you get not “yes” and “no”. You see “cancel” and “yes”. That is absolutely different. “Cancel” implies that your previous action to restart could be reversed AFTER you had already watched the advertisement play. IF you press “YES” they do not warn you that you will be forced to watch another advertisement. You can make these offers but it is very wrong and dishonest to not fully inform what the offer implies if you respond to it by interacting with the screen. As far as visual design the game is ok. One thing I strongly dislike is very cheesy, generic, stock soundtrack which has nothing to do with what you see on the screen and the sound effect when moving the tiles. It’s like free sounds they downloaded online.

You know what would make this even better? Loot boxes! Gems! Longer ads! Mandatory Facebook logins! “Share with your friends!” I know you’ve designed this to be another obnoxious freemium game born out of avarice rather than passion, but you can do even better. Beating level 3 is equivalent to getting an 8192 in the original 2048. I can’t imagine what the higher levels expect from you. Basically, it’s designed to be nearly impossible without buying power-ups. Ads, ads, ads. An ad before every game would be okay, but it also plays an ad every time you leave and reopen the app. I’m normally okay with ad-supported software, but it’s a little overboard here, and when combined with necessary micro-transactions, it’s obnoxious. I wish developers would just pick between IAP and ads. The isometric view is aesthetically pleasing, but I find myself accidentally swiping the wrong way far more often than in the traditional orthogonal view. It wouldn’t bother me if it had free undos, but no, those need to be purchased in the shop. The app itself seems professional. It’s a nice cosmetic makeover of 2048, the graphics are fine, and I haven’t run into any bugs, but it reeks of all that is wrong in the current state of monetization of gaming. Developers deserve to make money off of their work, but the constant “give me money” reminders in these kinds of apps is a major turn-off.