Bus Escape: Traffic Jam

I discovered this type of game platform recently and got hooked, but every app I tried was ridiculously hard, downright impossible, after 2-3 levels. This is the first one I tried where that wasn’t the case. It’s a good balance of moderate to difficult in rotating levels. However, OMG the ads are ridiculous. Yes, you can buy your way out of forced ads, but the price is too steep. I refuse to pay more than $5.00 to remove ads unless the app is of extremely high quality. This game is good but not that good, and all of them are a knock off of the other. However, everything else in this game is ad-fueled. Some levels literally have no solution without using a “power up” and once you run out, you have to pay coins or deal with ads. There’s no getting around it. What’s worse is some of the ads are disrespectful, ignoring your silent-mode on your phone and playing audio anyway, ridiculously long (90+ seconds), and an “X” to close out that is so hard to hit precisely that you end up in a loop of App Store, game, App Store, game. The other issue is some of the colors begin to look too much alike in higher levels, especially the blues. Overall I like the app but the ads are just too much.

From someone at level 500: One of the better ones out of all of these types of bus jam games, however some levels cannot be won without watching ads or using one of the extras. I like to challenge myself and try to win without using the extras or the 200 ticket or ad parking spot, but some levels are set up in the way that you HAVE to use these extras in order to win it. That’s kind of annoying since it’s supposed to be a puzzle game. Why make the puzzle unsolvable without watching an ad, spending a ticket, or using an extra? For this I’ve lowered my rating since my last review. Also- a few changes I’d like to suggest to the developers. Primarily, the red and the pink colours are too similar, same with green and teal, it’s too hard to tell the difference between them when you’re playing at night and don’t want the screen up full brightness, or have on the night shift mode. It would be nice to have them obviously different values (ex. dark red, light pink) or add a colorblind mode such as stripes etc. which would be easier to tell apart. Secondly, it really really REALLY needs an undo button! Something like pay 10 coins for first undo, 20 coins for second undo, and so on. I like to try to challenge myself to win without using the extra abilities but having to reset the whole level to try again for a minor mistake or a misclick is very frustrating. If you add these two features this game will be great.

This game is my kind of game in regard to logic and puzzling to the best outcome. However, i have deleted it for two main reasons. The first is the adds are intrusive and extensive. I shouldn’t have to completely mute my phone to avoid noise from the banner adds. I do understand that annoyance may promote some to spend the $10 to go add free and i do understand the need for adds to be able to provide the app to those wanting to just enjoy a game for a bit. However, the annoyance level did not make me jump for joy to spend $10 nor did it leave a good impression on me for the game as a whole. When waiting for the game to cycle after failure, adds came up that were in no way in alignment with the style of game and as it were- more annoying. Then if i chose to wait for the cycle to conclude, i could probably clean a room of my house. It was more efficient to reboot the app then to wait for all the adds to cycle through. The second issue I have with this is the level of chance is way to high to the point of not being able to compleat a level on tactics and foresight alone. Having to use the cheat several times in order to finish a level is not good gaming theory. It’s the balance of challenge verse achievable, and it would be easy to chalk it up to user error, but when ya have three cars left and you have to hope the one in the garage is the color you need, and its not- thats not achievable. Make it better and maybe it would be worth purchasing but as of now it is not.