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.

I love that you don’t need to wait a certain time or pay coins to play each level. You also don’t have to watch ads at all to play or you have the option to pay to remove ads. Incredible and I would happily pay for this game even if its a paid game. You have the option to watch ads for second chances and such but all the levels so far are winnable without. I took off one star because at some point in the 200s all the “hard” levels are basically just guessing game and its luck not skill. I am happy with the 200+ levels I got to enjoy and will uninstall now, as there’s really very little skill element and planning when every bus is a ?. I find the planning part to be the most fun and do not enjoy the later levels at all. I do appreciate this dev team a lot for how they decided to monetize this game. Very reasonable. The game itself is also fun and addicting when the whole map isn’t ?.