Mowing Mazes

What a refreshing game. Well designed, fun “quests,” and a basic gameplay structure that’s just hard enough to make you stop and think every once in awhile. No timers, no power ups to buy, and while the keys needed to unlock each level are limited, they refresh pretty quickly, or you can (usually) watch an ad to get a couple more. To be honest, I appreciate games that don’t just let me play forever without forcing me in to a break, so the time gating is a genuine value add for me. The free version does have ads, but they’re mercifully brief by mobile game standards, with most seeming to run around 15 seconds or so. My only slight complaint is that I wish they had a flat fee to kill ads forever, even if it’s higher than the monthly rate. I’d never pay monthly for a game, even one as good as this, but I’m always happy to pay devs for their work as long as it’s one-and-done.

The gameplay in this is great, I have been picking it up every opportunity to get a few levels done and try to stay competitive in the multiplayer league. Zipping through the levels and solving the puzzles has been a fun challenge with some changing level elements that add an interesting twist. I wanted to leave a review with 4 stars just to mention my displeasure that they’ve switched to a subscription-based ad removal system which also removes the time required to wait for more keys to continue playing. Like I get why they would but I’d much sooner pay more for a one-time fee like many other games instead. Also I’ve somehow only experienced this with this game, but the ads come on unmuted and will stop anything else I’m listening to at the same time, it’s incredibly disruptive and I’m sure designed this way to drive people to pay in to the subscription service. I hope there will be more level variation added in the future, maybe similar to the other mowing game, right now it’s a rotation of the same few level elements in different combinations.

I love Protostar! I have Super Starfish and Literally Just Mowing and Dream Hopper, and I love them all. When I saw a new game from them, I jumped on it. Unfortunately, it just isn’t as good. Starfish has no energy system. You can swim through the galaxy as long and as many times as you want. You can decorate your sanctuary with pretty sparkly plants and collect fish. There’s plenty to make you happy when you open the game. Dream Hopper never fails to relax me and I love reliving the random dreams. Literally Just Mowing has creature collection, the toolboxes, and mower customization. It’s a relaxing pace. This game has…zipping at top speed through mazes for coins and stars. I’m only in Silver league and I already can’t keep up as a free player. I don’t care about changing my skin or eye color. I haven’t seen a single outfit offered. Half the time the toolbox guy offers me real money deals instead of toolboxes. The quests aren’t worth the time they take (one guy challenged me to finish five more mazes and I got absolutely nothing at the end of it). I’m honestly really sad about it. After the initial fun of unlocking the NPCs, it gets boring and simply isn’t worth it.