I recently released a game for iOS/Android and we've been getting great reviews so far, except for a few who didn't realise that the game isn't entirely free, it's just free to try, and at a certain point in the story, you'll have to pay a one-time fee to unlock the rest of the game. I know that we're not communicating this well enough (here's the game if anyone is wondering), but I'm also having trouble figuring out the best way to do this. Does anyone have examples of games with a similar model? I'd love to see how they've solved this.
There are way too many to honestly remember, but Playdead's INSIDE and Oxenfree immediately come to mind. I mean, you can make it perfectly clear that it's free to start in the app description, but I guarantee you that no matter what you do, you're bound to get the typical one star "Make this free, why isn't this free you liars!?" BS reviews.
I would simply move the text up about being free to play then you have to pay to unlock the rest. It’s right at the bottom after a lot of text so people might just not see it