The game is good yes but the limited turns and the expensive IAP make it just a little less good. I think that they could still have unlimited turns but have IAP for the gold coins and still make money and people would be much happier with the game. I played for about 2 hours yesterday and managed to burn through all my turns. It was a great "demo" but I can't see my self remembering to go back to it after some turns have regenerated. Oh well I might keep it on the device to see if they change it later but I don't see my self going back to it.
Bingo. As the wall of text a page or so back (not the post I'm replying to ) points out the app store economics are what they are, but they are also clearly changing and we are paying higher prices, either through freemium mechanics, or higher purchase price point for more games today than a year ago. That said, this is not a $7 title, not on the iOS app store, not on Steam, not on XBLA, not PSN, not anywhere. This game, though a very clever concept and charmingly implemented, is rather rudimentary in the under the hood work - graphics and touch input aside, this is the sort of coding project they assign to CS juniors in terms of the grid and placing and replacing the objects via user input and location interactions. It has a wide, casual puzzler appeal, and should have been priced to reach that wide audience, not priced to inspire people to realize they can just keep uninstalling and re-installing if they should run out of turns. It's already been cloned (the previously mentioned Yeti Town), and with the simple mechanics will likely be cloned and remixed by other devs in the future, and when your only hook is that you were the first because the gameplay is trivial to duplicate, don't shoot yourself in the foot with a price tag that becomes the freemium equivalent of a gun to the head if you don't want to deal with the turn recharging/purchasing. It's one thing to resist the urge to go $1, I applaud that much, but you need to realize that for $2 or $3, most people complaining would have already hit the buy button - you clearly already had their attention or they wouldn't be complaining, but without some way to get that attention back, those complaints are lost sales.
this game is aweosme so awesome that i tapped the buy button and input my password... only to realize after doing that... that i paid $7 at least i got 5000 coins for it ._. but still....
When I run out of turns, turn off the game and wait for moves to regenerate sometimes the moves regenerate and sometimes they don't. More often they do not regenerate.
Maybe you get free random bonus moves along the way? After working my way to zero again I tried moving my iPhone calendar a year into the future. I instantly got another 150 turns but nothing more. I can only assume the 150 move limit is to stop me using this method to get 525,600 free turns Still, would've been nice if it topped out at a thousand or something instead.
Someone stated before that you can uninstall/reinstall and get back to the "default" number of turns, so I guess I will be going down that road until: A) The devs fix the price for unlimited turns, or B) I get sick of jumping through hoops and just uninstall. Earning 150 moves by waiting and then capping it there is just pure garbage.
I don't really care what they charge for it. I'd certainly ignore Tannorexic's long rambling posts. Just because you say "you'd make more money at $1 than $7 because more than 7x more people will buy it" doesn't actually make it true. It's nice in theory, but a theory is all it is, and to base your entire business model on a theory backed by no evidence at all is hardly "business savvy," is it? Maybe Ford should sell their new cars for a dollar each. Think how many more they'd sell! So yeah, I don't care how much they charge for it because it's their game and they can do whatever they want with it. All I can do, as a consumer, is decide whether or not I want to pay it. I have no right to demand that they change the price, if I think it's too expensive, I just won't buy it. And for me, I won't. It's not that the price is an issue, it's just that with these freemium games I like to pay because I enjoy the game and I want to support the dev, which is why I made an IAP in Tiny Tower. While I enjoy Triple Town, I don't so much like to be forced to pay or have my experience crippled, which is what it does. If that's the way the game is, I would prefer everything to be up-front, rather than hidden in IAPs. Also, a note to the dev, some of the text in the store is completely unreadable on my 3GS so you might want to look at that.
Well, I am done talking about the IAP. It is what it is. So, getting back to the game, I think I found a bug. Take a look at the attached screenshot. My last turn was to put down a bear in the last open space. He turned into a tombstone and I should have gotten the game over popup. Instead I seem to be stuck here. The people are still running around, so it isn't locked up, but I am not being offered the next piece, and it also isn't showing the orange bar to allow me to end things. There is no way in the menu to end the current game, so I seem to be stuck here. Has anyone else seen this? If the developers are still around, what should I do next?
Force quitting and reloading should enable you to continue playing, until we figure out what is causing this and fix it.
I have put hundreds of hours (gosh I feel ashamed admitting that!) into Dungeon Raid, a game that was well worth $3. The same I feel about Junk Jack (which I know is not a puzzle game like this, but still) Oh and I waited all night, my turns were slowly increasing when I left the app at 130 turns. Guess how many I have now? 130 turns, it stopped regenerating turns, what's with that? I don't have a problem paying for it. I have a problem paying $7 for something that is without question overpriced in comparison to the amazing games in the app store. Had this been priced $3, I would have already purchased it. But $7? And you cannot compare this to the hamburger/movie/Starbucks argument. Because it is not that. It's an app in a marketplace in which it's highly overpriced, which is frustrating because it's a great game, but it unfortunately seems like a sad cash grab. $7 to unlock unlimited turns combined with consumables that also cost money? Yes. And how many lost sales are there which aren't even discussed here. All of the people who have simply deleted and left it by the wayside without any comments. I assume this means there is no consideration on the IAP cost, and never will?
Having looked at their official forums today, I gather they depend upon a small but loyal cadre of users who don't see issue with their current Facebook/Google+ "sales" model, which is consumable IAP, period. I would guess Spry Fox saw making any sort of outright purchase a threat to the web game revenue, because those posters aren't complaining about the $7 unlimited play price point, they're asking if they'll ever get such a wonderful offer as to play all they want to for a mere $7. I also wonder why the mobile version cuts out all the exploration and building of the web version? I want to like this game - there is a lot of depth and strategy here considering it's just a match 3 with random tiles, but I can't get embrace the sales model, if they're going to stick by the $6.99 price point to protect the web game, it'll just get deleted once the novelty wears off.
Whoa, those exploration aspects are pretty new, no? I can only hope they'll be added to the iOS version eventually!
That is a very good, true point there. This whole "consumable only" web model is very frustrating. I understand developers need to make money, and they deserve to make money, but the mentality behind this constant cash grab seems great for the sellers and terrible for the buyers. This isn't an MRI machine, or something that requires constant upkeep. The ROI is very different for an addictive (albeit fairly simple) game. We moved away from arcades to home gaming because we were tired of slamming quarters into machines. Now it seems we are going back to the stupid arcade model, which benefits no one but developers. There's minimal to no cost to keep the ship afloat, yet we have to "invest" constantly. Why?
played a few games, really enjoyed it, but the IAP price is too high for me at the moment, so i.. deleted it.
I really enjoyed this game.. i enjoyed it so much i paid the $6.99 IAP on my iphone 4 So I go to install it on my iPad2 and "restore unlimited turns" .. it asks for my password but nothing happens.. uninstall and reinstall game do the same thing and I'm still limited.. Please don't tell me this $6.99 IAP is per device.. I'm about to leave a very poor review if it is..
I only just found out about this website, I googled triple-town to see if others where actually paying the $6.99 to unlock. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. I got this game only a few hours after it came out.. I absolutely loved it. went to Tafe the next day and showed my circle of friends, they also loved it, we would all play on our lunch break and see who could get a better score, it was awesome. Until the next day when the free trial ran out, I had gone through my turns before them, and went to buy the full game and saw $7 and thought WTF? And the next day they had all complained about it too, every single one of us (there's 12) refused to pay $6.99 for the app. I'd hate the see the sales figures, I bet their horrendous. They would have made $12 instantly if it'd been $0.99 maybe even double at $1.99 .. And that's just my circle of friends! I can imagine how much this much happen all around the world. When 0/12 very big fans of a game isn't willing to pay that much to unlock, then there's something seriously wrong. I just read through the forums on a few different sites and have only seen maybe 4 people out of probably about 100 or so, actually claim to have bought the game. Those numbers are shocking, considering 99/100 really enjoy the game, and only 4 buyers. In a few weeks after sales figures come in I'm pretty sure the company will reduce the price, of course they wont admit it on here because then everyone will just hold off waiting for the reduction. I can nearly guarantee you that they will though, the numbers are just too bad. I don't think asking for a cheaper price is a crime, I'm not the only one,almost everyone is, so the minority will not pay $6.99 to unlock and the profit margin will be very small, that's if you even recuperate your losses. Thank you to the people on here that mentioned the reinstall cheat. I will be telling my friends, no money was lost because not one of us would ever consider paying that much for a game that wouldn't have cost much to develop. There's no reason for a price that high, none at all. You can't compare it to selling a car for $1, whoever said that is probably a 12 year old gamer on daddy's laptop, obviously cars cost alot of money to make, to sell and distribute, there's many costs to sell a car, car parts, staff salaries, designing, safety tests, the list goes on and on, that's why cars cannot be sold for $1. An iOS game, on the other hand, are commonly sold for a dollar, that's the average price point on the AppStore, so it's not insane to be complaining about the price at all. Especially a game that clearly would not have taken long to produce, it's a very simple layout, no fancy graphics, not fancy artwork, it's a very basic game but it has the logic factor, kind of like chess games on iOS, very simple to make, but there's that logic factor. Basically, it's a fun game, but production costs would have been very little, if not none, the price tag does not reflect the production costs, therefore, in my eyes, the price is unwarranted.
Downloaded, played, enjoyed. Too bad about the price cause what this does (for me anyways) is take a game that I would have told all my friends about to one that I would be embarrassed to tell my friends about. Would have purchased at $1 easily, considered at $2, hesitated at $3, $7 ... Umm, no.
