Needs some work – 1010! Block Puzzle Game Review

This is one of those mindless stress-killer apps. I wouldn’t even call it a game, it’s more like a relaxing activity. I’ve been using the app for years to help me fall asleep mostly, but I’ll also open it up for a few minutes when I need to give my brain a little breathing room, or when I’m on hold (very common due to my work). I’ve never focused on my score, and re-starting has never bothered me... I’m literally just organizing blocks as a stress reliever. For that reason, it was worth it for me to purchase the ad-free upgrade, so I did. But the sudden pandemic crisis situation has put me in more situations where I’m stuck waiting, which has led to me spending more time on this app. As a result, I’ve started paying more attention to the app itself, and that’s given me some ammo to write a review. Most importantly, this game must have internal glitches/errors quite a bit. I noticed yesterday while playing that I was approaching my high score, and so I started paying attention to my score. Like I said, I play the app for seconds or minutes at a time, several times throughout the day, and it saves the board and score automatically as you go, so when you open the app, you always just pick back up where you left off. But now that I was paying attention to the score for the first time, I noticed that it started me from scratch one of the times I opened the app! It’s silly, honestly, but eclipsing my previous score was something I had started looking forward to. Now I’m certain that I’ve come close to high scores plenty of times, but because I close and re-open the app so many times a day, I’ve “lost” those boards and scores and simply never noticed until now. It’d be nice to get an explanation of how the score is calculated, too. I see an animated icon sometimes when I place a block, even if that placement didn’t result in any lines cleared. Do you get more points for eliminating multiple lines at a time? Are certain lines worth more than others, and does a line’s value depend on its position on the grid, or on the blocks that make up the line? Or both? Also, what are the stars for? What do they represent? Are they something that can be used/spent somehow? I haven’t a clue, and can’t find an explanation. I have 68,015 stars, but I have no idea what that means. Lastly, I have had to “restore purchases” on the app before, to get it to remember that I had purchased the ad-free upgrade, but I’ve only had to do that twice, so that’s not a huge deal to me. In closing, the app is fine as a mindless time-killer or stress-reliever, but if you’re going to analyze your moves and actually pay attention to your score, you might want to choose a different app.
Review by pastfacesfuture on 1010! Block Puzzle Game.