Frustrating and too Ad ridden – Block Puzzle Wood Review

I get it, ad revenue is where it’s at, and honestly the placement of the ads after each failure makes sense. I’m not complaining about the inclusion of ads in general. The issue is that a typical run before failure (at least for me) is maybe a minute or so, with some variation for really good and really bad runs. In app ads across the board have gotten obnoxious about not really notifying you when you can skip them, and some of the ones you can’t skip are up to 15 seconds long, plus another 5 seconds to close the splash screen after the video, sometimes even with one additional screen to close before you’re finally back to the game (that’s not even the voluntary ones that you can use to get one reattempt). The reality is that it almost feels like you spend 50% of your time in app watching ads, and the other 50% playing the game (probably isn’t exactly that, but believe me it feels like it). It’s not even the ads themselves that get me though: This game appears to be a relaxing puzzle game on the surface, but it has one, infuriating factor: randomness. The game starts you with a clear 8x8 board and gives you three random blocks. Once you place those three, you get three more mostly random blocks and keep placing until you can’t place one or more of those three blocks. I say mostly random, because typically you get at least 1 block you can place, but the other two are completely random (at least I haven’t gotten a batch of 3 impossible blocks yet, but I have gotten batches with only one placeable). At face value, that amount of randomness would seem fine. My issue is that these random blocks don’t give you a chance a lot of times, so you can have a game going really well, or even have just started your run, but get completely screwed by getting 2 3x3 blocks that you can’t place, and no way to use your playable block to clear enough space to keep the game going, you just have to accept your loss. In a puzzle game, it just feels bad to lose to RNG instead of your own mistakes. The only way to keep going is to watch a 30-60 second long ad and use your replay for another 3 random blocks that could equally screw you (plus after your first replay, you don’t get any additional ones, so you could watch a long voluntary ad just to lose one turn later and be thrown into another 15 second long ad before you can start a new run). Even if it’s at least another game mode, I want logic that at least gives you a chance. I’m not saying that every piece needs to all be able to go immediately on the board or to remove all loss condition to make the game easy, but I would like the game to make me think about how to use what I have to keep going, or to make me play carefully so I don’t block myself off. You could have longer runs then that could last a lot longer, so the ratio of ads also wouldn’t feel so obnoxious.
Review by Evenir on Block Puzzle Wood.