Bus Traffic Fever!

This game is fun and addictive. I just got to level 1,194 and they’ve added another fun element. I’ve abandoned a lot of other games because they aren’t as advertised, the developers don’t maintain them and they become less fun as time goes on. This game keeps getting more fun. The ads are well placed, so they don’t interfere with game play. The timing of the ads allows me to enjoy the game, and also pay attention to the ads instead of angrily deleting them like I do when they interfere with a game. This is the only app I’ve ever made a purchase from the ads, and I’ve done that three or four times. Don’t get me wrong. The ad placement is nice, but it’s not what makes this game a big hit with me. It’s a fun game to begin with, and the developer keeps it maintained, glitch-free, and routine improvements.

The game is designed to force you to either watch ads to get through a level or buy the ad free version. It’s not just that you have to watch an ad to start the level, go to the next level, or restart a failed level, it’s that the game is designed in such a way that you must use a power to complete which requires coins earned at a slow rate or only has a watch ad option to use. For example, sometimes the level begins with the loop almost completely full of one color, but all the buses of that color are in the middle of the grid lock without enough spaces to free one. Other times, the seat count of the buses on the outer rim is intentionally too high to force you to use up all your spaces and use the buy space option. Sometimes the powers themselves contribute to the game forcing you to watch an ad - like the VIP parking space option will cause people to enter from the right instead of staying with progression on the left or filling the buses pulls from the back of a line instead of the loop. The most galling is that if you have full spots, but the loop would slowly fill the buses and open a spot the game will instead pop up the “out of spaces” warning and force you to watch an ad to free up space and continue or restart. You can hold an option to watch the buses fill and free up spots, but it stays locked in the pop up that forces you to watch the ad.

I like this game, to start. The concept is fun, it’s colorful, it’s easy. Good game to just waste some time. However, that time wasted is actually properly WASTED when you basically have to watch ads to win. I will say, so far it’s not “pay to win”. No mandatory micro-transactions to buy powerups. But sitting through at least one to two ads at minimum to win a round does end up feeling like it’s pay to win. The way it works, as per the ads, you’ve got a bunch of little people of different colors walking around a little track and you have to send cars of corresponding colors to remove those people from the track. However, you only get 4 parking spots open to put these cars. And sometimes, you have to send cars to the spots that have no people in the track, essentially filling a spot just to get to the color you need. And sometimes you have to do that so many times that you run out of parking spots for the colors you DO need. And the game solves this issue for you by allowing you to watch ads to open more parking spaces. Sometimes the level is DESIGNED to have you run out of the free parking spots so you’re basically forced to watch an ad to open more spaces to finish the level. I’m on level 18 so far and this has been the strategy for the majority of the levels so far. And we’re not talking quick ads or playable ads either. We’re talking back to back 30 second ads. So if you need to open, say, 3 extra parking spots, you might be forced to waste 3 minutes of your time just to pass the level. That might not sound like a lot, but times that by 10 levels and I’ve just wasted 30 minutes of my life watching ads for a mobile game. It’s a waste of time and it’s a blatant money grab by the developers. If I have to watch ads to pass your game, you’ve made a bad game.