Bejeweled Classic 4+

Bejeweled has been with me for a while. My dad had an iPad (that I still have lol) that he gave to me to win him a game. He didn’t actually need help. He was just like my mom, on level 300+ but not on candy crush saga. Couple years later, we just stopped. He deleted the app, (he wanted to delete it, he just got a bit bored and unchallenged) lost all his progress, and passed the iPad to me because he got a MacBook. I reinstalled the app on my phone two weeks ago. Still as I remember, but a bit harder. Zen is my favorite mode. It’s amazing how you can just calm down and match with those soothing noises when the gems clad together or you get a supernova gem. I love Bejeweled, but I wish it wouldn’t crash. The more I use the app, whenever I go into any mode, (Zen, ice storm, diamond mining, ect.) everything freezes. It’s weird, but it’s not too often. Other than that, I’m obsessed. Barely any ads, it’s calming with sound effects (THAT YOU CAN TURN OFF), and so much more. It can be thrilling when your timed, but soothing when you have anxiety. I would rate it 5/5 stars, but for me I don’t like the ever-so-often freezes. Thanks for reading !

I've been a big fan of Bejeweled Classic since I found it included in the freeware that came with my flat-screen iMac over 20 years ago. It's been one of two steady go-to games on every iPhone I've had. I've never experienced the kinds of problems I've seen in reviews here, though there have been UI issues on my last two phones.
All that seems to have changed with the latest update. A big problem is that the game board is suddenly half the size it's always been, an inexplicable change, as far as can tell. It's still playable, but barely. Restarting it didn't change anything, so it doesn't appear to be a glitch. A much bigger problem, however, is that the game now quits abruptly after about 10 seconds.
Deleting and re-downloading didn't help. Just erased all my data, of course, but I'm not real concerned about levels. I reached the end of them a long time ago.
However - I did discover something new. I hadn't seen the developer's privacy policy before. It is, in a word, unrestricted. Tracking and data sharing are completely unlimited. This alone might be enough to make me delete the game. I had no idea over all these years that it was so permissive. My fault, for sure, for not checking, but I haven't looked at the app on the store for years.
So, I guess this is (a long) goodbye to an old friend who seems to have gone to seed or something. I'll sure miss the it.

Look, I get it, they gotta get their revenue from somewhere. But the amount of ads I run into is absolutely ridiculous. I get an ad as soon as the game opens. Fine. But then I get another ad as soon as I click which type of game I want to play. Pretty annoying to get a double ad when I haven’t even played yet. But it gets worse. If I lose/time runs out/no more moves, it offers to let me watch an ad to keep going. That on it’s own isn’t so bad. Where it gets bad is when if I click no, it makes me watch an ad anyways for no reward, and then makes me watch ANOTHER ad after I get back to the home screen and click on another game option. Not to mention that every time I think I close an ad, it forces me to wait another 5 second to click another x to close it, and each ad will do this multiple times. It makes me click 3 or more separate arrows/x’s to close one ad. I understand they need revenue, but this is too much.

Oh and the sounds and music glitch often. Sometimes the sounds and voice will stop playing, or the music will play when it’s not supposed to. What I’ve mainly encountered is sounds and voice not playing if I pause and in zen mode I’ll have the ambient sounds on, pause, and then the music will overlap the ambient sounds.

I would really love this app if it weren’t for the highly intrusive ads. There are more user-friendly ways to get revenue.