Bonza Word Puzzle 12+

I really enjoy this game. Ads are minimal and although there's the option to pay for some puzzle packs, I've been playing for a few years and haven't spent a dime. I'd love to spend the 13,000+ coins I've accumulated on new Showcase Packs if anymore ever become available though. For now I'm just playing the daily shuffles and occasional bonus puzzles.

Some of my favorites are the mystery clue puzzles for their extra challenge. I also like having the option of being able to get a small clue (or several if I need them) by watching a short ad. I keep the sound off and the ads are short so they don't bother me at all.

Highly recommend this one if you enjoy word puzzles.

So I’ve been playing a couple of weeks now and I have some opinions. First, by and large, it’s a solid word puzzle game with a good premise and decent execution. The UI could use a little bit of fine tuning, especially on phone screens where the limited space makes accurate selecting of pieces a bit too much trial and error. But that’s whatever. Lots of puzzle games suffer a bit on phone screens. There are two areas, however, that impact the fun of the game. 1. The random nature of the daily puzzle is suboptimal. Frankly, combining the daily puzzle with the user submitted puzzles is a bad idea. The daily puzzle should be the central draw to bring players into the game each day. Therefore they need to be good. As is? Sometimes there’re good, sometimes they’re not. They either need to have better curation or they need to be made by the devs, not farmed out to the players. 2. The puzzle should be making words to fit the category NOT trying to figure out the category. I’ve gotten stuck several times. If I’m struggling because I can’t figure out how the pieces apply to the category, that’s fine. In those cases it’s me playing (and failing) at the game I opted into. But when I struggle because the category is hidden and nothing is fitting together, it feels like a cheap trick. It doesn’t feel good. That’s not the point of the puzzle. But hey, even with those issues I’m still playing.

I had the luxury of playing this game for YEARS, since I was in high school! (Almost ten years now) and I have had periods where I don’t play as much, but recently I’ve been playing before bed to help relieve some anxiety I’ve been feeling. I had never updated the game since I got it (I don’t like to update things unless it’s absolutely necessary) and then I was stuck on a puzzle and tried to do my usual “watch ad for free hint” but no matter what it would not play an ad and wouldn’t give me the hint. So I decided to update the app not knowing all of this ad stuff happened. I can’t play a SINGLE level without seeing an ad. All the levels are made available to you (before you had to earn them with coins) so the coins they are begging you to buy don’t even matter! Every time I open the app I’m bombarded with a pop up to buy things. It’s ridiculous! Obviously the game has no interest in being usable and only cares about money. So beyond disappointed. I’m thinking of deleting this game despite how much I’ve loved it over the years. Too many ads and the fact that every level is now available to me instead of having to earn it takes away the play value for me. Plus, if you don’t need coins to unlock levels, what do you need them for?? Scammers!! I’m so sad :(((