ColorFill - Puzzle Masterpiece 4+

Why is it so hard?

I adore this game. I truly do. But the fact is, there is such a spike of difficulty right after level 5, it just doesn’t seem fun anymore. Getting to level 8 is almost a miracle. Please lower the difficulty. The tutorial does a good job of explaining how to play, but the fact is that the first 25 levels should be much easier, just to give an idea. Either that, or I’m just really bad at this. :(

Poor UI and poor gameplay design lead to a negative experience

TLDR: simple design, ads that are seemingly impossible to click out of, resource hike, and puzzles where you have to guess
I got to half way through the third set of 20 levels before the games issues became too much for me. Firstly the game is not complex, and as you continue to play you begin to recognize shapes that tell you that patterns you need to place reducing most of the puzzle solving to nothing more than a memory challenge. This would normally be solved by the introduction of new mechanics but that just never occurs. The game seems to be same the whole way through with the exception of timer challenges. You’re also given the puzzle screen on the timed challenges so you can solve portions of the puzzle before even playing making it almost a meaningless change. There are also chances you’ll get a puzzle where you’re forced to guess about the placement of a particular square rather than a logical way of reducing it from two possibilities. The game is also overly punishing as a single miss click will force you to restart or to watch an ad/ spend coin to keep going. That wouldn’t be an issue if they didn’t give you less than a 4th or what it takes to restart in currency every 4 hours and if the Ads were capable of being closed out of when they finished.

Developer Response ,

Hello, we will respond to your points above, most of which are not accurate:

1. There are indeed some patterns from level to level. However, the solution to a puzzle is based on the numbers/colors within the various squares - it is NOT based on guessing patterns. ColorFill requires critical thinking to solve each puzzle.

2. There are no instances where you would need to guess - every level has a distinct solution that you can arrive at after analyzing and solving each particular board.

A Good Game Ruined

As others have noted, the game becomes much too difficult too early. In particular, the addition of a timer in Level 12 makes an otherwise relaxing logic game stressful and taxing. To make the difficulty even higher, making a single error often means being bumped back to earlier levels, requiring you to trudge through levels previously completed. Unfortunately, the high difficulty ultimately feels like a cash grab. Moving forward (especially in timed levels) sometimes requires purchasing coins for another shot at the same puzzle. After purchasing coins, but still being repeatedly kicked back to Level 10, I’m done. I’d happily pay $5 for a relaxed, normal version of this game. But as it currently stands, I’m keeping my money deleting this exercise in frustration.

On a final note, shame on the developers for using fake reviews. Note the pattern of 5 star reviews: A couple of nice words, less than a sentence, from user names with lower case middle initial.