Humbug 4+

Good value puzzler to kill downtime

There’s nothing I hate more than mobile games designed to get you to spend real money to solve arbitrarily difficult puzzles. Humbug is not that game. While it’s initially filled with ads, this game is well worth the $3 to remove them. The puzzles are fair and interesting, and the micro transactions in this game are out of the way and basically meaningless. You get 30 gold from beating a level, and you can use it to buy hints or unlock levels early. I bought two hints the whole game and unlocked a couple levels on accident. I ended the game with 4K gold left.

I have a few minor complaints. The egg should be a different color depending on the insect inside it, so that you can feasibly solve a puzzle on the first try without having to check what’s inside it. The ads you do get with the free version are super annoying. Lastly, there’s no fanfare when you beat all the levels. Would have been nice if the game acknowledged it.

I probably got 6 hours of entertainment while I waited for subways. Well worth the price

Nice gameplay!

Good puzzles and a bit unique from other games with a similar mechanic. It’s worth the ad-free coat to support the developer. If you dislike spiders, you might not like the skittering black widow!

I have one request for the developer! It would be great to NOT have the puzzle board do the slight motion back and forth. I didn’t notice yesterday, but today I went to play and it was making me visually motion sick (I have recurring visual issues with vertigo and migraines). I get it’s aesthetic, but maybe make an accessibility option to turn that off? Thanks for listening :)

Tacky and aggressive monetization

This is a great puzzler. I really enjoy the actual game itself but —

It’s tacky and obnoxious due to its aggressive monetization.

1. You earn coins for completing a level, which cheapens the whole feel of the game.
2. There’s an undo button, but it costs 10 coins to use each time. Gross and tacky.
3. There’s a giant HINT button and if you have the audacity to take more than one or two attempts to solve a puzzle, a huge flashing yellow arrow will draw your attention to the HINT button, making you feel like a loser for not solving the puzzle on your first attempt.
4. It’s intentionally really easy to waste hundreds of coins accidentally on a level skip. When you press RESTART, sometimes it offers a skip for like 500 coins and I’ve hit it by accident several times already.
5. Sometimes tries to sell me coins in between levels. I don’t want more coins. I want the game without coins!

There’s already a ton of forced ads you can remove for $2.99. And I would have gladly paid it if the game had stopped there and let me have a fully premium experience for my $2.99. But as is I won’t be spending any money on it. What a way to ruin what could have been a really enjoyable experience.

Developer Response ,

Hi AppUnwrapper,
Thank you for your detailed review. We're very happy that you like the actual game and appreciate you sharing your opinions regarding monetization. This is by no means the final version of Humbug - we will continue to update the game and try to make it enjoyable to as many people as possible. We have discussed your points and are planning to address some of your concerns with the hint button soon. We will let you know once that update is out. Sorry to hear that you've clicked the skip level button by mistake - that is definitely *not* our intention. We may need to make some adjustments to the UI in order to prevent that from happening. Thanks again for your honest opinions.
Kind regards, Jonathan and Christoffer