Wood Nuts & Bolts Puzzle 12+

Game is great I actually thought it could help me have less dopamine going thru me every time I play since there is a minute and a half comercial after 30 seconds of play. You get it right? weening myself off the dopamine rush and playing like a civilized human. Well that was a good plan until the commercials started. The only game that sponsors them is the gossip brand and the tell you the story of a woman with young children and how she became a single mother on the street. Her husband is abusive, part of the game is to help her, so they give you an option STAY or LEAVE. While you are deciding he is being abusive to her. Then on other scenes she is picking up her baby off the floor because they are now homeless; they pan to her feet and she has cuts and lots of bruises from the abuse. I then realized how depressed I was becoming being recently divorced and leaving because of abuse. The unscewing and freeing the boards part of the game is awesome, if you can be smart enough to get the board done on your first try then you can avoid the commercials. When it’s time to decide the abused mentality starts to reactivate, “maybe she should stay” her babies will be safer in the house rather than out in the cold. I actually felt guilty that I left him now. Psychologically speaking, I got sucked in because I connected to her, this can’t be good.

I would love this game so much more without the time factor. I don’t really care they have an easy level and then a hard one and then just rinse and repeat. I love sitting forever to figure it out. But forcing me to watch a single ad that’s 80 seconds long with no exiting it just to undo a single move… yeah, that’s annoying. Another undo, 30 second ad. That’s fine. And then another 80 seconds. Need another undo? 30 seconds. I think I’m on the fourth or fifth hard level and even now, they basically want you to spend money and they don’t hide it. And all of this is for a single hard level that’s maybe 3:30 minutes long. Why am I spending more time watching ads than I am playing the game? If this is all at level 5, why would I even bother continuing to play? If this was like level 60, I could hear you out on that. This is level 5. If you took away the timed part of levels, I’d be a lot less annoyed. That or installing a “zen mode” where you just play over and over and over while not trying to beat a clock or get a better score. I’m not keeping this because it’s incredibly depressing that even ads on streaming platforms are shorter than the ones in a single game where you undo a move three or four times. When you undo a single move, you don’t get that time back. Wanna restart the level? 50/50 chance you get an 80 second ad.

The levels are actually challenging, which is fun. A couple of issues though… you’re on a timer, which is ok, but it means you will probably have to do harder levels several times to memorize the steps and do them quickly. Some of the more complex puzzles do not give you much extra time to think, so memorizing is important. It’s honestly fine, infuriating part is, each level is 2 parts; one brainlessly easy, the second ridiculously complex. Every time you retry, you have to do the dumb puzzle first. At first I thought it was little “learn the method” practice puzzles, but no, they are on EVERY LEVEL. Even once you've accomplished them, you have to do the same childish puzzle OVER AND OVER if the puzzle in the second part is complicated. My second irritation is, some of the puzzles rely on sliding or swinging or rolling of pieces out of the way, not the same sequence of moves will not necessarily generate the same reaction in the affected pieces. So, I’ve times out several times just simply because I did all the steps, but the piece I released did not move in the required fashion to accomplish the task. So I’ll have to do the same level, the same way several times just to get certain end game pieces to move properly to finish.