Today, we look at the interesting experience when a mobile game you enjoy just stops being taken care of by the developers.
Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of pop culture history that interests me that doesn’t quite fit into the other features.
I have a number of mobile games on my phone, but I really don’t play all that many of them with any regularity. The only ones I steadily play nowadays are Royal Match and Duolingo (almost at a 600 day streak on DuoLingo!). In the past, I would play Candy Crush Saga (I told you the other day why I don’t anymore) and Temple Run 2 a lot (I actually still like Temple Run 2, but once you’ve reached the highest level, well, there really isn’t anything more to shoot for, and I reached that, like, ten years ago, soooo….).
I then have a few games that I’ll play on occasion, almost always to the point where the game gets repetitive, and then I’ll stop. A game I enjoyed a lot was Color Bump 3D, a straightforward game where you maneuver a 3D ball through a series of obstacles, all while trying to touch any color except the color of your ball.
It’s a fun game, and years ago, I even paid for the “No ads” version (it was very cheap, something like $3).
Well, it’s been five or so years now, and it’s funny to watch the game just fall apart.
Recently, there have been bugs where you literally cannot complete a level due to the bug. One recent level was impossible until finally, after loading it a few times over the course of a few days (it’s not like I was doing it constantly, I would just check in on it once a day), it resolved itself and I was able to advance.
The current bug, though, is still there after WEEKS, so I assume the game is just dead for me. Here’s the bug – see the bar on the ground? That’s supposed to be in the air, on a column. With it being on the floor, I literally cannot progress my ball through that area without hitting it…
While the game falling apart is one thing, something that I think is a bit more nefarious is how the game is trying to get around the fact that I paid for no ads. They still allow me to avoid ads, but I have to click on “No Thanks” here instead of “Continue” to avoid an ad….
What’s that? You don’t see “No Thanks”? How could you miss it? Here, I’ll get a detail of it…
You still don’t see it? Okay, I’ll now color in the letters in red…
Pretty sleazy, huh?
But whatever, games come and go, so it’s no big deal, it’s just a shame when a good game falls apart.
