I downloaded this app last year and spent a few months with no subscription. I was able to accumulate tons of coins (which are used to give hints in puzzles) and a decent amount of tokens (which are used to play a puzzle). About a month or two ago, I decided to pay for the annual subscription to get rid of the ads, and it did, which is GREAT! Also, all of the daily puzzles are free with subscription and you get to play five special issues for free per day (any more than that and it costs you tokens). I really appreciate the range of puzzles this app offers, unlike a lot of other apps. I’ve gotten better at puzzles I didn’t enjoy or know how to play earlier, like killer sudoku (which is still tough), but the instructions for each puzzle are very clear. I also like that the player can choose which difficulty they want to play a puzzle if they are still learning or haven’t mastered that puzzle type yet. The special issues are GREAT since they’re great practice...I don’t know if I’ll ever complete all of them! I also love that the developers are always adding new puzzles and new issues, which keeps the app fresh and never boring. I use this app every day to keep my mind sharp and I absolutely love it!

After using this app for several months, I decided to buy the subscription to avoid having to watch ads to earn tokens. On the plus side, there are lots of puzzles to choose from. Unfortunately though you don’t get unlimited access to your favorite puzzles in the special issues. For these puzzles you have to use “keys”, and you only get 5-10 keys per day. You can use earned tokens to pay for more puzzles, but you receive fewer tokens the more puzzles you play. For example, for some puzzles I now only earn tokens after I complete 100 of them. If you run out of tokens and want to continue with your favorites, you have to go back to watching ads or paying for tokens. Some of my favorite puzzles are only posted once per week on the daily pages, so this is very disappointing and also very upsetting since I paid for the subscription. On the plus side, I can go back to previous issues to play my favorites, so I am doing that now. I expect though that I will work my way through those pretty quickly. After that, I see no reason to continue with the subscription. I understand that developers are trying to make money, but when you try to squeeze more money out of customers who have already paid for the service, your customers are going to resent that and not come back. I feel cheated, and I will be one of the customers moving on to other apps when my yearly subscription ends.

For the most part I love this app. I play it everyday, and I love that as long as I don’t mind watching ads I can keep up with the daily puzzles and even do a few of the special issues once in a while. I have a very tight budget so subscriptions to games are not something I can afford. However, a few programming changes they’ve made recently are a bit annoying, and one of them I think might actually be a bug. 1. After finishing a puzzle and getting the reward screen I don’t like how it sometimes kicks you out of the page you were on all the way back to the main daily page calendar. This seems to only happen when you complete a “quest” which is a new feature for getting additional rewards. Not really needed, but if it has to be in please have it send you back to whatever page you were on, not kick you out all the way back to the main calendar. 2. After getting kicked back to the calendar, if you were in a previous month BEFORE getting kicked out of the page, you will be placed into the current month but the previous month’s name will show at the top and any dates you tap on will take you to the same date for the previous month. This has to be a bug. You can fix it by sliding to the previous month and back to the current month again, but it’s annoying. Maybe just...have it not kick us back to the main menu after completing a quest. That seems like a really easy way to fix this.