Star Battle Puzzle - Hoshi

I tried a couple of other apps for this type of puzzle but none had the same sort of elegance in design. The included packs have kept me busy for hours and I love the weekly challenges. The real standout here is the clean user interface where you can mark your guesses and sub-guesses with a variety of colors. There’s even a relaxing music track which I put on when playing at night. Great game, great app. Very happy with my purchase.

Update to the developers comment - I just played it and had to wait 50 seconds then hit done and waited another 15 seconds. It is better but shouldn’t be more than 30 seconds. For that I’m changing this review from 2 to 3 thanks. Original review: The developer responded to another review saying it’s out of their control but that’s not true. In the past the app had shorter ads and other similar apps have shorter ads. I paid full year for another of your apps and I don’t get ads now which is great. I also paid for a pack here and I still get insane ads. There also aren’t that many games to play to justify these ads. After awhile there’s nothing else to play.

First, the good: the puzzles are usually very good. I like the daily puzzles and the streak aspect. It is fun to play every day. The UI is good and easy to use. The bad: the ads are frankly insane. The daily puzzles requires a token to play, one every day. Of course you can pay, or you can choose to watch ads. When you watch ads you get three tokens, meaning three puzzles. But that’s not the real problem. It’s that the ads are not 15, 20 or even 30 seconds, they are usually a minute long! For me this is a ridiculous amount of time for three puzzles which usually take less and a minute each to play. If the puzzles are really easy (which they sometimes are) the ads can be longer than the puzzles. The daily puzzles are also often way too easy. They are often “one star” puzzles. These really take no thought.

The ads are insane. I paid actual money for a pack and as soon as I finished a puzzle got a full screen ad. I couldn’t dismiss it either, was automatically pushed to the App Store page. The weekly challenges have even more ads somehow. Full screen mini game ads that take over your phone for quite some time. The difficulty levels don’t seem to be consistent. Some 5 star puzzles are easy and some 1 star puzzles require a lot of trial and error. The puzzles are clearly stamped out automatically. After you get the hang of it they are all the same. The idea that this is competitive is odd. It seems like engagement bait. Uninstalled.

One of my favorites to play and develop new strategies for. Well worth it, the developer is responsive to changes.

Ads to refill play tokens, ads autoroll after every game. I’m shocked you don’t have to watch an ad to install the app.

Why are 1-star puzzles in the packs so basic and easy?

Good interface, solid challenge

Great classic Star Battle puzzle app, ads aren’t too intrusive, and I like that there are daily and weekly puzzles with stats for how you compare with other users. My favourite part is the UI. It’s very easy to use and the highlighting is very helpful for solving. (Only gripe is that some of the colours are very similar in dark mode). I also appreciate the responsiveness of the developers. I reported a bug on their related Akari app, and got a very prompt response and fix. Unfortunately, I feel the puzzle packs are a bit expensive. I know of other puzzle apps where you can get 100 puzzles for $4.99 whereas it’s about twice the cost here.

I paid the $20 but it did nothing. It’s supposed to remove the ads but it didn’t.