App game review: Garfield Snack Time

As a nearly life-long Garfield fan, I saw the game "Garfield Snack Time" (GST) and decided to play it. It's a typical match-3-or-more-items game, with bigger points for more items matched, and possible boosters or helpful items. Each game has a specific goal: get lasagne to the basket at the bottom of the field, get a certain number of points, collect a certain amount of each of the items, etc. There is a daily challenge that awards you with one coin or more, and the game urges you to connect your Facebook account or buy more coins and boosters with real money at every turn. Watching short video ads gives you 'free' turns or rockets. The app company also constantly hawks its other games, which is annoying.

The game is bright and colorful, with everything animated in a Jim Davis style. It's cute and very addictive. Everything is food-based, with the matchable items being food: blue popsicles, green fast-food soda cups, pink lollipops, red containers of french fries, and yellow pizza slices. Personally, instead of lollipops, they should have had cupcakes, as that is a food item I could see Garfield more readily eating. 

Something else that annoys me is that whenever you fail to make your game's goal, GST does not give you the option of watching an ad video in order to get five (or even one) more turns, the way many other similar apps do. Instead, you have to pay 70 coins to get five turns, or 120 coins to get five turns and 3 boosters. GST also does not set off your remaining rockets and other boosters after you run out of turns, which I think is incredibly unfair. 

Besides the aforementioned turn limits, there are stopwatch "bombs" that will go off in a certain amount of turns, evil anthropomorphic onions that create rings that block areas of the board and mugs of coffee that cover the items in a java lock, requiring you to match the item twice before it disappears. I hate this. Garfield LOVES coffee in the comics, so the java mugs should be a power-up, not a deterrent! The ad companies are very sneaky and often format their ad like an actual video, causing it to play sound (often loudly) despite my phone being on silent. There is a special place in hell for them. 

Anyway, which it's not being an unfair, frustrating and unsolvable pain in the butt, this game is fun, and I more or less recommend it. 3.5/5 stars