Fun game….when it’s not lagging
I bought the game because I could, according to Apple play it offline. But the lag time during less than optimum connectivity (such as traveling through mountainous terrain) leads me to believe it was falsely advertised. But then again I am now traveling in an urban environment and still issues persist.
Fortunately, it cost less than a cup of coffee so, I will put up with the quirks.
I don’t think this review will be seen as it is well below 5*’s and those get buried deep.
Response from developer
We’re very sorry the app has acted up on you this way. Just a couple of points to mention, and then a heads up to everyone on the current version. The app does not use any internet communication at all. You’ll find it works the same in airplane mode as not in airplane mode. Please give it a try. What were the circumstances when the slowness happened? In particular, which variation were you playing, Spell the Beans (where beans appear), or Spell the Coffee (with spilled liquid coffee)? The occasional sluggishness we’ve seen in testing, which we mention in both the app’s user guide and our website FAQ, has been when playing the Spell the Coffee variation. If it happens in Spell the Coffee, it may be related to the fact that as you tap to place letters in bubbles, the app is simultaneously working to create the next game’s spill and bubble pattern beforehand so it will show instantly when you finish and press New Game (if you press New Game before you finish a game, or under certain other conditions, the app abandons the pre-creation and will start creating a new spill from scratch, which takes time). As yet, despite exhaustive work, we don’t know why this only happens in some instances, but we may decide to forego simultaneous pre-creation and always wait until a game is finished to start creating a new liquid spill. That would mean waiting from 2 to several seconds after every game for a new spill, but also no sluggishness when placing letters. We could also disable the liquid spill variation until we find an answer, though that would take some variety away from the game. We haven’t seen this behavior in the bean variation (the pre-creation math is simpler), so you may want to stick with the beans for now. At any rate, as mentioned in the user guide and website FAQ, if the app should become sluggish or unresponsive, etc., there are two options: 1) use the app switcher (drag up from the bottom of the screen, hold, and release on devices without a physical home button; or double-tap the home button on pre-iPhone X devices) to find and flick the app’s screen image upward and out of the background. This will cause the app to reopen (in the state you last used it) next time you open it; or 2) in intractable cases, delete and re-download/re-install the app (re-downloading is always free of charge). Simply tapping New Game when your letters take a long time to appear in bubbles may also help. As a post-script to everyone, we just tested out the latest version more thoroughly than before and find that it’s acting very erratically on both iPhone and iPad, with behavior this user (reviewer) didn’t even mention, though it may be related. We don’t know at what point this behavior crept in (these things happen despite the best of efforts. Things that were fine before stop working between versions for any number of reasons, even when the only intended change was an edit to some text), but if you haven’t updated to the latest version (1.3.9), it’s probably better not to. Just playing the bean variation does seem to be okay. Please bear with us as we try to sort this out. Thank you so much, everyone.