“Fake Games” Inside Fake Game

The world of mobile app game seems to me like the Wild West. There’s a whole lot of ads for them promising all sorts of things and very little of it (I’m being nice and not all-inclusive) seems to be true.

We start by seeing an ad that possibly features some typo describing the most awesomest game ever! And it’s not like those fake games that promise money but never pay out! And the gameplay is just like the ad! So you download it and: a) the gameplay is nothing like the ad, and b) if there is a possibility of a payout, the goalpost for achieving it keeps moving away from you at breakneck speeds.

Case in point: a game called ScrewPuzzle 3D. Yes, I’m going to call it out by name, since I already wrote a (negative) review of it on the App Store. The idea behind screw puzzles is great, but this one’s puzzles are not very difficult and do repeat themselves. It seems the whole idea is to get you to keep playing and slowly accumulating cash. When you get to the cash-out threshold, you get put in a queue. Mine’s been counting down for about a week, and as of this writing, I’m still 63 away. I’ll keep waiting “patiently.”

Another game app that elicited a negative review from me (for the same reasons) is Claw Party. I liked this because of the cute cat that operates the claw. It’s amazing how quickly you can get to $900 but then the amounts get smaller and smaller, and it becomes agonizing to get to the cash-out threshold of $1000. Then you have to watch 5 videos. Then you get put in the queue. And that has been over a week—I’m at 3515. I don’t expect to ever have that recede.

So I’m sorry I wasted my time. I didn’t really need the cash but I thought it might be a good way to raise some revenue for my non-profit. But that’s not happening, so I might as well use my experience to warn others to not waste their time as well.