Review Insights · App Store
Townsmen Premium
HandyGames · 342 ratings · ★ 4.6
4.6
★★★★★
342 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 25 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"game"
17 negative reviews mention this · 68% of all complaints
★★★★★ "STOP BUGGING ME ABOUT REVIEWING. Love game. Until it asked me one too many times to give a review." - ViolentJester
2
"paid"
6 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Microtransactions. Been looking for paid games to avoid the micro transaction scam but was disappointed that despite being a paid game it still has micro transactions for the currency used in the game. Please no." - tryha11
3
"money"
6 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Money Pit. This game is designed to frustrate you enough to consistently spend money. Very different from the Xbox version. No unlimited fast forward and you don’t replenish your prestige. Very disappointing. Stay Away!!" - jeff56545
4
"love"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "STOP BUGGING ME ABOUT REVIEWING. Love game. Until it asked me one too many times to give a review." - ViolentJester
5
"every"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Too much inconsequential clicking around. You have to click on each house every time you collect taxes, you have to click on each building every time a building starts needing repair. Frustrating to the gameplay. Don’t like it. Otherwise would’ve been great." - Joe127463
6
"been"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Too much inconsequential clicking around. You have to click on each house every time you collect taxes, you have to click on each building every time a building starts needing repair. Frustrating to the gameplay. Don’t like it. Otherwise would’ve been great." - Joe127463
7
"games"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Microtransactions. Been looking for paid games to avoid the micro transaction scam but was disappointed that despite being a paid game it still has micro transactions for the currency used in the game. Please no." - tryha11
8
"play"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Too much inconsequential clicking around. You have to click on each house every time you collect taxes, you have to click on each building every time a building starts needing repair. Frustrating to the gameplay. Don’t like it. Otherwise would’ve been great." - Joe127463
9
"anything"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Worthless ripoff!. This game is a ripoff! I paid for premium, but it takes so long to build anything that it's unplayable without paying for credits! This is fraud!" - Ted357
10
"without"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Worthless ripoff!. This game is a ripoff! I paid for premium, but it takes so long to build anything that it's unplayable without paying for credits! This is fraud!" - Ted357
11
"give"
4 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "STOP BUGGING ME ABOUT REVIEWING. Love game. Until it asked me one too many times to give a review." - ViolentJester
12
"love game"
4 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "STOP BUGGING ME ABOUT REVIEWING. Love game. Until it asked me one too many times to give a review." - ViolentJester
📋 All 25 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
STOP BUGGING ME ABOUT REVIEWING
Love game. Until it asked me one too many times to give a review.
Microtransactions
Been looking for paid games to avoid the micro transaction scam but was disappointed that despite being a paid game it still has micro transactions for the currency used in the game. Please no.
Money Pit
This game is designed to frustrate you enough to consistently spend money. Very different from the Xbox version. No unlimited fast forward and you don’t replenish your prestige. Very disappointing. Stay Away!!
Exit abnormally
Open this app on my iPhone, and it will automatically exit frequently. Exit abnormally
Forces you to accept device tracking before play.
Paid for the game then was told I couldn’t open the game until I agreed to device tracking.
Now I can’t get my money back. If they’re going to require device tracking it should be clarified up front before you pay.
Now I can’t get my money back. If they’re going to require device tracking it should be clarified up front before you pay.
Worthless ripoff!
This game is a ripoff! I paid for premium, but it takes so long to build anything that it's unplayable without paying for credits! This is fraud!
Greedy update!
The recent update destroyed the tax revenue. You literally have to spend money every time you build anything unless you want to wait to collect enough tax, which after the update can take forever.
I absolutely love this game!
However, your constant pestering is annoying AF. I totally support developers earning pay for their work (I’m a game dev myself), and I’m happy to give you my money for this great game. BUT when I pay to download something ad-free, I expect a hassle-free gameplay experience. I bought unlimited speed-up too, because it’s a feature I wanted, and I don’t mind the price. BUT I don’t want double XP, and I really do NOT want you to beg me to buy it every two freaking minutes. Take NO for an answer, please. Same with asking for reviews. Take no for an answer and don’t constantly harass your paying customers by not giving them a ‘never’ option. I want to play the game without interruption. And why show ads when opening the game first thing when you sold me an ad-free game? You took my money and didn’t deliver your promise. It doesn’t make it ok just because your advertising your own games. This game is great enough to make plenty of money on its own merits, without you tarnishing it was cheesy used car-salesman tactics. You are great devs, and you are better than this.
Love this game but, so irritated
First of all I paid for the no ads.. then I got charged AGAIN because I got the premium app.. like, what the heck. You would think that if you had paid for the no ads you wouldn’t get charged again, right? & how do I request a refund or something because basically I paid for the SAME thing TWICE.
Don't buy premium
Bought the premium version and I still have ads, wonderful waste of money. Go with the freemium version if you're interested.
It just randomly deleted my game!
I have been playing for over a week on the same town and I just tried watching a video to get the merchant to come faster and it took me out of the game and when I tried reloading the game, my previous town wasn't even there!!😡 there also was no sound or music at all and all settings on my phone are set to where I know the game should have had audio so that's another problem...
cant play anymore
每当开始1分钟后，就会严重卡顿，已经没法继续玩了。fix it，stuttering , can't bear it
Lost all advances in levels with upgrade
Everything I had leveled up has dropped back down. My castle before the upgrade help over 12,000 supplies, now it only holds 5,000. The Prestige points have dropped significantly when quests are completed and the supplies needed for quests have raised dramatically. I use to be able to get 80 prestige when I donate 10,000 coins for the poor. Now I only get 20 prestige for that quest. Please fix this issue.
Game basically destroyed
The villagers get stuck, letting fires rage when you have towers and letting resources go unused, prior purchases have disappeared so you can't upgrade buildings you used to as a result of the purchases, and the game now feels like a gimmick to panic you into in-app purchases.
Ad after purchasing?
I bought this app and it advertises to me all the time. I thought the purpose of buying an app was to avoid advertising. Apparently not. After completing a task the app will give me an advertisement/ask to rate. It asked repeatedly so here is my review. Horrible
IMO top iphone games but...
It must have glitched because my saved games are no longer loading. The game crashes every time. Very upsetting considering it's corrupted two of my huge cities. Done with this game. I'm also playing on a iphone 4s so maybe that is the problem.
Collect taxes
Good game but a little tedious collecting taxes
Too much inconsequential clicking around
You have to click on each house every time you collect taxes, you have to click on each building every time a building starts needing repair. Frustrating to the gameplay. Don’t like it. Otherwise would’ve been great.
Premium? UnReStRiCtEd SaNdBoX
Should’ve stuck with the free version
Too many ads in piAid version
Great game if only the constant adds would just stop. Granted,
the paid version decreases them a bit, but the games own ads for progress points and rewards is really in your face. This is a downer at times.
the paid version decreases them a bit, but the games own ads for progress points and rewards is really in your face. This is a downer at times.
Sick of microtransactions
Get these %#*?ing in-app purchases out of here man! We paid for the game!! So greedy and obtrusive. I really wanted to like this game but the devs are too pushy. I paid for no ads, and infinite speed, and double xp, yet STILL - really can’t progress through a sandbox game without buying their in-game currency.
Also, there are some interface issues like finicky roadbuilding, not being able to get info on existing decorations, buildings getting in the way of each other, etc.
I haven’t been this frustrated by shady dev practices in a long time. I thought I was buying a whole game but it was too late.
Also, there are some interface issues like finicky roadbuilding, not being able to get info on existing decorations, buildings getting in the way of each other, etc.
I haven’t been this frustrated by shady dev practices in a long time. I thought I was buying a whole game but it was too late.
Fast forward
Fun game but what happened to having unlimited fast forward?
The lack of game center left a big hole in the townsmen game play.
Hi I wrote a review about this game a few years ago on android regarding how great its was. I actually suggested many of the changes you recently made. I mentioned that I loved that game and wondered what you would add next. To my surprise you actuallly added everything I suggested as if you listened to every word of my review. The game is now even more fun that it was before. However I have one complaint as an iOS user.
I would like to suggest that you add some sort of story tracking mechanism to the game. Some sort of system to show the player how much of the games content they have completed. Due to iOS 10 removing the Game Center app, all of the iOS players previously tracked achievements are gone. I was thinking it might not hurt to have a universal/ cross platform story line. Maybe give a gold, silver or bronze medals to show that the map has been completed. Maybe a check box or a less complicated indication of achievement like a single blue ribbon or something. Either way the whole thing feels very aimless and sandbox without some sort of guidance from the system.
Don't get me wrong I love the sand boxing options that are available but, there needs to be something to give the player some incentive to play quest based maps. I wouldnt suggest making it mandatory to play the quest maps. I would just offer some kind of story or achiemvent indicator to link the quest maps by difficulty or feature introduction. Try doing something like giving gold silver and bronze metals for various difficulty maps in quest mode. Maybe give the player new quest map specific benefits to their townie technology or new buildings ( I would make those retroactive though, so as not to miff old players, who may or may not want to replay the quest maps). There needs to be something to give quest maps purpose. Something positive though, not just an occlusion of previously available features or anything that would rob the player of freedom or progress at current time.
I would like to suggest that you add some sort of story tracking mechanism to the game. Some sort of system to show the player how much of the games content they have completed. Due to iOS 10 removing the Game Center app, all of the iOS players previously tracked achievements are gone. I was thinking it might not hurt to have a universal/ cross platform story line. Maybe give a gold, silver or bronze medals to show that the map has been completed. Maybe a check box or a less complicated indication of achievement like a single blue ribbon or something. Either way the whole thing feels very aimless and sandbox without some sort of guidance from the system.
Don't get me wrong I love the sand boxing options that are available but, there needs to be something to give the player some incentive to play quest based maps. I wouldnt suggest making it mandatory to play the quest maps. I would just offer some kind of story or achiemvent indicator to link the quest maps by difficulty or feature introduction. Try doing something like giving gold silver and bronze metals for various difficulty maps in quest mode. Maybe give the player new quest map specific benefits to their townie technology or new buildings ( I would make those retroactive though, so as not to miff old players, who may or may not want to replay the quest maps). There needs to be something to give quest maps purpose. Something positive though, not just an occlusion of previously available features or anything that would rob the player of freedom or progress at current time.
Crashes.
I love this game. I have for a long time, but whenever I play, I have about 5-10 minutes before the game will lag uncontrollably and make it impossible to do anything, forcing me to close the app to fix the issue. Just for me to build a common building I must close and reopen the app over 5 times.
Pay model ruins game
This game should be fun but the pay model really ruins it. I can understand this if the game is free, but having to watch videos and pay real money to gain prestige even when paying for the game is not cool. Without using prestige or fast forward it takes forever to do anything.
Sentiment summary
89%
Positive (4-5★)
4%
Neutral (3★)
6%
Negative (1-2★)