Play Nine Reviews

I love the card game and, like many on here, I saw the insert advertising PlayNine . So I downloaded it last night. Played two multiplayer games and lost. No big deal, everybody loses from time to time. Played some more today and lost several more games in a row. This game is designed for you to lose. It becomes glaringly obvious after the first 4-5 games.

But (and what is really sinister about PlayNine) the more you lose, the more money the developer makes. They will bleed you dry of your initial batch of coins by rigging every game for you to lose. They do this with the hope that they trigger some urge in you to win. They're hoping once you run out of coins you'll buy more coins for the chance to win. I'm really not sure how the developers sleep at night. They are greed personified. They've taken a great game and corrupted it to the point of unplayability.

I'll be reporting PlayNine to Apple. It's not much, but there exists a non-zero chance that Apple sees my report and removes PlayNine from PlayNine store. And even if that chance gives the developer only a second of anxiety, it'll be worth it.

Developers claim not rigged but ohh is it ever! It’s coded to favor any player/s I play. My guess, whoever pays actual money for it is given preferential treatment! I can quickly identify who is going to win at beginning of game. If it isn’t the person immediately playing after me I will pass them my best cards to help them win, buttttt the player predetermined will get even better cards. It is more entertaining playing this way than actually playing to win. Would be really great if it was random like the actual card game.
UPDATE: I continued playing with varying results but mostly lose to the online bots! I just ended a game with a quick close and despite me in the lead and still ahead after counting the others cards I still lossed! Why rig it this way? PlayNine is rigged, so you can’t win against the bot. If you buy coins and tickets which are worthless, you’re just wasting your money. Too bad, would’ve been a great app! Horrible app!!! Bots rule, don’t I mean don’t but coins and tickets. Don’t line the developers pockets.

I love this game in real life. PlayNine … absolutely horrible offline and multiplayer modes. The bots in multiplayer are horrendous. They pass cards that no reasonable real life person ever would, always to the benefit of the player immediately after the bot(s). Offline play is painful. It doesn’t matter how well you play, 80% of the time you will lose. If you’re winning after 5 holes, prepare yourself mentally for the worst “luck” possible. You will not get good cards at that point and the bots will miraculously start getting everything they need to make a 30+ stroke comeback almost every time.

If the programmers can fix the bot issue in those modes, that would help tremendously. Additional improvement could be made with the active games available. Let us know how many real players are waiting and how long is left on the clock before the countdown expires.

I hope these issues can be resolved. I’d love to enjoy this game on my devices.

The game is definitely rigged to get you to lose your coins in an effort to force you to purchase more. I recently showed my wife a game of three rounds and told her if I pull from the deck and use my draw card to replace an unturned card in my hand, the unturned card I replace it with will either be the same card I replaced it with or a -5 card. To her surprise, it was like that 100% of the time, an equation which is mathematically impossible. Further, it is like that EVERY GAME, including the live games. If you want to play a game that is frustratingly rigged to ensure you lose in an effort to get you to buy more coins, this is the game for you. A fun game to play with real cards, a rigged game of cheating to play on PlayNine .

I play this game a lot in real life And it’s fun to play in person with real cards. PlayNine was going to be my go to for plane rides or to just pass time.

Playing in offline mode the computer always seems to have an edge when trading their card in. Taking a 3 from the deck and their upside down card is an 11/12. While mine are always beneath 3.

The computers don’t look at the other computers hands of cards. So they just give up cards that the next computer hand can use and get to cancel out. And then that computer cancels out. Takes the upside down card. Flips it over and it’s the exact card the next computer hand needs. Then when he flips his blind card guess what he gives me! Something above a 9!

Also on the final putt sequence the computer always seems to get a 0 or a matching card. What’s up with that?

Also seeing your opponents live score is also lame. When you play the real card game in person you can’t do live math to play against 1-3 other people every single hand. When you see the opponents live score count it just encourages people to finish as fast as possible

We play the physical Play 9 card game at home quite a bit, so I have a feel for how the game is supposed to go and the probabilities involved. That being said, the computer players in this game have impossible luck. They usually start with their 2 cards lower than mine. In the rare cases they don’t, their first draw is ALWAYS a match, so they can zero out one of them. Whenever I try to push the pace to “stick” them with a bad card, they always draw or turn up a zero. I really enjoy Play 9 with real cards, but PlayNine is a very poor version.

I understand that the devs tend to compensate for poor AI with an increased “luck” factor - you see it in pretty much every computer card game…but it is ramped to an absolutely ridiculous level here. I recommend getting the physical game and skipping PlayNine.

The game itself is super fun, but there are huge issues with PlayNine . 1) it glitches out frequently. Earlier today it skipped a round entirely and gave us each the score for that hand we were initially dealt. I went from being in first place to last. Sometimes it will glitch during a round and show you a card and then you place the card and it sort of freezes up and then shows that you chose a different card and put it in a different spot when it comes back. It has also shown me everyone’s hand they were dealt before. 2) there appears to be no way to report players that I can figure out, and players will frequently (1-2x/week) “slow play.” In other words, they will purposefully let the entire timer run out and then let the computer move for them. They do this for every move for the whole entire game, apparently in an effort to get the other players to quit because it’s so infuriatingly slow. I cannot imagine why they do this (I don’t think there’s an incentive - I think even after everyone quits the game keeps going??), but there’s nothing you can do about it when it happens, and if you leave you’ve wasted a ticket. Not the biggest deal (tickets are easy to get), but incredibly annoying.

Would really love to give this game 5 stars but there is a big glitch in the offline version that needs to be addressed. After a final putt is started, on occasion, the game will go directly to the score screen not letting me finish my turn. It gives me a score, sometimes I win the round sometimes I don’t but I do not get to actually finish the round by myself. At first I thought I was missing something as the screen changes so fast and there is no option to view the last page but started to carefully paying attention and sure enough it happens quite often, once I even had two cards uncovered that were not turned over before the game went to the score screen. Other that that, this is a great game. I might add I usually play offline with 2 players as a want to just play a quick game. I don’t agree with the complaints of this being rigged to give the computer an unfair advantage, actually this seems to be the best “random” play game I’ve ever played. I seem to win/lose about the same as when playing the actual game. The ads don’t aren’t any worse than other games, probably better as most are very short and unobtrusive. I haven’t run into any of those really irritating ad that hide the X or makes you chase it only to get another ad once you hit it! If my issue is ever fixed or even the option is given to go back to look at the last game screen before going to the next round I will be more than happy to give PlayNine 5 STARS!

Just played this for the first time in real life and was super excited to find it as a game on my phone. You start out with quite a few coins however it cost 500 coins to play against real people.
At first this doesn’t seem a big deal, even though I wasn’t winning every game I won enough to boost my coins up quite a bit. Then, after the first day of playing, I have won zero games, even against AI. Meaning No more coins
The ad you can watch, to “earn” coins only gives you 100 coins and the free spin is only every 24 hours. That also only gives you a small amount of coins.
I understand you’re not gonna win every game, that is life and I honestly don’t mind losing. Keeps you humble. But to win zero games in 24 hours seems a little suspicious. It’s almost like they want you to run out of coins so you’ll spend money buying more. No thanks. I will probably delete this game as it’s no fun only being able to play against ai.

The players when playing offline will always, ALWAYS take a 4. They’ll replace a 5 with a 4 before replacing a 12 with a 5. They’ll replace an unknown card with a 4 instead of discarding and revealing the card. I’ve also seen it now where it will be last move of the game and the computer has an unmatched twelve and a card less than 12 is either drawn or on the discard pile. And they will not replace the 12 with it to reduce their points. It could be a 5 but nope! They only take 4 and they’d rather have 12 more points than between 5 and 11 more points. It’s so predictable that if you want to win 2 player, just take everything that’s not a 4 and the other player will always give it to you. The game needs some work but overall it’s fun to play. Coding seems far too simple though.

Things that would greatly improve the game:
-most importantly: the cards aren’t actually random. Feels like about 80% of my flips are great cards if I’ve decided to swap a face down. Or if you draw a random card and discard it, your flip ends up WAY more likely to be whatever you just discarded. There’s no way it’s actually random and programmed statistically correctly

-designate who is CPU in multiplayer

-bring back chat but give people the option to turn it off or organize a report button

-randomize which player starts. In multiplayer, the person who organized always has an advantage because they’re most likely to follow a bot in turn order and the bots always give good cards away

-teach the bots defense, not just (mediocre) offense

-some visual and graphic updates would be nice. Feels like a much older game than it actually is

-give people levels based on wins

-different versions/rules would be fun.

I love this game and it just needs a few things to change for a solid 5 stars, primarily the probability

(#1 huge issue) I have to keep exiting PlayNine and turning off my phone just because of the ads and it’s so annoying
#2 fix offline playing for when in the car I can practice aginst a computer or bot.
(#3 BUG ISSUE) The amount of bugs I’ve experienced is absurd, for example when I am playing a normal match with random people in multiplayer, sometimes it just kicks me out for no reason at all, I have all 3 bars for WiFi and I know WiFi isn’t the issue. This is very annoying and I’d like it to be fixed

Fun little game - except the Fishdom ads. Some suggestions:
For players, the Fishdom ad lasts at least 30 seconds. Save time by closing the game and re-launching, then click continue.
For PlayNine developers, please do two things. First, if the game is silenced, the ads should also be silenced. Don’t allow ads to use sound when the game is muted. Second, please put the skip video / close / big X on every ad by at least the 5 second mark.
For advertisers, 5 second ads without sound are respectful and less likely to alienate your audience.

I love the in person version of this game and PlayNine is fun if playing against friends. Question/Suggestions:

What is the point of coins? Nothing can be done with them if you have the vip subscription. I’m coin rich with nothing to do with them lol
Also there should be different levels based on % of wins. There should be an ability to add friends, so if they are online you could see that and when you are playing with friends you should have the ability to talk to each other instead of just chat. Would make it more interactive.
Just some thoughts on making the gameplay better but otherwise really like it!

Love the original physical card game, and this one is great too, but why is there no option to just buy the game for like $5 - $10? I realize app dev costs time and money, but realistically, how often does the game need to be updated? Most likely only to compile for new versions of iOS. Other than that, the core game isn’t changing. I’d love to just buy it for one price, and be done with all of the ads (and to be able to play others for no additional money or ‘coins’) for good! Please consider this. Playing/using PlayNine doesn’t need to have this many small details/restrictions about it!

UPDATED: Not long after I left my first review (complaint) of all the long ads you had to sit through after every hole, there was an update to the game and now you can play several holes with no ads at all, and there is more variety to the ads when they do play - some short, some long and thankfully nothing inappropriate. Much better playing experience! Thank you! And as another reviewer suggested, if it's a long ad, it's quicker to completely close out the game and reopen it and resume play than wait. ************************* First review: This 30 second Fishdom ad is killing me. After every. single. hole.??? Ridiculous. You're driving people away.

I play guest, just myself, and nine holes.

Too many ads.

I have to turn off my smartphone to end the nauseating ad.

Then I turn on.

Cheat mode:

If my opponent, PlayNine , is really behind in its putts, it will suddenly readjust to cheat mode to give itself big negative scores.

My opponent, PlayNine , will quickly give itself all matches, (usually low numbers), while giving myself high cards, with no or few matches.

Then my opponent, PlayNine , will go out early so I end up with a high score so I eventually lose the game.

If I have a nine over zero, and I made six consecutive attempts to get a nine or zero, but with no luck, and if my opponent, PlayNine needs a zero, it will suddenly give me a nine.

I then match nine over nine for zero in that column, and PlayNine gets its zero to score even lower than I.

Then it goes out early.

My opponent, PlayNine , is determined to win, no matter the cheating PlayNine usually does to win.

My opponent, PlayNine , may even figure out the math wrong to its advantage.

Often my opponent, PlayNine , gives itself minus fives and low cards.

Often certain low numbers are rarely seen by me to get in my play, but are often seen by my opponent, PlayNine , to get in its play.

Seeems to me that the winner is determined at the beginning of the game…The opponet gets every car they need and I get nothing that matches…no one can be that lucky…once you are so far apart in the score the game is not much fun! I think alot of times I’m playing with a computer…and why do some players wait until their time has expired before they play, making the game very boring! Having said all that, I do enjoy the game…just wish it was random cards, not so one sided!

If you press the wheel super fast it cab let you spin many times. Also, if you didn’t know something annoying is when I accidentally close out the game. And I get back on it glitches and makes the games ruined and it wastes the in game currency. I know you might be working to chip at the grass to get all those pesky bugs off the grass but this is just if you didn’t know. Great game by the way I always play it with my family in real life and in the game! (:

We have family that live in different states. We have been trying to Play Nine and the Bot ends up taking our turns! At least one player can’t even play because the Bot takes over. This has happened several times. It’s very frustrating. I have the card game and love it. But I was thrilled when I found out there’s an app so we can play from a distance. Not fun, after all.