State Connect Reviews

This is an amazing game and would be well worth it if it weren’t for the ads. Thankful, they created a solution by allowing you to make a one-time purchase to eliminate ads for good. This would be great accept that after making the purchase, the ads didn’t go away. It’s not registering in StateConnect , even though I’ve gone through the process of re-purchasing the same ad block about 9 times (it’s free on StateConnect Store since you’re technically buying the same exact item). Every time I do it, the text box pops up that says the purchase was successful, but the page in StateConnect itself that advertises the ad block stays up, and when I ex out of it, I still get ads. This is so upsetting. I’ve tried everything. It’s the newest version of StateConnect , I’ve refreshed StateConnect , I’ve deleted and redownloaded StateConnect . I even changed the language to English (I keep my phone in Portuguese). Nothing works.

Please make a patch for this! Then I will give StateConnect 5 stars because it honestly deserves it. The concept is simple but enjoyable, the graphics are high quality, there is tons of room for expansion and progress since you literally have the whole world to explore. Well done, just please fix this bug. Thank you! You’re doing great!

This “seemed” like a cute little time killer app, at first. There are major issues that need addressed ! First , I understand this is a small studio development, however the incessant ads are pervasive to say the least. So much so that the developers wrote a couple paragraphs that explain how they keep the development going on StateConnect and even go so far as to say how annoying ads are, in the icon to remove ads. The low end quality of StateConnect is in no way worth $9.99 to remove ads. My reason for this is the fact that there is no implementation of away earnings . Unless you have StateConnect open and are actively playing , all earnings stop. What makes it even more pervasive with the ads, to the point I feel it’s engineered to encourage paying for ad removal, is that earnings while game is open stop every 15-20 seconds of while 30 second ads interrupt play. It’s aggressive marketing and aggressive pervasive ad placement , bordering on apple developer TOS for the platform. To be honest , ad revenue is not the only revenue available to even small studios . Try introducing a lower cost of ad removal, add in some in game content to purchase at a reasonable cost . Perhaps a coin purchase or a way to buy some keys to open additional territories . But at the current way the game runs , or fails to run from flooding of ads , I see this game , or any future apps failing to pick up momentum enough to be a success in this industry!

I paid for the ad removal because I enjoyed the game. I tried to play it today and StateConnect kept crashing. So I uninstalled and reinstalled StateConnect and much to my chagrin, the ad removal that I had already purchased was gone. I tried to restore purchases, and that did not work. I then tried to re-purchase the ad removal to see if it would force it to recognize I’d already purchased it. Every time I tried to purchase it, it would give me the pop-up saying you already own this do you want to install for free? I would hit OK StateConnect would crash. I’d open it back up and I still had ads. This is very frustrating as this is a game that I do enjoy to just relax with. I sent an email to where it said to email case of problems. Heard nothing back. So until I get what I paid for this will stay a one star review. This is not fixed sooner than later, I will reach out to Apple support. I have no problem supporting developers and small businesses but not when I don’t get what I actually paid for that right there is a scam. if this gets fixed, I will change this review from one star.

*just got an email with the devs asking what the issue is; legit asked "Could you kindly tell us more about the problem you are facing? We are looking to improve the game. Thanks.” I paid for the ad removal and I’m still getting ads. How is that hard to understand? So still a 1 star till I either get a refund or no ads.

I have put off this game for weeks and finally cracked 2 days ago. Do not trust the 4.1 star rating. This game is truly terrible. I’ll first start with the ads. You get an ad every 45 seconds or so and it makes the game nearly unplayable. When you upgrade a city or buy a new state and etc.. an additional pops up in between. Every. Single. Time. I do understand devs need revenue from ads but 45 seconds is ridiculous. Maybe 1 minute or a minute and a half is sort of doable but 45 seconds is unnecessary. Based on reviews I’ve seen the game only has North America which is pretty lame. The no ads price is a ridiculous $9.99. I could go to a Wendy’s and get a decent lunch for that price point. Maybe a more reasonable price would have been better for this kind of game ($1.99 or $2.99 or even $4.99) This game requires internet which means no airplane mode to avoid ads. You do earn offline earnings so they at least got that on point. I have just removed it due to the unbearable amount of ads this game gives. If the developers update this game to regular standards of an idle game and they add more content maybe I’ll come back.

I understand the need to have ads for revenue if users aren’t paying for anything. But an ad for every 90 seconds of game play? That is a bit ridiculous. That turns into 40 ads per hour, which is a bit overkill. Even if you can close out the ad within 10 seconds, it becomes more annoying than it’s worth. Especially due to the way ads are set up now; having to click “skip”, then the “x” then “done” then “x” again. No matter how “fun” the game may seem, it ends up feeling more like a chore than fun.

What I would recommend is have an option to watch “x” amount of ads to avoid ad interruption for a set amount of time for those that don’t pay, this way you still get the ad revenue. You could alternatively setup an interval where for every “x” amount of time (minutes) you play the game, it gradually increases the interval in which you receive an ad. This would encourage players to then play the game longer rather than get so frustrated by the frequency of the ads that they just uninstall the game altogether like I did. It’s a fun game, but for something I just want to kill time with, it’s not worth dealing with all the ads that pop up.

Sure this game can be fun to keep idle and slowly build up the US and everything. But you genuinely cannot leave it idle because there are unskippable ads every single minute of gameplay, they are milking you for your time. Add on top of that, you dont gain any progress while ads are playing so for every minute of progress you make you are halted a minute unless you close out the game which still takes time and attention. The best way to play this game is to… not do it. The best thing to do is leave it closed then come back and watch an ad to get offline money. But that has a limit of 2 hours with no way to increase that limit. Now of course you can always pay money to skip the ads, but how much is that? 10 DOLLARS??? This game is fun but the ads are ridiculous and drain all joy or fun you will receive from playing this. THIS GAME IS NOT WORTH IT

Edit: Add onto that, the fact that the game developers constantly misspell the names of cities despite being a google search away shows that the developers dont care about the quality of the game, just milking you for money. Dont. Give. In.

When I first started playing this game i thought it was a silly little game that i can kill time with. But that changed pretty quick when it turned into an ad watching simulator. Every 10-15 seconds, or every 2-3 roads you make, an ad pops up! it’s about five seconds until a skip pops up, then five more seconds, then an app store pop up, then you can finally go back. the game “experience” is 70% ads 30% actual gameplay. This is sometimes even worse when ads struggle to load, to the point of having to completely close out and reopen the game! Normally I would just buy the no-ads, but 10 WHOLE DOLLARS! just to see no ads is an insanely high price! the way i see “no ads” is how much i would pay for the game if it weren’t free. at MOSTTTTTTT, this is a 1.99 game. if it were two dollars for zero ads i would gladly buy that! not to mention all the micro transactions in the game, there’s even more opportunities to make money. I get it’s a small development team and everything, but there are so many ways to make money other than that. The game is also pretty popular so the amount of money made from ads is astronomically higher than from buying no ads.

TL;DR- The game is simple in design but the sheer quantity and quality of ads makes the game nearly impossible to play

Firstly, the amount of ads in this game makes it unbearable. Every 1-2 minutes a new ad pops up and takes 30 seconds to go away. Not to mention, an ad banner blocks the upgrade buttons at the bottom. This game also is unplayable without internet, which I know is just a sham to get more ad revenue because there should be nothing in this game that needs ad revenue. Secondly, the gameplay is very glitchy and bugged. You cant place tons of roads because the game will find some alternate route to take, leading to weird spots of no roads. Its also possible to make roads across water by just dragging the selection a few more cities out. And, you should be able to make bridges anyways. The monetary scaling is wonky and uneven. I may be wrong but I believe some of the assets are stolen from other games, at the very least they look suspiciously similar. After you complete the map, the game asks you to "start a new country" and I assumed it would take me to a map of Europe, but no, it just starts the game all over again. There is no content in this. I understand this is a game made by a small studio, but the lack of effort is not a result of that, and the amount of ads and cost to remove them is far higher than it should be. I will change my rating if these problems are addressed by the developer.

This is a simple game, but I can’t put it down. And yet, I can’t bring myself to rate it any higher than three stars. For a geography-based game, they make some curious choices. I understand not being able to have a separate area for small states like Delaware or Rhode Island for space reasons, but why give Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Wisconsin and not be able to connect it directly to the lower peninsula? And the currency system is way out of whack. You go from 150 coins to upgrade your first city to 69.9 octillion coins for your last. Yes, that’s a real number — basically a 7 followed by 27 zeros!? And as many other reviews have mentioned, the ads are ridiculous! (Sorry developers, I turned on Airplane mode to keep my sanity.) Plus, I’m not sure what replay value it will have if you just start over in North America once you finish connecting all your cities. StateConnect Store previews show Europe, which would be nice. Hopefully future versions will eventually expand the playing field!

Update — with the latest update, the game now requires internet access, so no more Airplane mode. This renders the game virtually unplayable. There is no way I would pay what they are asking to get rid of ads; I would rather get rid of the game. It’s a shame, such a promising start ruined by greed.

I get it, developers need money but two adds every minute seems a bit excessive. And it’s not worth 10 bucks for a simplistic game like this to unlock it. The price point should be more like 2.99 or 3.99 for as simplistic a game like this, IMO. That being said it’s fun to unlock the territories and figure out all the connections that are possible. I still haven’t quite figured out what causes you to be able to buy a new area, but it seems tied to how many connections and upgrades you have made.

Updating like a week later. 1) once you complete your map, there are no other maps. I was looking forward to going to Europe, Asia, or Africa. Not an option. Just North America. 2) adds are still too frequent. 3) if an add pops up, all resource generation stops till the ad is dismissed. This is highly frustrating as it hits when you are most likely looking away, waiting for cash to do the next road or upgrade the next town. Then you go back in, and you STILL have to wait for the cash because it paused the game while you were looking at the mandatory ad.

Tldr if you are bored, this is an interesting concept for 2-3 days. If you aren’t bored and looking for a fun game, go elsewhere. And it’s not worth the 10 bucks to make it ad free.

I love idle games for whatever reason. This is a very cool one except for the fact that you have to have the game open and running to get any kind of progress. There is no offline generating, so if you’re not actively playing, you’re not getting anything. The absolute worst thing about the game is the ads. I’m completely for games being free with ads and then if you want to remove the ads, pay for it to be removed for like 3 or 4 dollars. It beats the heck out of paying 6 or 7 dollars to even be able to play a game before testing it and you end up hating it. In this case, you can pay to remove the ads but it’s 10 dollars. Who set the price for this??? I understand the studio making the game isn’t supercell, but 10 dollars for a mobile game that doesn’t do anything with online play or generate any income while you’re not playing. The ads here are ridiculous. I had an ad, upgraded one base, and before I made the 150 I game currency to upgrade a second base, I was hit with another ad. It’s literally an ad every 45 seconds.

TLDR;
The game is unplayable unless you spend 10 dollars to get rid of the ad every 45 seconds, but the game just isn’t going to be worth 10 dollars to many people in its current state.

This is such a fun little game but the ads are downright horrible. There are so many of them and they just don’t seem to stop. Out of curiosity I opened a stopwatch on my computer and played around until I got an ad, and then started the stopwatch at the time gameplay resumed. The next time I got another “ad break!” message I stopped the timer. TRULY, only 1 minute and 11 seconds had gone by since the last ad. You cannot even make it a minute and a half without another mandatory ad video coming up. Absolutely insane.

Having the option to pay to remove ads is not the solution to this problem. The solution is that there should be less ads for users who don’t want to pay, and 0 ads for those who want to pay. Continuing to run this many ads isn’t going to convince me to pay to remove ads, it’s going to convince me to delete StateConnect . I’ve never seen an app This Bad with ad usage. I’m not even sure I’ve ever left an app review before, but this one was bad enough that I opened up StateConnect Store to come leave my complaint - absolutely insane amount of ads.

Overall this is a very fun and addicting and game, only experienced a few issues. 1) It seems I’ve reached max expansion after maxing out all cities in just two of the seven areas/maps. The world map lists additional areas as “coming soon..” well when? After reaching a certain level in the first area (I believe lv 90ish) is when the second area becomes available. Is this true for all new areas or have those areas not been developed yet? This is confusing. It would be nice to know at what level the next area has been or will be unlocked. 2) In both areas completed I can no longer upgrade the car even though it appears I can. Is level 20 the max level? If so, it would be nice to know it’s been maxed out. Also, if that’s the case there shouldn’t be anymore “missions” related to upgrading the car. 3) Because there are so many road connection possibilities and the map can easily fill up very quickly, it would be nice to know how many connections have been completed out of the total connections or if max connections have been reached. 4) Same with the cities, because the map can fill up very quickly and city icons are tiny.. it would be nice to have a counter to know how many more cities there are to upgrade.
Thank you!

Overall it’s a very good game. Simple but entertaining. There are a couple of flaws however. Once you connect everything in the United States, Canada, and Mexico A message pops up and says you’ve connected all of the states, would you like to go to the next level. Going to the next level simply deletes all of your connections in the United States, Canada, and Mexico and starts you over. I would have thought It would open another continent as the image shows in the Apple store, however it does not… Also, if you make the mistake of selecting Alaska as you’re starting point you will never get enough keys to unlock any other area and the only option you have is to delete StateConnect and start from scratch (an obvious oversight by the developer but easily fixed). So where are the other continents as advertised? Also you need to add in an option for clearing your map as well as and a screen for instructions. Other than that it’s great, but with a $9.99 price tag, I would NOT suggest purchasing StateConnect until these issues are addressed. Once you have access to other continents and a little bug fixing it would easily be a five star rating

The game is fun enough but the ads for every 30 seconds of gameplay is really killing it. Ever since the latest update I can’t even play anymore. Connected two different roads to cities? Here’s an ad. Trying to find an odd road connection that requires taking a moment to move around the map? Ad. Looked up for five seconds to check on your kid? Look back down, we got you a present, it’s an ad. I get games having ads and the need for them to be slightly increased with small teams, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but this is ridiculous. The one redeeming quality that could have helped out would have been the ability to turn off my wifi and play offline but nope. Not an option. Game tells you you aren’t connected to the internet and you need to be connected to be able play. That’s only acceptable if there’s online features; even a leaderboard would be a good enough reason for me to not be enraged by that “oops looks like you need to connect to the internet” message that popped up. Not worth it to spend time “playing” between ads to even destress as its actively stressing me out more at this point 🙃

I’ve literally never played a game that had ads that popped up so often the game is nearly unplayable before this one. That being said, I think I finished the game? I did all of North America and Europe and don’t see any more content. I managed to finish it in a day… $9.99 is a really steep price to kill ads for a game that has less than 24 hours of content. The fact I finished it in a day though should show that it’s a fun game! If all 7 continents were finished perhaps the $9.99 price tag (which btw is the most I’ve ever seen a game ask for to kill ads) would be worth it, but until then the number of ads and/or price of the full game purchase should be less.

Separate little issue is that yall have New York City in New Jersey!! It should be part of New York!! Trenton, Newark, Jersey City, Atlantic City, the list goes on and on of other places that could have been used for NJ! Minor in the grand scheme of things but would love to see that fixed

It’s a fun little game, capturing some of the fun of hits like mini metro and motorways, while having idle gameplay. There are still a few things that need work, but I’m confident the devs can address this.

1. Every city feels the same. Maybe make some of them generate a special landmark for flavor.

2. Crossing roads make the map ugly but seems more effective than a clean system. Some sort of “intersection counter” or the ability to delete roads would help.

3. Missions or long haul routes would make the game more interesting. Maybe certain cities generate trucks and take goods to other cities, and these trucks benefit from efficient routes, whereas cars usually go from just one city to the next.

4. More customization options like being able to choose the color scheme or a colorblind friendly mode would be cool.

5. More upgrades for cities. I don’t even know what the upgrades do but maybe “car production” or “goods needed” or “destination attractiveness” or something would make each city feel more unique as you cross the map!

6. Upgrades feel like they scale in expense way too fast. It’s hard to upgrade after a point and it feels like late game will be a real grind. Maybe make it so you can “win” faster and begin a new game plus?

Anyway, love the game so far but I hope to see constant improvements. :)

First of all the ads are insane. Unless you’re willing to pay the $9.99 to remove the ads, you learn to deal with them. My main issue is this though: once the game is over and you get all of the US, Canada, Alaska and Mexico, it asks you to start over. But you literally start over to the same thing. Add some more countries or at least have some challenges. Like maybe have it to where you find all the different kind of paths you can make from one place to the next. You also continue to get more keys. Maybe we can use the keys to unlock the next country. Have more options instead of connecting everything and that’s it. It’s a wonderful game. Me and my husband were hooked. But once we finished and it just had us start all over again, it was kinda eh at that point. Please add some more options and maybe lower the remove ads price. $5-$6 is okay but $10. Uh uh. I would’ve given it five stars. Otherwise and amazing highly addicting game.

Okay, I love this game! I love it. I wouldnt give it five stars if I didnt okay? But i have put about 15 hours into it and I have a couple of glaring flaws Id like to express that is taking the fun out of it for me. I made as many paths as I thought possible, finished my board and it asked me to go to the next level so thinking there was some kind of perk or addon I hit yes, what I got was a reset board that let me start anywhere which I thought was neat until I picked alaska to start and now Im stuck because I need more keys to progress. The two big takeaways being not only did I get baited into extra content that wasnt there and reset my board but the reset lead me to basically softlock my game. Like I said, I love this game. 9.9/10 needs more. Ps. This game is about 2 weeks old right now I understand these things take time. Pps. I bought the ad blocker, made the game so much more playable. If you’re just reading this review and you like this game but dont like the ads, get the blocker. Its like night and day

UPDATE: remove ads option available. Now this is a 5-star game

TL:DR VERSION: If this game offers an ad-free purchase upgrade, surely this can be a 5-star app easily. But, until then, the ads knock 2 stars off my rating for annoyance and hinderance of progression. IN DEPTH VERSION: The game itself is simple to understand, easy to play. As you unlock more regions and more routes, the pricing goes up, as is common with these kinds of games. At about level 5 or so, you can unlock 3 different “boosters” to increase your rate of earning to make gameplay quicker. Each can either be bought by your in game coins, or watch a free 30 second ad to gain (pops up every now and then). Where this game gets on my nerves is the mandatory 5-8 second ad watch every 45 seconds of gameplay. At first it’s not so bad, but when you have multiple areas unlocked and are trying to connect a city with all possible other cities, this ad break becomes troublesome, as most times you’ll find yourself in the middle of scavenging, and unable to complete the routes. It’s even more difficult when you return to the game and you have no idea which cities you were trying to connect, so you basically start all over and run into the same problem in 45 seconds.