Halloween Patchwork Trick or Treat Reviews

They changed the controls to drag'n'drop which makes the game horrible to play.

"Halloween Patchwork Trick or Treat" is a basic mobile-app like jigsaw/mosaic puzzle game. Solve various puzzles by placing stained glass window/mosaic pieces onto an existing picture (picture stolen off the internet and used without crediting the copyright holder). It's been done a million times before, for free, and free on mobile app stores too... yet this one has a hefty price tag on it. Who knew you can just charge $5 for mobile trash? I guess Creobit/8Floor does. The asset flipper/"developer", Creobit/8Floor, has copy + pasted this game SEVENTEEN TIMES onto Steam with minor reskins, and more stolen artwork... why cash in on one asset if you can cash in on multiple copies of the same game? Asset flipping begins at home! This asset flipper is responsible for polluting steam a whopping 353 times with copy + paste shovelware asset flips. Here's a list of Creobit's copy + pastes of this asset: [list] [*] Alice's Jigsaw Time Travel [*] Alice's Jigsaw. Wonderland Chronicles [*] Alice's Jigsaw. Wonderland Chronicles 2 [*] Alice's Patchwork [*] Alice's Patchworks 2 [*] Christmas Patchwork Frozen [*] Fairytale Mosaics Beauty and Beast [*] Fairytale Mosaics Cinderella [*] Holiday Mosaics Christmas Puzzles [*] Holiday Mosaics Halloween Puzzles [*] Mosaics Galore [*] Mosaics Galore 2 [*] Mosaics Galore. Challenging journey [*] Mosaics Galore. Glorious Journey [*] Pirate Mosaic Puzzle. Caribbean Treasures [*] Thanksgiving Day Mosaic [*] Halloween Patchwork Trick or Treat [/list] [i]These are all reskins of exactly the same game![/i] What value is there in this spam/pollution glutting the Steam store for gamers? From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. The game features simple, cartoony 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort mobile apps. 3D graphics programming does require a degree of skill and competence and unfortunately not all developers have the budget or talent to deliver this, despite 3D graphics cards hitting the mainstream in the 1990's. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing. The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio (although they put "wings", flat textures, on the pillars). It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. This looks and feels like a mobile app, but I wasn't able to find it on the app stores. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all). Regardless, for all intents and purposes this might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 3 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. "Halloween Patchwork Trick or Treat" has the total ripoff price of around $5, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. Because this is the kind of game you can just play for free on mobile phones, it's impossible to recommend anyone should pay money for the same experience on Steam.

This game had been sitting untouched in my backlog for a while but since it’s October I thought it would be the ideal time to start playing. This turned out to be rather different from what I was expecting. I thought it would be similar to completing a traditional jigsaw puzzle, where I’d have the entire board to fill by trial and error, but instead I was presented with some mosaic pieces already placed in the correct positions, along with a randomised selection of free pieces in the side bar. However, only a few free pieces are displayed at a time in the side bar, which was annoying when I picked up one piece and another appeared in its place, and I could see exactly where that new piece fitted on the board but was unable to access that piece until I’d correctly placed the piece I was currently holding! (I hope that made sense...) I have two other games by this developer which I haven’t played yet (Fairytale Mosaics: Beauty and the Beast, and Holiday Mosaics: Christmas Puzzles) but this is the only one of the three which uses the drag and drop method to move pieces. If you suffer from RSI, playing this game will likely not be a fun experience. Also, I didn't like that when dragging a piece over to the board in order to see where it fits, accidentally letting go of the piece caused it to count as a mistake. This has in-game achievements but no Steam achievements. I believe it’s necessary to play the timed mode to unlock the in-game achievements. I found the points system to be unnecessary. Why not just have all puzzles unlocked and available to play in any order, right from the outset? The relaxed mode still displays the timer, and still records the time taken to complete the puzzle, and still records the number of mistakes made. Why even add a timer in the first place?! I don't think the developers really understand the player base for these types of games. When I play jigsaw or mosaic puzzles I want to relax and take my time playing, not try to race against the clock or be concerned about making mistakes. Such features turn what should be a peaceful experience into a stressful one. There is a lot of useless visual clutter at the end of a level. When playing in relaxed mode, I couldn't care less how long it took to complete the mosaic or how many errors I made, so it'd be nice to have the option to not even be shown this information at all. Pros: There is an option for left-handed players. The images themselves are good, and fit the Halloween theme perfectly. I am still in World 1 at the time of writing this review but I particularly liked the soft fabric effect of the pieces in this section. Also, you get to hear a witch shriek whenever you make a mistake. However, due to the negative aspects, I cannot in good conscience recommend this game. The major negative thing for me was the drag and drop method, but if this and the other points I mentioned aren't issues for you then you may still find it worth a try. I'll continue playing, but just a few levels at a time. There is a decent game here, but it's buried beneath unnecessary features and pretty much ruined for me by the drag and drop method, all of which could easily be fixed and improved if the developers better understood their player base.

Art is usually nice. Depends on what you like - it's in line with other titles, 2nd world is my least favorite. Level difficulty / design / playability is much better than in earlier titles. You can still get really bad luck with the pieces you get. My times vary by 2-3x depending on the pieces (and hint), so just play each level until lady luck smiles on you. For me it's best if I play just a few levels a time. On some levels you can't extend time more than once. Probably a bug. I wish for an alternative mode, where you start with an empty board, but there is no timer.

I do like that they changed up the music to be Halloween themed for this one. There is a relaxed (no timer) mode. Unfortunately I cannot recommend this game because the pieces do not adhere to your cursor when clicked. It becomes taxing on the wrists to play much at the time.