My wife recently got me hooked on a mobile game called Two Dots. It’s been featured as an Editor’s Choice on the app store, and has some decent reviews. It’s a simple game of matching colored dots to make them disappear. As the levels grow, it becomes more and more complex, with special dots and obstacles to work around. It’s a fun little game, and requires some brainpower to play. It also encourages you to spend money to play.

Two Dots is one of those games where you can play all you want for free, but if you want power-ups, or extra lives, or extra moves on a board, you have to pay for them. I don’t mind the pay-to-play model when what you get for it is mostly a small boost. However, in Two Dots, it’s not quite that simple.

The starting dot colors are mostly random on every board. That means that unlike other puzzle games, there are often boards which simply cannot be solved, based on the opening selection of dots to match. However, if you’re willing to spend money, you can power-up your way through even the most random impossible level. Despite how much fun the game is to play, that one aspect bugs the crap out of me. You can be really good at planning out your moves, and visualizing the next step in the board, but the random nature of the game play means you may never get what you spend time planning for.

Granted, I still haven’t given up on playing the game. It’s a fun game, and I like the mental challenge. I just wish that there was a way to out-think the various levels, instead of resorting to frustration as you waste life after life on boards that simply can’t be completed.