Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As best I can tell, the Kindle Fire version will go no further than Level 35, at least not without paying 99 cents to unlock the next set of levels. Let's see: 440 levels @ .99 cents per 35 levels = $12.57. Kinda pricey for an app, particularly when you consider how many match-3-type games are out there. It would be nice to know what the pricing structure was--I could see paying $1.99 or even $2.99 for a game where all levels were theoretically accessible, even if in-app purchases continued to be available. Obviously, it *IS* possible to solve the initial puzzles without purchasing extra lives, moves, or boosters. It remains to be seen whether this is true at higher levels--and I imagine it's not something I'm going to ever find out. Perhaps if I were in the Facebook majority (seems to be a requisite for this game), it would be more appealing. As it is, I find it appalling from an ethical point of view, and diabolically clever from a MBA's point of view. After all, fools and their money deserve to be parted. And who am I to say whether or not people are getting their dollar's -worth of utility each time they choose to cheat at a video game? 10/28/2013 UPDATE A kind commenter pointed out that it's possible to unlock the next set of levels by successfully completing "Mystery Quests"--in the case of level 35 and 50, there are 3 "quests" (which are just like game levels). The next quest becomes available 24 hours after successfully completing the one before. The first set of quests unlocks the levels up to 50--meaning that you can rack up quite a bill if you're impatient and pay to unlock levels. (440-35=405; 405/15 = 27; $26.73). You can therefore view "pay to play" as payment in money or incovenience. Pick your poison. What seems to make Candy Crush different from other match-3 games (e.g., Bejeweled, Jewel Star; former FAOTD "Around the World in 80 Days," Heroes of the Kalevala," and "Call of Atlantis"), other than the social-network connections (and associated peer pressure) are fairly trivial: 1) On most levels, the limiting factor is MOVES, not time. One can contemplate the position of the pieces at leisure and find and plan for 4- and 5-piece matches. 2) The special tiles resulting from 4- and 5-pieces matches (roughly equivalent to bombs and lighting bolts in similar games) can be combined for an amplified effect. 3) When there are moves left over after achieving the goal of a level, the game goes into a hypnotic autoplay mode in which it simulates the effects of special tiles and adds thousands of points to the score for that level. There's a moral in there somewhere, but I don't know what it is. P.S. Does it look to you as if developers are not only paying for reviews, they're also paying for those reviewers to mark all 5-star reviews as "helpful" whether they are or not? I hope this can be reined in before the review system is rendered completely unhelpful.