App Store Editors’ Notes

Cute & Relaxing

I have to say that it is incredibly refreshing to see mobile game developers who clearly put a lot of love into their work. I have been playing their other game “Snack Bar” for a couple of months and paid the $20 to not just get rid of ads, but to support the developers. I did the same with this game immediately because I have the money and I believe in supporting indie developers; I understand how much hard work goes into making a game and I understand the need to put ads and micro transactions into a mobile game in order to pay your staff and keep making new games going forward. After a long day of work, I like to pull up a no-nonsense game on my phone and listen to an audiobook or podcast at the same time to relax. I really like this new game, it adds extra depth compared to Snack Bar and there’s a little bit of strategizing you have to do so that your lumber doesn’t stack up on one end of production and make the process of earning coins slower. You learn how to make it more efficient through each level progression. I’m a big fan. The graphics and music are absolutely lovely.

Buyer Beware!!!

I love that there’s an option to pay $20 to get rid of ads forever….but buyer beware…it really doesn’t get rid of ALL the ads. I bought it not knowing this. There are literal pop up ads that pop up when you’re trying to play the game. They clutter the screen and ask you to try out “Office Cat” I'm not sure why the devs think that doesn’t count as an advertisement? Also cluttering the screen are “play *this* event”, two different types of battle passes (one that makes you pay to progress beyond a certain point and one that has free items alongside paid items), spend $5 to unlock the “golden piggy bank”, and another ad to spend $5 to get “star pass special discount products”. Maybe it’s just me but if I pay TWENTY DOLLARS to get rid of ads, I expect to NOT have ads cluttering up my screen. It gets so bad at times that at least 30-40% of the screen is just crap they want me to buy. It would be nice if the devs would at least have the decency to put paid purchaseable items in the shop and not in both the shop AND the main screen of the game - especially for people who paid an outrageous $20 to have no advertisements. We don’t need or want to see it twice. Also, it’s literally impossible to complete the last step of events without spending more money. I stayed up with almost no sleep, glued to my phone for two days straight in order to attempt it and only got a quarter of the way through the last level of the event.

Kind of Boring

The cats are super cute and the game was fun enough that I paid to not have to see ads, but after having played a couple of weeks, there really isn’t much to do. There are special events that have great rewards, but they have the exact same two events on a rotating schedule. You’d think that with a simple game like this, they’d at least try to vary something about the animation or characters. When leveling up, you change seasons. This changes the background, but nothing about the gameplay or much else. Since there are only 4 seasons, the seasonal look gets recycled consistently. There doesn’t seem to be much incentive to leveling up, and the diamond rewards hardly seem worth it. There is also a bug that the developers haven’t fixed. When switching back to the town and lumber yard in the middle of a delivery, the game sometimes gets stuck. The number of wooden boards increases, but the delivery won’t progress. I have found a way to force the game past this. You have to turn off the delivery contract cat’s automatic deliveries. This will clear the stuck queue and help you accept a new delivery. Of course, you lose any wood already moved to the loading zone or taken away by the delivery trucks, but there’s not much else you can do until the delivery is either deleted while in progress or the game is restarted.

Fun and relaxing but has some issues

The game overall is great. I played the other idle cat game they made, the cooking one. I played that one for hours nearly everyday and enjoyed it a lot. I expected this one to be similar, which is is but there are some issues ive noticed. Sometimes when watching ads for rewards, the ad crashes the game or when you finish the ad you dont get your reward. I ended up buying the ad free pass, which has been worth it so far. Another issue is the time travel. You can skip ahead using these tokens to instantly earn the money you would in the set amount of time. They are incredibly wrong. I'm on the Autumn Lumbermill Year 2 and making 2.3e a minute on one of my machines. For a 10 minute skip, i would only earn 6.3e. That math does not add up at all. Besides those two things, Ive been enjoying the game and cant wait for more updates. The pirate lumbermill is a great way to start from scratch every few days. And yes im a real person💀

Good but some fixes would make it more enjoyable

It's a good cozy game. Really aesthetic and soothing for me before i go to bed haha. One thing i would suggest is making the event rewards more achievable. I've tested out a couple events nd ultimately it requires constant grinding in order to get in & maintain the top 50 rank by the last hr aline. I also don't feel like the ranking is real- like probably bots listed to make it harder to achieve as time goes by. I have only bought the ad pass ($15) and i can only go so far- making me feel like the only way to get more rewards in the game is by purchasing more- which is very inconvenient for me as an enjoyer. Although i understand that this is the best/only way for the dev's the make money, i still think a lot of things should be more achieveable😅 (sanding machines, tree cards, etc.) Thanks for reading my rant nd sincere hope for this game. Best of luck. I'll still be around, i just hope this game doesnt die out

I have been genuinely enjoying the game but now I’m left very frustrated.

I have had the game for one week now. I even paid $20 and removed adds. I was having a blast! The most fun I’ve had with an iphone game in a long time. Recently I have experienced a bug where my forklift will not deliver a single thing to packaging. Usually, simply shutting the app and reopening it would fix it. This is not the case anymore. It is completely stuck. Everything in my lumberyard is backed up, there is nothing I can do. I don’t want my money back, I just want to continue to be able to enjoy the game. To top this all off, I tried trouble shooting. Couldn’t find an answer in the FAQ so I did what was recommended and linked the game to my apple account so I could then have the option to contact the team. No option appeared after this. So I took the next logical step to pursue the company website and unfortunately there is no english option that I can see. If there is, it is difficult to find. Please help me get my game back to normal. I would love to give a much higher rating.

Great game with a few areas for improvement

I really enjoy this game, Ive previous played cat cafe and appreciate the attention the developers give their game. Im using the free version with ads and am still greatly enjoying it, but there are a few places I think the developers can improve the game. The biggest part that needs changing in my eyes is how the lumber yard functions in relation to queuing orders. Ive been having an issue where I will almost complete an order for lumber, but at 87% completion the lumber yard completely fills up with sawed logs and all my forklifts stop moving bc the currently active job needs lumber. This could be easily fixed if I could change the order of priority in the job queue so that sawed logs get used freeing up space for lumber, but currently I can only cancel the job and I lose out on all the lumber I just put towards the job. Still a fun game but there are little things like that which can be improved upon.

It was perfect for so long

For the past week i've been playing nonstop with only one problem, the forklift going to do the orders will glitch out and will go back and forth from the wood to the orders but won't actually take anything. Normally just restarting the app would work but it did it on the event and i restarted it 3 times before deleting it to redownload to see if that worked, it did but it sent me back 5 days and i went from the winter year 2 to having to buy the summer one again. Other than that it's perfect, im not upset enough to stop playing entirely but it's a little irritating. Also i had just saved my progress before doing that so it wouldn't happen and it confirmed it but it said i last saved it the 21st (it's the 26th while writing this) Also to the ppl saying the orders don't pay out, they do but the pay out as the orders being done rather than all at once at the end. I was confused for a while too

TREEPLLA's adorable idle tycoon game Lumbercat is now open for pre-registration on iOS and Android, letting eager players get first dibs on...

Pocket Gamer Sat Aug 02 2025