Wordsworth made me enjoy a *gasp* word game!

Released: Dec 14, 2008
Developer/Publisher: 99Games
Verdict: Buy It
Wordsworth Lite also available for free!)
Pros: Visuals and gameplay/mechanics made me like playing a word game
Cons: Drawn characters not so appealing, no online leaderboards

You know, I’m not a HUGE word game fan. I’ve been known to dabble on occasion with Scrabble and Boggle in real life, but they just don’t usually grab my attention. I don’t find myself saying, “Self, you really oughta go play a word game when you get home.”

So it was with some small trepidation that I grabbed me a copy of Wordsworth, the new word game for the iPhone and iPod touch from 99Games. I was pleasantly surprised, though, when I spent a good hour enjoying the game play, graphics and mechanics of this little gem.

Think Boggle with a real nice visual/kinesthetic mechanic and you’ll be getting close to what this game achieves. THe main object of the game is to tap letters in a row, creating a chain that spells a word. Your chain can be any length, though each level has a preferred number of letters as a goal. The longer and more unique the word, the better the score for that word. When you hit “submit,” the letters of that recently found word disappear and new ones fall into place from above. There are green letters that give extra points when used, blue “wild card” letters, and red time limited letters that explode if you don’t use them. The bottom of the screen has a special bonus word that kicks your score WAY up, nd a little avatar you can click to switch out all the letter tiles on your screen, though I prefer the optional “shake the iphone” method, as it appeals to my kinesthetic sense. Each shake will give you more explode-a-tiles, so use this fun feature sparingly. You get gold tiles for creating words that are two tiles longer than the minimum length goal.

The tiles and vector art in this game are fantastic and high resolution. The drawn characters are less appealing, but that really doesn’t interfere with gameplay. It is a good game to play when waiting for events to happen in your life (think bank lines, dentist office, on the bus), as it starts right up where you left off when you relaunch the app. There a local high score system, called the “Wall of Wow,” but no leader boards that I could see. The two modes included are an un-timed “classic” mode and a timed mode that ends when a specific tile explodes.

Bottom line, I’d recommend grabbing this game if you like well-designed word games. At $1.99, you’re not going to regret too much.