Publisher/Developer: Little Red Bike Media
Genre: Word Puzzle Game
Price: $0.99 (Lite Version Available)
Verdict: Sometimes challenging but always compelling Word Puzzle game.
Pros: Very addictive for Tetris and word game fans.
Cons: Nothing really, does exactly what you would expect!

Loading up Word Tower, I felt a little uncertain. It looked like a curious mess of Boggle and Tetris, with a hint of Scrabble. All excellent games in their own right, I just wasn’t sure how well they would combine. Fortunately, Word Tower turned out to be good fun and the ideal distraction for five minutes, as well as a game that could keep you playing for hours if you so wish.

The concept is pretty simple to get to grips with. Letter tiles come down the screen like Tetris, but instead of lining up blocks, you line up letters to create words. You can move the tiles about to be more strategical, as well as select the word you’ve created with your finger. The longer you play the game, the faster the tiles come down meaning you have to keep your wits about you. Unlike Tetris, you have a lot more to think about than simply matching up blocks. You must concentrate on what words to create, placements of letters to give you the best chance of being able to create other words in a few moves time. The key to doing well at this game is most definitely thinking and planning ahead. For example, there’s no point dumping a load of ‘i’ letter tiles together as you can’t make a word out of that, so it’s best to aim ahead and come up with a strategy. As well as creating words, to progress through the level faster, you have to line up a key and a keyhole to go onto the next level. Again this requires careful planning, as it can be a long wait for the key to appear. Finally, if all else fails, you can flip the action around. Just turn your device upside down and the tiles all flip around, giving you another way of approaching the action.

As you can probably tell, Word Tower has a lot going on. I didn’t find it relaxing at all times but I did find it extremely compelling. It was the sort of game I’d play for five minutes, then realise an hour had passed. Praise indeed for such a game. If, unlike me, you become an expert at the Basic mode of play, there are four difficulty levels with the hardest being Genius level where a 4 letter word is the minimum accepted rather than 3. Along with the obligatory online high scores, there is plenty to keep you interested.

Word Tower offers some great longevity for a game that costs a mere $0.99, with a free lite version also available. If you fancy a word game that requires a bit more strategy and quick thinking, you just can’t go wrong with Word Tower.