I had Spellwood on my Google Play wishlist for a long time until I finally realized that I had a bunch of Amazon coins that would expire in under a year so maybe I should just buy it! It seemed like a more interesting take on traditional Scrabble type games but when I started playing it, I ended up with the same problem I had with most of these games – I suck at them. Eventually, both the computer and I end up resorting to BS “fake” words like aa in certain circumstances and that just sucked the fun out of the game. A lot of the reviews talked about having to buy an IAP in order to continue, but I never even got to that stage because I got stuck on one level where the difficult ramped up suddenly. There’s a XP/equipment system but you can’t seem to grind XP (or equipment) by replaying levels – so rather than improving your character, it’s just a means to introduce new gameplay mechanics (which is lame). I wish I had known about the demo version before so I wouldn’t have to waste my (free) coins.

I also came across another game called Wordiest which builds from the same Scrabble foundation – except this one is a lot more fun. The gameplay is more constrained, you’re given 14 letters and you have to create 2 words from the letters. You’re scored based on the words (same letter-to-points mechanic as Scrabble) and then ranked within a random pool of 100 other players. I like this much better because it doesn’t reward words like aa and you actually have to think within the constraints. It’s also nice for a quick round, but might require internet in order to play. I also wonder how long one would play if you’re ranking is less than 50%

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: android, games