Quadrum: Words (Updated)
by Eric March on October 31, 2008 at 2:12 pm
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(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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App Name: Quadrum: Words
Developer: iChromo
Category: Word Games
Combine Bookworm with Bejeweled and you’ll have something like Quadrum: Words. The idea here is to slide rows of letters into place to form words and eliminate the word(s) from the board. Words can be formed horizontally (left to right) or vertically (top to bottom). Higher scores are awarded for longer words, which means your primary goal would be to spell words vertically since there playing field is an uneven 5×7.
Chains can be spelled by intersecting words horizontally and vertically, though only one of each can be played at a time, and you are scored even higher for those.
The game has rather nice graphics — not fantastic, but very well done, with a few nice effects thrown in for good measure. The sound is sparse and well placed, and I don’t really miss there being no background music. (If anything I’m able to concentrate better without it.)
Now, I love word games, being a big fan of words and all, but my main problem with this game is that ultimately, there doesn’t seem to be any point. There is no timer, no target word(s) to spell, no specific number of words to spell, no letters that are on fire and have to be put out by being used in a word — in fact, there doesn’t appear to be a goal of any kind. You’re just aimlessly spelling words. It has a decent enough dictionary, at least — none of the words I threw at it went unrecognized — but that doesn’t really count for much when I’m just doing the equivalent of grabbing fists full of random letters from a Scrabble bag and scoring myself on the words I can make out of them.
A time limit would have given it a point at least — a weak one, but still a point. I’d prefer something with a little deeper meaning, but really, but as long as I don’t have to make up my own pointless goals, like how many words will I have to spell before I get the letters I need to spell “vagina”?
It’s a good effort, and I’d like to see something come of this, but I honestly have trouble even classifying this as a game at this point. Points for the nice graphics and decent sound though.
UPDATE 11/07/08: He’s now charging $2.99 for this app. No, it’s not a new version. It’s the same one. He’s just charging three bucks for it. For a “game” with no point, which the author now freely admits. It’s almost tempting to stick this in the hall of FAIL, but something tells me his sales are going to be very low and he’ll either lower the price, make it free, or add some actual goals to the game to make it worth the money.
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Posted in Games: Word
