Wordulous

by Eric March on June 14, 2009 at 2:10 pm

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	App Name:	Wordulous
	Developer:	99Games Online Pvt. Ltd.	Version:	1.0
	Publisher:	99Games Online Pvt. Ltd.	Size:	9.7 MB
	Category:	Word Games	Price:	$0.99

I loves me some word games, make no mistake, and it was nothing short of providence when 99Games E-Mailed me about this at the very same time I was browsing for a TextTwist type of game on the App Store.  It’s like they knew.  Yes, yes, I know, TextTwist Turbo is available on the App Store, but that’s an abbreviated version of TextTwist proper and just didn’t appeal to me. I’m not big on these thirty-second ADD-inspired twitch games. I want the full experience.  I want to be able to take the desktop or Flash game with me on the go, not some foreshortened mobile version.  Skyworks has D-Crypto Baseball, but it’s too sports oriented, and I’m not much of a sports fan.

Wordulous is indeed a game that patterns itself pretty heavily after TextTwist.  I’m sure you’re all familiar with that, but for the benefit of the two of you who aren’t: The idea is to create as many words from seven letters that you can within the time limit.  In the original TextTwist, your ultimate goal with each level was to uncover the 7-letter word (or one of them if there were two or more) before you could advance.  Wordulous changes things up just a little bit here.  You’re still required to find the 7-letter word, but at the end of each round you’re given a trivia question in which you’re required unscramble the answer using the letters given. Answer that and you can progress to the next level with a refreshed time limit for more points.  One interesting aspect of the game is that after you get 5 words, a button lights up that lets you start a fresh board with new letters. This gives you an extra chance to get the 7 letter word if you get stuck.

Now, when I first tried this game I was a little put off.  I found that its dictionary was too comprehensive, containing words only scientists and dictionary writers would know, and those words would litter each puzzle, pretty much guaranteeing that only the most ridiculously erudite would score big.  (I’d say that’s me, but even I was stumped by half the words in the puzzles.)  That initially put me off the game — until I discovered in the settings that the game lets you choose between three dictionaries: Sowpods, TWL, and Enable.  TWL was the default, and thus the offending set that would embarrass even the most loquacious Mensa members.  Sowpods was better, but only by degrees.  Enable seems to contain much more common words far more suited to games like this, so that’s what I ended up playing with.  I’m all for expanding my vocabulary, and it’s great when a game can boast a comprehensive dictionary (I hate when word games don’t recognize valid if uncommon words), but not under the pressure of a time limit, and not to the degree that more than half the words will be foreign to most players.

There are a few other things that became a little bit annoying with Wordulous: There’s no way to return all of the tiles you’ve tapped on to the deck; you have to tap on them one-by-one to start a word over.  There’s also no way to recall the last word you entered so you can quickly add plural forms or suffixes to root words.  Yes, that would make this game more like TextTwist, but that’s kind of the point: Those were two features that really made TextTwist fun to play.

Despite those however, I found that the more I played Wordulous, the more I enjoyed it.  It grew on me as I learned more of its features.  Visually it’s clean, if without much pomp and ceremony.  It gets a bit weird during the end-game sequence where your score, and thus your vocabulary, is compared to that of some person in a random profession, like a chef, a tailor, or a rock star who plays “the rock and roil.”  (No, really, that’s what it said.  I’ve got the screenshot to prove it and everything!)  I’m not sure how these professions have anything to do with vocabulary, especially when a rock star — who, in writing songs, presumably should have a good vocabulary — is inferior to a chef, who lets his cooking do the talking for him. I mean, at least compare me to, say, a construction worker if I get a low score, or a novellist if I get a high one.

As I said, the visuals are clean and simple but there’s no flash or pizzaz.  The sound effects are minimal.  But it’s word game, so it’s not strictly necessary as long as the gameplay works, and it works pretty well here.  It’s not spectacular, but there are some nice features, and there are some handy customization settings where you can pick your own preferred colour scheme, and of course, which dictionary you want to use.  There’s also a practise mode, and the ability to challenge friends to a game online via Facebook or through 99Games’ own online server, and it does feature global leaderboards.  For $0.99 it’s certainly worth a shot, and from having browsed similar games, it’s better than some of the ones I’ve reviewed.

Related Posts:

• Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 -- WordsWorth
• Monday, April 20th, 2009 -- Spotlight on Skyworks Day One: D-Crypto Baseball

 

Posted in Games: Word, Paid Apps