Make no bones about it, SpellTower [$1.99] is an awesome game. Created by Zach Gage of Zach Gage fame, it's a word game that has you tracing out actual words from a jumble. In general, the bigger the word you can trace, the more points you'll get, but sometimes you'll come across letters with bonus modifiers that can jack up your score and delete lines from the jumble.
Built with every type of word gamer in mind, SpellTower rocks several different modes, including a rush mode and a zen-ed out, no pressure spelling mode. The game's iPhone 5 update packs in a new mode for the taller screen: "iPad puzzle mode." In this, you'll compete against iPad players, using the same 14 rows that full-sized version has.
Also, if you have the iPad version, you'll be able to sync your iPad puzzle mode games across devices.
Regardless of if you want to roll in iPad mode, SpellTower looks just as gorgeous on iPhone 5. Gage has expanded the game's borders for every other mode, so it still has the same visual sizzle that we enjoyed back when it was in 4:3.
Give this a look if you haven't already. It's awesome and utilizes the iPhone 5's taller screen in the best possible ways it can.
If you're big on periodicals, chances are you've become intimately familiar with Apple's Newsstand functionality that was introduced in iOS 5. If you're not, here's how it works in a nutshell- Magazine and newspaper apps all get filed away under the Newsstand folder, and when new issues are available, they just appear automagically.
Up until now, Newsstand was home to fantastic selections like The New York Times [Free], The Daily [Free], and tons more. Interactivity in these newspaper apps generally is limited to flipping pages and publisher H Bauer is the first to break away from that with a completely game-oriented app.
Take a Break's Mini Arrowwords [Free (HD)] is a word puzzle game that has you filling in letters on a grid to clues that span all sorts of categories from historical trivia to pop culture. Check it out:
What do you get when you mix a timepiece with tetanus?
Clockjaw. Get it? Clock… ah, never mind, it's not much of a joke, is it? Just clever wordplay, that thing that Frankenword [Free] is so good at. Take two things that share a few letters, mash them together, then run with the bizarre, overlapping chimera you end up with.
It's something of a one trick pony, but I find it strangely satisfying. It's the Pringles of word games: you know there's not much too it, it's not especially good for you, but once you pop you just can't stop. Generously, I could call it a good test of vocabulary, but it's a far better way to stretch your imagination. Picture the cougarcade from the game's description, or maybe some dwarfare. Snickers aside, it's good to engage your powers of pretend.
When it comes to word games, I'm not the most strategic player. Give me a game like SpellTower [$1.99] and I end up with long, spindly columns of Qs and Js dragging me down. When I stumbled on Lumicon [$1.99] it looked like a safe, simple game, a matter of making a few simple words all at once out of a short gutter of letters. Piece of cake, until I dug in and realized how fiendishly clever this little game could be.
Lumicon starts with seven empty rows and a gutter for letters. Every couple seconds a new letter appears in the gutter, and you can choose to place it in any of the rows or leave it to stew for a while. As you build up letters in each of the rows, any words you make that have three or more letters can be cleared away with a tap. You can—and should—have a word going in every row, because if you can clear all seven at once you'll be rolling in points.
Of course, setting that up is crazy dangerous. When you've got three or four empty rows just sitting there, a stray consonant will fit to start any old word. But when you've got something on the go in all seven rows you're much more likely to play yourself into a corner. The gutter can only hold so many letters, and you lose if it overfills. If the letters you need don't show up before that happens the only way out is to throw some useless ones into a row and ruin whatever word you've been working on there.
At first I played Lumicon with my usual lack of tactics, polishing off a few words at a time and occasionally saving one or two for bigger things. That didn't go so well. The only way to make real progress in this game is to clear as much as possible in one quick combo, with each word adding one digit to that combo's multiplier. One word awards points for its letters, two words get double the score. And that scales right up to seven. Clearly, the only way to play is to rock seven rows at a time.
And then there are the power-ups. If you can get a combo of at least three words, the power-up bar will shuffle and you'll have the chance to deploy something that may just help. Some of the power-ups are risky, like the one that adds a random vowel to your gutter, or the one that adds a consonant instead. You'll always be in need of at least one of those, but trusting to luck can be dicey. There are also power-ups that can utterly save the day. Pausing the gutter might help if you need a second to think, but having the ability to clear the gutter at the tap of a button can make a huge difference.
There are two times you might want to clear the gutter. Maybe you fill it up with junk you can't use, like stray K's and X's and Z's. But it's also possible to fill it up with letters you literally can't use because they've gone ahead and died. Every once in a while a letter appears with a timer. If you don't dump that letter into a row before the timer runs out it'll go dark, and you'll have one less space in the gutter to work with.
As the game approaches its maximum speed these frozen letters become absolutely deadly. You might want to save a power-up that can clear the gutter, except that you can't really do that. The power-up changes each time you get a 3x combo or better, and you need to be earning those combos to get a decent score. Use it or lose it, as they say.
By the end of any good run through Lumicon, your board will be cluttered with useless bits of words and awful letters you dropped in a panic. It's a stark contrast from the game's usual elegance, with its lovely minimalistic design and upbeat music. But if your screen isn't littered with the detritus of your failures, you gave up too soon. There's always a chance to save yourself, always a chance to draw things out a little further. And Lumicon is a game that rewards taking those chances.
I may not be skilled at strategizing in word games, but I can recognize a game that deserves a tactically savvy player. This is one of those games, one that requires players be as good at adapting on the fly as they are at planning ahead. Lumicon requires razor-sharp focus and nimble fingers, and there are plenty of strategies to suss out. If you think you and your vocabulary can handle it, you really ought to take a look.
Words With Friends HD [$2.99] is, like, totally HD now. The game's latest update, which went live just the other afternoon, has added support for the new iPad's display. Version 5.0 also sees the addition of a new sidebar interface element that hooks you up with links to other Zynga games and lets you pester your friends via social media.
Of course, this update also includes nebulous "bug fixes and optimizations." Words With Friends [99¢] on iPhone and iPod Touch has also been updated with these, and as you may have just noticed, it's also just 99¢ instead of its usual $2.99.
I'll be the first to admit, when the discussion first started on giving Zach Gage's SpellTower [$1.99] five stars in our review last year, I distinctly remember raising an eyebrow and saying, "Guys, it's a word game." Truth be told, until then I hadn't spent much time with SpellTower, but once I did… I was hooked. So hooked that this simple looking word game wound up as an honorable mention for our game of the year.
SpellTower isn't bogged down with complicated rules or conditional abilities. The tutorial is only a handful of screens expressing a handful of simple rules. You can make a word as long as it's in the game's dictionary and it's at least three letters long. Words that are five letters or longer clear letters all around them. You can't make the same word twice, and if a letter has a number on it, it needs to be used in a word of at least that length. Finally, uncommon letters like Z, J, Q and X clear their rows if they're used in a word.
Those rules will carry you through SpellTower's four game modes, which change up how the board is presented. Tower mode gives you 150 letters to earn the best score you can. Puzzle mode adds a row to the board each time you make a word, and if any column hits the top your game will end. Extreme Puzzle mode follows the same rules, but requires longer words faster and more often. Rush mode adds new rows over time, putting you on the clock.
A fifth game mode was added in a recent update, introducing local multiplayer. It shouldn't be much of a surprise, but, spoilers, it's even more fun than just playing SpellTower by your lonesome. This update has also revitalized my love for this game, and I've spent the past week absolutely engrossed in SpellTower.
Since the update landed, SpellTower has been rocketing up the iPad charts, and to attempt to push the game over the edge and take on Angry Birds and Draw Something, its price is being slashed to 99¢. If you're even vaguely interested in word games, you need to pick up SpellTower. Heck, if your mom has an iPhone, tell her to get SpellTower, I bet she'd love it, and maybe love you a little more in the process for recommending an awesome video game.
I love word games, but they have a bit of a PR problem: the vast, vast majority are glorified takes on the word search with a new hook here and a novel mechanic there. And y'know, I don't really mind—give me a reason to frantically form words and I'm usually happy. Letterbox [$1.99] is a pretty good reason. It's a game in the word-search mold, bringing in 3D block stacking for its special touch.
Word hunting in 3D is entertaining on its own, but Letterbox goes a step further. Finding words is a means to an end—the real goal is to use those words with a variety of special blocks to tear your tower down. It becomes a game as much about destruction as it is about creating words.
Though ShockPanda is keen to call the game "Jenga meets Boggle" in its marketing material, the Jenga comparison is a bit loose. There is no fear of collapse, here, no tottering physics. Instead, you carve away at your cube with each word you make, letters disappearing and leaving gaps behind.
In tomorrow's update for SpellTower [$1.99], creator Zach Gage is giving fans a lot of reasons to stick with his beautiful word game. On top of adding new iPad support, night colors, tweaks, and various fixes, Gage is finally implementing a bluetooth battle mode, which looks as great as it sounds. We've got video of it just below, in fact.
If you've somehow missed out on SpellTower, now's a good of time as ever to take the plunge. It's a remarkable word game with a ton of clever puzzle games and its designed with elegance in mind. It ended up being one of our Game of the Year contenders, as it was easily the standout word game of 2011. Give it a look.
UPDATE: Sometimes things don't go as planned, unfortunately. Some approval process stuff is holding back the update. The new release date is April 12th.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret: we're pretty big fans of SpellTower [$1.99], the clever iOS word game from Zach Gage. Actually, that's not really a secret at all now that I think about it. We gave SpellTowera full 5 stars in our review when the game launched in November, and an update the following month added Universal support and Game Center achievements, making an already great thing even greater. In fact, we thought so much of SpellTower that we included it in our Game of the Year picks for 2011.
So yeah, it's no secret that SpellTower is pretty good and stuff. About the only thing the game is missing is some sort of multiplayer mode, but over the weekend Zach Gage posted a quick teaser video showing just that: a local competitive multiplayer mode. Matching words will send letter blocks over to your competitor's screen, and the grey shading in the backgrounds shows where the other person's current tile stack is at.
When it comes to game genres that have been done to death, the word game is king. You can't blame developers for trying to come up with a unique twist for them, because if it does well, it does SO well -- look at that Words With Friends phenomenon. How do we make the next Words With Friends? And then there's a flood of games that all make you use your spelling skills. Great. Maybe if I get really fancy I can spell "ubiquitous". Or something.
Maybe it is possible to find a few that try the new twist and come out successful, though. Bubble in Paradise [$0.99] didn't sound too promising to me from the name itself, but once I got a look at the bubble mechanic I could tell the possibility of getting hooked was there. Basically, the premise is simple: your screen fills with bubbles, each of which have a letter on them. To form a word, you have to tap the letters and submit, and if you've got a word, the bubbles all pop, clearing more space for the ones to come. The twist is that if you don't use them, the bubbles grow, and if you let them get too big, your game is over. Hope you have a good way to use that Z in a sentence.
If you enjoy Tetris, match-3 games and Boggle, then Puzzlejuice [99¢] from Colaboratory might be right up your alley. That's because this falling-block, color-matching, word-finding mash-up combines these things into a nice-looking bundle of pleasure.
Puzzlejuice starts with falling puzzle-blocks, just like Tetris. You can rotate each falling block by tapping the screen or drag it left or right. A ghost image of the block shows where it will end up at the bottom. When you're happy with the position of the block, you can swipe it downwards to speed up its descent. And the idea is to form a solid row. That should all sound fairly familiar for anyone who knows Tetris, but that's just the start of this game.
Our collective gut says that we'll be talking a lot about Colaboratory's Puzzlejuice [$.99] in 2012. That's big praise considering it's January and all, but it has that indescribable feel of a remarkable game. To its credit, it does a great job convincing you that it is, in fact, this good; it has an unparalleled swagger, presence, and charisma that crops up in almost every aspect of the title, including the UI and tutorials. It knows it's hot.
We're not sure if it knows how crazy it is, though. Puzzlejuice deftly pairs the block matching of a Tetris to a free-form spelling mechanic like the one used in last year's stand-out, SpellTower [$1.99]. Basically, you create lines by rotating blocks of varying shapes and smashing them together at the bottom of the screen. Once you make a solid line, the matched blocks magically transform into letters that you then have to spell words with.
By the time you read this, my big problem with Letris 2 [Free] might be resolved. That's the beauty of modern gaming: what is broken can be fixed. But indulge me for a second before I get to the good stuff (and there is quite a bit of good stuff to be found in this freemium title): Letris 2 uses what might be the worst dictionary I've had the pleasure of bashing my head against.
Ivanovich Games has already assured us there is an update coming in that adds 25,000 words players have submitted. That leaves a question, though - why were at least 25,000 words left out in the first place? Worse, how is it that the game accepts every common curse and racial slur I tried, a smattering of proper nouns, and at least a few non-English words in their place? The dictionary is the backbone of any word game, and this one is more than a little fractured. Let's hope the update fixes it, because aside from that one glaring issue there's a lot to like in Letris 2.
SpellTower [$.99] is one of those rare titles that come along and completely knock your socks off. Mixing elegance and good word game play, we recommend it to anyone looking for a good game, no less a good word game. And now it's an even better value: version 2.0 of SpellTower adds in achievements and bug fixes on top of Universal support, for free.
Oh! And the price? You probably noticed that it's lower, too. As of yesterday, the game's price has been knocked down to $.99 instead of its usual $1.99. Deal! They happen! I'm excited!
If you're still on the fence after this reduction, take a moment and educate yourself with our review of the game. Spoiler: it's pretty good.
It's a good time to be a word game fan. Every few weeks a new genre standout arrives, ready to tide you over until the next big hit. Now App Store superstar Zach Gage (Unify [$1.99/Free], Bit Pilot [99¢], Halcyon [$1.99]) has thrown his hat into the word game ring with SpellTower [$1.99] . Those of us who fit in the Venn diagram intersection of iPad owners and word game fans benefit -- SpellTower is elegant, clever and fun.
Not that it's entirely unique. We've all played any number of games that make use of SpellTower's main mechanic. Presented with a grid of letters, you spot a word and trace a path through its letters to select it. You can trace in any direction, loop diagonally back on your path, and make words of any length past two. And if that were all there was to it, this would be a yawn and a skip. But it's not.
Make no bones about it, SpellTower [$1.99] is an awesome game. Created by Zach Gage of Zach Gage fame, it's a word game that has you tracing out actual words from a jumble. In general, the bigger the word you can trace, the more points you'll get, but sometimes you'll come across letters with bonus modifiers that can jack up your score and delete lines from the jumble.
If you're big on periodicals, chances are you've become intimately familiar with Apple's Newsstand functionality that was 
