Courtesy of Electronic Arts, the company for all the classic games it seems (Monopoly™ is coming soon too), comes this game of letter tiles and colored squares.
This has been my favorite game since I was a kid, so it was an instant “must buy” for me. I’ve been playing Scrabulous™ as a substitute lately with family and friends, and I was eager to see how it held up against that, being “real deal” and all. I wasn’t blown away, but I wasn’t disappointed, either.
Download and install went smoothly. When the game is fired up, an impressive looking 3D floating tiles “loading now” movie plays, and the game takes perhaps 10 seconds to load. The movie freezes for a few seconds at the end, which scared me into thinking it had crashed my phone. Nope! Just an awkward transition into the menu screen.
Selecting “Quck Play” on the menu just launches a game with whatever settings are set up under “Custom Play.” In Game Setup (Custom Play), you can choose the Game Mode, (vs Computer, “Pass n’ Play” against another person, or Solo), Game Style (Classic, 75/150 pt games, or 8/12 move games), Difficulty (against the computer), Number of players (up to 4, in Pass n’ Play mode), And a setting called “Duplicate” which is a mystery to me. I think it’s to play a solo game against the computer, where you each get your own board, and play head to head.
As you can see, the game doesn’t offer much more than the basics. For word play the only options are play, pass, and exchange as options. In terms of tile manipulation, it’s either shuffle or drag the tiles to a spot on the board. To drag, simply press and hold a tile until the buttons at the bottom turn dark, then drag the tile to a place on the board you want to drop it. The board will automatically zoom into the area you drag the tile to, making placement accuracy better, but still I miss 30% of the time with the first tile.
To shuffle either press the “shuffle” button, or shake the iPhone. Yeah, it’s cute to shake the iPhone to shuffle, but I had to shake it hard 3-4 times up and down. It’s easier and quicker just to use the button.
With the “Tip” function enabled, appropriate tips pop up occasionally. I encourage you to play a couple of games with the tips enabled. I learned a couple of things from them, including the above “shake to shuffle” function.
There is no dictionary lookup, unfortunately. That’s a big ommision in my opinion. I’d like to see a two letter word list as well, during play. Another huge ommision is playing against another iPhone competitor wirelessly. That function is coming though, claims EA.
One final peeve is that it doesn’t show a score as tiles are placed on the board. Scrabulous™ does this, and it makes deciding between words much easier.
Upshot: If you’re a fan of Scrabble™, get it! Not as good as Scrabulous™, but is well worth the $9.99 cost.
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