WayWords, TwistedSimple's new single-player word puzzle release, is one part Boggle, two parts Magic Square, and three parts playing around with alphabet blocks. It has the sort of aesthetic that wouldn't be out of place between the Crossword and the Sudoku in your daily newspaper, and gameplay that would fit right in between Scrabble and Upwords in the ol' game cabinet.
You are presented with a four-by-four grid and letter tiles in groups of four. You drag and drop the titles onto the grid and lock them into place. When you make a four letter word, up, down, left or right, it disappears, opening up space for new tiles. Extra points are rewarded for word combos (...presumably, that farmer Arepo would top the high-score table on this one.) Various special tiles and power-ups may help or hinder your progress, but bun out of time or fill and lock the board with no words, and it's game over. It's very much like Lock 'n' Roll's mix of luck and strategy, though with letters instead of dice. And believe me... it's harder than you'd think.
Don't get me wrong, the game dictionary is more than up to the task of recognizing any legitimate four-letter word you throw at it, but the learning curve goes past "daunting" and straight to "frustrating." You'll wish the grid was bigger, you'll wish you got more vowels, and you'll wish that the guitar player in the background would give it a rest. Perseverance brings rewards, however, or, at the very least, addiction. If you're not in love with word games, you might want to give this a pass. However, if you are, and are up for a challenge to boot, WayWords offers an exasperatingly good time.
This reminds me EXACTLY of lock-n-roll, except its harder because instead of colored dice, you have to deal with the letters of the alphabet and you don't know exactly where a letter will go in a sequence.
I think there should be an "easy" mode that takes out obscure letters like J, Q, Z, X, etc. so that players aren't left with basicly garbage pieces. It's hard to think of a four letter word that uses a Q, so to me, it becomes a garbage piece.
I like, however, that you can change letters to what ever you want (a few times at least) so that you aren't sitting around the whole game for a vowel or a certain letter.
If you don't like the guitar, it's pretty easy to turn the music off.
I don't know why kongregate doesn't load for me anymore. Keeps saying that it can't display the webpage
This is a pretty fun game overall. My first couple of tries I didn't use any powerups, then I realized they're pretty much mandatory if one is to play for any length of time. I guess my only suggestion is to add some color to the game to make it pop a li'l bit. I realize it's a newspaper sort of theme, so any color fills could be the sort of stippled dots you find in the paper. Just a thought. Good work! =)
sounds educational,
I'll pass
Hi guys,
Thanks for all the compliments and advice. WayWords 2 is already in the works with some new modes, ideas, and soundtrack!
And thank you to Tricky for writing a great review.
Enjoy the game!
Twisted Simple
I love word games but find this a bit limited due to locking the letters in place and allowing only four-letter words. Don’t understand purpose of the ‘black block’ – like idea of spelling backwards. How about allowing more letters and spelling in a spiral?
Addictive, yet frustrating, for the reasons others have already mentioned.
Would the developers please consider weighting the occurrence of letters close to their natural occurrence in English, i.e. E, T, A etc. in the next version? Think Scrabble tiles...
My best score so far: 15,300. Better, anyone? (I'm sure there is.)
One big hint that I don't think needs a spoiler: those starred tiles can represent two or more different letters in one turn, allowing you to rack up many more points. For example, in one turn I made FL*P, which made both FLAP and PELF.
The dictionary is a bit strange.
Didn't let me have ARAB but let me have ENGR (I'm guessing it's an abbreviation for engineer?) Maybe the ARAB one was a problem.
I also came across an occasional bug where I couldn't put a letter in an empty square only resolved by ERASING the empty square.
But a fun game! :-)
adding to clickity6 - would not accept "quad" which, according to dictionary.com, is a legitimate word ...
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