Word Challenge
by eSoft
Interactive, Price: $9.95
Reviewed December 2003
From the creators of Tower
of Mogul, here is a collection of word games that will
build your vocabulary rather than high rise empires. eSoft
Interactive's Word Challenge is a bundle of four popular
word games: Word Jumble, Hungman, Hunt-A-Word and Word
Whiz. Word puzzle fans will find familiar gameplay in these
games, but will be tested by the time limit and required
score to enter higher levels.
In Word Jumble, you will be given a group
of seven letters. All you have to do is to figure what the
seven-letter word is. The more letters you complete, the
higher your score. Hungman game keeps the exact traditional
Hangman gameplay: you guess the right word or your Hungman
dies. Hunt-A-Word resembles the traditional word search games
where you are given a large grid of letters and a list of
words you much hunt from the board. And lastly Word Whiz
gives you 25 letters on a 5x5 grid and you must find the
required number of words to move to the next levels. The
traditional gameplay is spiced up by time limits, the limited
number of moves and required quota to advance. If you are
used to deep thinking when playing word games, you will run
out of the time in each and every one of these games. Mad
tapping and go for broke is a better strategy here. Of course,
all four games require your absolute attention and concentration.
Solving the puzzles isn't hard in Word Challenge, the real
challenge lies in beating the timer. eSoft Interactive hosts
a high score board for those who are masters of word puzzles.
The graphics in Word Challenge are sharp
and the interface is easy to use. The frontier/western style
shows through the puzzle board design and word fonts. When
there is need and space, the developers added some nice drawings
as the background (found in the man game which is lighthearted
and comical). You will notice some little nice touches such
as in-game battery meter, and you can access to the help,
menu and pause game easier via the shortcut buttons below
the puzzle screen.
The sound tracks fit the mood of this fast-paced
puzzle game. Since there aren't a lot of sound effects, the
groovy music fills in the void. You will find some sound
bites corresponding to your actions however. Word Challenge
game supports ARM/XScale devise and takes less than 2MB of
space.
For word nuts, Word Challenge is
certain a worthy title to try. It contains over 10K words
in its database, and is set up to add more words. Four
popular puzzles in one game is always a good deal and provides
variety. I wish there were different difficulty levels
which would allow it to appeal to a larger fan base. It
would also be fun if the timer reset when you got an answer
right.
Playing Hints and Tips
In Word Whiz, don't look for too long;
just start clicking as soon as the timer starts. Don't be
afraid of using 3-letter words, even though longer letters
will give you better scores. You will need both to get pass
the quota. |
