iAppLover

Wordpop! iPhone App

Wordpop is another contender in the battle to consume my free time, and it’s no bum.  Like many portable word games, this isn’t exactly new – it’s a port of an old word game.

The fact that the game pretty much remains the same isn’t a bad thing – it’s the selling point. It came out years ago as an addictive game and making sure that formula still works now is probably a good idea.

For those new to the portable game scene, Wordpop is a simple yet addictive game where you essentially try to spell words from a bunch of randomly arranged tiles, the way you would in a game of Boggle, for example. Whenever you use up a bunch of letters to form a word, those letters vanish from the grid. As always, the point is to get the highest possible score in a round.

Scores per word vary from length, complexity and the letters involved in spelling that word.  Some foresight and consideration is required to make the most out of every round.  If you use up too many letters at one time, you may end up with a bunch of other letters remaining that can’t be formed into a word.

The difficulty levels available are the standard fare of easy, medium and hard.  For those who are worried that it may be too difficult, you can earn bonus tiles. Some tiles are blank and can be used in the same way a blank tile in Scrabble could be – as any letter that you need.  The different difficulty levels give you a different number of starting bonus tiles.

Predictably, hard has you starting with exactly zero bonus tiles, which is why I’m no real fan of hard.  I like a brain exercise, but I like winning too.  Sometimes the tiles come with a letter that you can insert wherever you need it in the word you’re thinking of.  Hard level tends to have more lettered tiles than blank ones.

The good part about this game is that it’s only around $1.99.  Great cost for something you could actually end up playing forever.  The bad news is, a lot of other games come for cheaper, addictive games of the word game or match three variety, games that are just as addictive.  If you’re a big fan of Wordpop or looking for a new word game after exhausting other options, this is one’s for you.  I know it’s definitely for me.