Friday, March 29, 2024

Jumpy Word combines elements of Scrabble with Tetris (review)

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Overview

If you’re choice in mobile games veers toward your inner ‘word nerd’, then you should consider “Jumpy Word” by evezzon.  This game could be alternatively titled ‘Speed Scrabble’ if not for all the potential copyright infringements.

Why do you ask? Well, how do you play Scrabble?  You are given a set of random letters and are tasked to spell the most complicated words with them, scoring the most points — that’s how.  Jump Word works a lot in the same way.  The big difference is that your letter inventory is never-ending and your time limit for finding said words is much more limited.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Setup

Available for free from the Play Store, the game is linkable to Google Play Games, if that’s your thing. Note that it only applies if you manually click on the profile icon in the title screen.  The settings consist of turning sound effects background music on or off.  An additional setting is to turn ‘Slow Mode’, which simply slows the game down. 
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Gameplay

To play (by clicking on the gamepad icon in the title screen), you are presented with a blue 7 x 6 grid on your screen.  Another way to think of this game as Scrabble combined with Tetris. This grid starts out blank, but begins filling each square with a random letter, starting at the bottom and moving up towards the top.

Your goal is to tap on combinations of letters making the longest words possible (longer words  = more points).  After tapping out the letter combination you want, click on the pencil icon to register your word.  If you make a mistake in your tapping, there is an eraser button which clears your current word build.  If your combination is an actual word, your word is scored and the squares holding your tapped letters are emptied, albeit temporarily.

AScreenshot_2016-02-04-23-31-33fter a brief time these square begin to fill back in with new letters, again moving (generally) from bottom to top.  As the grid fills up, the background color moves from blue, to a kind of gray, to orange, and finally to red. This is designed to indicate your game is close to ending.  The game does end when your grid fills up.

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If there is a twist to this game, it’s the inclusion of ‘bombs’.  You can tap the bomb button anytime to completely empty your grid to start fresh without disrupting your current score.  You can gain more bombs, at the rate of one per 500 points scored at the end of a round. Players have a maximum inventory of 50 bombs.

Conclusion

I personally love this game, as it combines very easy pick-up gameplay with light-hearted mental gymnastics.  Because the game can be played with any word combination, the difficulty is flexible to the person playing it. This makes it a great title to have on a parent’s phone as it can be enjoyed by an adult or child. It’s currently residing on my phone where my grade-school kiddos can access it.

Highlights:

  • Quick startup
  • No in-app advertising
  • Simple gameplay
  • Adjustable difficulty
  • Fun but intellectual

Download from the Play Store.

The post Jumpy Word combines elements of Scrabble with Tetris (review) appeared first on AndroidGuys.

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