Home > iPhone > Nice iPhone Game App… If You Acted Fast

Nice iPhone Game App… If You Acted Fast

December 17th, 2008

Wordwarp-IconI was kind of hoping for a game like Boggle, one where you get a selection of letters and you try to find as many words as you can from what’s available. The iPhone would lend itself to such a game, in fact, as you could shake the phone to randomize the letters and set them each time. Of course, Boggle is copyrighted and all that, so the app would cost a bit, but I wanted some game like that.

Turns out, there’s an app out which could be about as fun–depending on what version you get. The game is called Word Wrap, and it’s a Boggle-like game where you are given six letters and must figure out as many 3- to 6-letter words as possible which can be spelled with just those letters. You start out with the letters and a list of dashed-out word blanks which show you how many words are possible and how many letters each is.

The game is fun and addictive–but there’s a catch I explain at the end of this review, so for the time being, you may not want to download this.

Wwrp-01To enter words, tap the letters in sequence, and they appear in the white blanks above the letter buttons. If you want to take a letter back, tap the white blank with the letter and it’ll go back.

Wwrp-02The “Warp” button jumbles the letters–a useful function as it helps you rearrange them quickly to prompt you to find new combinations (see image below). I’m not sure how useful the “Last” button is, as it just shows you the last word you tried. When you have a word you think is valid, tap “Got It” and if it’s one of the words, it will appear in the list. If it’s not valid, then it doesn’t appear and the white boxes blank out for the next try.

As you compile the list, the words appear in order of length first and then alphabetically–meaning that if you’re stumped at some point, you can use the list as a clue in itself. In the example at right, there’s a word yet to be found which comes between “NOR” and “ONE.” That narrows down the possibilities, as is would have to start with one of the two letters; if “N,” then the next two letters come after “OR,” and if “O,” then the next two letters come before “NE.” In this case, that word is “NUN.” At the end of the game, all of the missed words are shown in red.

Wwrp-03
The “Word Warp” feature mixing up the letters, helping find new combinations.

There are several problems, however. First is that you get bogged down with the three-letter words, and they often repeat and can be inane. Some two-letter words in plural form are accepted, but some aren’t; some abbreviations work, others don’t. And often you’ll be supposed to know words that don’t register as words. When I’m stumped, I start entering words that I don’t think are words but which follow spelling rules, and often I’ll hit something. I mean, “Elan”? “Ulnae”? They didn’t bother to weed out the arcane or technical words.

On the good side: in the prefs, you can activate “alternate” words, which lets swear words be recognized; but better, you can alter the time limit. One minute is not nearly enough, for example. I prefer three minutes, but even that can be too short when there are up to 32 words–not enough time to enter them all even without getting stumped much. It goes up to 30 minutes, then to unlimited time.

Wwrp-05

Now the down side, and after that, the BIG down side: ads. If you got the original version of the app, it’s not so bad. At the start and at the end of a game, you get an ad screen; tap it and a prompt appears, and you can dismiss the ad. The first version of the app, the ads are not intrusive at all–you have to dismiss them every 15 or 20 minutes, between plays, and it’s not such a big deal.

Wwrp-04

Now the BIG bad point: the developers apparently decided that their original ad rate was too lenient, and probably too few people were clicking through to the sponsors. So they released an “update” to “fix bugs,” but really all it did was to change the ad display settings–to something really obnoxious. Apparently, the new version’s ads pop up every time you complete a level, stay up for a while before you can dismiss them, require more taps to dismiss them, and apparently even pop up in mid-play sometimes. Ironically, the upgrade that was supposed to introduce “bug fixes” actually introduced a bug where the clock runs too fast–that in addition to the ads. If you download it now, you get the bad version.

Reviews of the app, before in the 5-star area, have started to tank as people who fell for the “upgrade” scam are complaining in droves. What was a great free app with a minor ad distraction has, apparently, been ruined–unless the developers decide to put it back.

If you really, really want and app like this, you can buy the 99 cent version without ads. If you got the first version of the free one, DON’T UPGRADE! Otherwise, you maybe should stay away from it–until it becomes clear that they made it better. I hate to even introduce a game where the developers are acting so dubiously, but the first version is very fun, and it might be worth it to some people to ante up the dollar.

Me, I’m sticking with the first version.

Categories: iPhone Tags: by
  1. Karen Poza
    December 22nd, 2008 at 02:03 | #1

    Funny you should do a post on this – it is my favorite ap! I play it all the time when I’m stuck waiting somewhere, and it is addictive. I agree about the ads not being too bad – apparently I got the early version. At this point I would recommend paying .99 for the ad-free version. It’s a pretty fun game, and really, as you say, you’d spend .99 elsewhere without even thinking…

Comments are closed.