Popcap's new game - Bookworm Adventures

[Peregrine]

I didn't play a lot of their previous game Bookworm, though now that I've tried their free online play edition, it's pretty fun. Popcap now has a new game out, Bookworm Adventures, that's a lot of fun. Basically they have fused a really good word game with some RPG-like elements to make a really nice combination.

You play the bookworm Lex, who travels into the books of lore to rescue a damsel in distress. Each level is broken up into several fights against monsters, basically you have a square full of letter tiles, and you make the best word you can out of them then use it as a spell to blast your enemy, the better the word the more damage you do. (This is similar to the game Dungeon Scroll, but feels more polished.) After you attack the enemy attacks back, doing various amounts of damage and possibly leaving you stunned (you lose a turn) poisoned, or worse. One thing I like is there's no time pressure to compose the words, you can take as much time as you like to get a big word. As you go through the game and fight the boss of each level, you get a magical item to take with you, that have various powers. The first item, for example, is a bow that gives words with X, Y, and Z an extra power burst.

As you go through the game the monsters get a lot tougher, and so do you, you can level up to get more hearts (can take more damage) and more word blasting power. You can also get potions that have various abilities. The monsters also get nastier, they can do heavy stuns, power-up to launch big attacks, or even crush some of your letter tiles so that if you use them in a word they don't count towards damage. Later on you can get magical gem tiles with a variety of effects as well.

Personally, I enjoyed playing this game as an adult, and I think kids would like it too, and it should help their vocabulary skills. Try the demo, it's a lot of fun if you like word games at all!

hxxp://www.popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=bwa

[hoosierdude]

I have the game and have wasted a few hours with it. Nice quick game to play and keeps the vocab skills fresh :)

The only thing I have found is that these kind of games always seem to skew to the UK side of the dictionary, and what should be a legit word doesn't seem to be acceptable..

But I love this game. Any time I can use Qua as a word I am all over it. :P

[terpkristin]

Haven't played the game yet but am looking forward to giving it a go. First heard about it in an article on joystiq... [link (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/01/18/off-the-grid-scrabble-and-the-elusive-letter-q/)]
ze article... :D /tk
Off the Grid: Scrabble and the elusive letter "Q"

Posted Jan 18th 2007 11:58AM by Bonnie Ruberg (http://www.joystiq.com/bloggers/bonnie-ruberg)
Filed under: Features (http://www.joystiq.com/category/features/)
This week, Bonnie Ruberg contributes to Off the Grid (http://joystiq.com/tag/offthegrid/), Scott Jon Siegel's column on gaming away from the television screen or monitor.

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/01/offthegrid-scrabble.jpgScrabble is not a sexy game. When you think of Scrabble, what do you see? Family gatherings at your Aunt Mae's spent quibbling over proper nouns? Conventions of blue-haired grandmothers and smarty-pants girls in braces, all clutching their Scrabble dictionaries? Maybe Scrabble deserves its homely image, after all -- as board games go -- it's pretty dull-looking. No bright colors, no "some assembly required" three-dimensional terrain, not even the satisfaction of a tiny, silver boot for a game piece. Just words. Words, words, and more words.

Scrabble may look, sound, heck, possibly even smell dorky, but when have gamers ever been afraid of a little dork-dom? I say, embrace your inner word dork. Okay, maybe I'm just a word dork. But if Scott had asked me, instead of all those games-industry leaders, what my favorite analog game was a few weeks back (http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/23/off-the-grid-thanksgiving-edition-or-industry-favorites/), it definitely would have been Scrabble.

What's great about Scrabble is that it takes an everyday thing like language -- so banal we barely even think about it -- and turns it into a game mechanic. So we've got this alphabet but, in English, we use certain letters more than others. Boom, mechanic! Widely-used letters can be worth only a few points, whereas letters we rarely use can be worth more.

All of which lends itself to some serious strategy. I'm not just talking about that heart-breaking moment when you're staring at the letters U-A-R-T-E-R and someone else pulls the last Q from the bag. Between point values, number of tiles, and special rules -- triple letter score, double word score, use all your letters and get an extra fifty points -- Scrabble makes something as simple as spelling into a complex ordeal. If you're me, that ordeal usually involves your opponent tapping on his watch as you take fifteen minutes deciding to make P-U-P-P-Y.

Someone should really invent a game where you can take all the time you want to form words, and a little voice tells you how much you rock just for spelling. Oh wait, they already did!

Scrabble has been on my mind lately thanks to the recently-released, word-dork heaven known as Bookworm Adventures (http://www.popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=bwa). Greater powers than I have hailed (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/12/01) its awesome powers but one of the things that makes the game so cool (okay, the word "cool" is probably a logical impossibility in a column about Scrabble) is that it combines the mechanics of language with the mechanics of video games.

Spelling and RPG-style combat, together at last? It sounds absurd, but that's Bookworm Adventures, and it works like a charm. Just think about it. Like in Scrabble, longer words are better, but instead of points on a score pad now your SAT vocabulary earns you hit points against enemies. It's like a spelling bee with knives ... seriously, there are knives.

So the next time your Aunt Mae pulls out the Scrabble board, don't yawn an over-exaggerated yawn and pretend to fall asleep in her apple pie. Yes, it's dorky. But remember, you're not really forming words, you're eating away at the health hearts of your loved ones. And that's good, old-fashioned family fun.