I’d Buy That For A Dollar: Wordstr and SNOOD

Wordstr

Wordstr, which could either be pronounced word-star or word-ster depending on your vowel preference, is the kind of game that would probably appeal to the Scrabble fan, but is by no means a Scrabble game.

Don’t let the developer’s choice to axe a clearly needed vowel from the title of the game make you think that spelling is not important in Wordstr. You don’t have the luxury of arbitrarily deleting letters like the creators of Wordstr did. You have to spell everything correctly.

Wordstr is basically like a modern day hangman, except without the unnecessary violence and limb memberment. The player has to figure out a five letter mystery word that the game has put forward, and you have to do this by offering five letter words to the computer. As you offer words, you will gain points, and be told what letters you have figured out are in the mystery word. For example, you could offer the word table, and the game will let you know that the mystery word contains the letters t and b, and you can now infer that the mystery word does not contain the letters a, l or e. From there you keep offering words and try to try to solve the mystery.

Wordstr has high production values, and helps the player avoid frustration and solve the puzzle by keeping track of solved letters. If that is not challenging enough, you can bump up the difficulty and keep track of the letters yourself. It’s an interesting twist on the word game genre, but it is limited by its five letter cutoff. It’s constricting to be limited to five letters, even though there are hundreds of five letter words available. I never met the same word twice, but I felt constrained by not being able to access all the multi-letter word knowledge I have developed during games like Scrabble and Bookworm.

At $1.99, which is comparatively low compared to other iPad games, you are getting access to a fun little word-puzzle game with short rounds that can be knocked out in only a couple of minutes. It’s a worthy distraction, especially if you have friends to do high score battle against. I would have liked to see words with more than five letters though.

SNOOD

SNOOD is a game whose title is written in all caps, because when you haven’t played for a while you will suddenly realize you don’t have enough SNOOD in your life. At that moment, you are likely to drop everything you are doing and your brain will just flash the letters S-N-O-O-D over and over like distracting neon sign. It won’t stop either until you’ve got your hands back on SNOOD either.

Of course, the above paragraph is an exaggeration, but only slightly.

SNOOD is not an original concept, and it’s not the first version of itself to appear on the iOS. It’s basically Bust-a-move (a game that surprisingly, has no dancing), except instead of matching colored balls, you are matching assorted colored shapes that happen to have faces.

You control a launch device at the bottom of the screen, and at the top of the screen there is a large grouping of colored face shapes. The player must launch additional colored face shapes into the the SNOOD crowd, and match three to make the crowd lighter. All the while, the SNOODS are getting closer and closer to the bottom of the screen between every turn. If you can’t get rid of all the SNOODs before they reach the bottom, then it’s game over.

If you’ve been aware of SNOOD for awhile, then you will notice that the SNOODs have adopted a new look. They have more facial animations, and even have a bit of personality, but if you prefer the old look of the game, it’s very simple to switch back.

Along with a plain old classic mode for those who want to get straight to SNOODing (a verb created for exclusively for this article), there is also a time attack mode, a puzzle mode, and a story mode. The only one of those modes that needs a bit of explanation is the story mode, and there really isn’t much to say. The SNOODS have interpersonal problems that can all be explained in seven to eight words, and all conundrums can be solved by playing SNOOD. It’s really there to offer more reward for finishing specific SNOOD tasks, and it is a genuinely fun mode.

It’s incredibly addicting because of it’s simplicity, and the ease of control on the touch screen means that it has full right to be seated next to such iOS greats as Peggle and Bejeweled. The best part about it though, is that it is only $0.99 making it a must own for those waits at the bank or important business meetings. For the latter situation, just tell them you are checking your e-mail.