Tuesday, November 9, 2010
0
Letter Rip! Review
★★★★☆
Combine letters, make words, score points; you know the drill. But there's a catch... the longer you play, the faster new tiles get thrown in your face! Can you take the pressure?
Title: Letter Rip! | Developer: Anthrological | Genre: Brain & Puzzle |
Players: 1 | Version: 1.0 | Size: 1.1MB | Price: Free
Click QRC image (from phone) or scan with a barcode reader.
Letter Rip! is a tight little word-game that's something like Scrabble-meets-Tetris. No, letters aren't falling from the sky, but they're popping-up on a fixed-size board... at a faster and faster rate. Your goal in this game is simple: score the most points possible with every word you make. However, the pressure ramps-up as you run out of precious space.
As in Scrabble, each letter-tile is worth a varying number of points; the more difficult-to-place ones being the most valuable. Using your finger (or your nose, if you're really good), drag tiles around the board to arrange them into a word - horizontal, diagonal, or vertical - then swipe the word to score it. In the beginning, new tiles pop on the board rather slowly, but the longer you play, the faster they pop. Once you've reached your limit and simply can't find any new words, you'll find yourself swamped in tiles... thus triggering the second phase of the game!
Once the board is full of tiles, you enter into a final round of elimination where every word is worth half of the original points. No new tiles will pop, but you're given a small bank of black letter-tiles to work with, just in-case you're missing a couple critical letters. In this final round, you work your way backwards from a full to an (hopefully) empty board. When you've hit your limit, and you're left with a smattering of nouns but no consonants, hit the Finish Game button and see how you did!
After your game, you'll land on the High-Scores screen which shows you your final score, as well as a list of the words you submitted. If you really suck at making words, there's a Word Ideas option (requires data connection) which will show you some more obtuse combinations of letters.
Controls
Tap-hold and drag tiles around, then swipe your word from first-letter to last. No complaints here!
Graphics
The over-all feel of this game fits the theme - very book'ish, like a Scrabble Board. They're rather simplistic, but do the job. The glow-effect on the tiles as you swipe a word works nicely, but I feel like the tiles themselves are a bit blurry and could use a bit of sharpening. You're given the option to change the style (themes), but this merely serves to swap-out the basic color-scheme... no glitz or glamour here! The game is functional, but could use some sprucing-up for sure.
Sound
The sound-effects are marvelous, and feel like a well-made game. The "tick" sound that triggers as you drag a tile around is nice and tight, as are the scoring effects. Unfortunately, there is no background music. Why are there so many games without background music?
Options
If playing in Practice mode (Options menu), you have a myriad of game-tweaks at your disposal, including board size and game speed. Tournament mode, the main-mode which allows you to save high-scores, locks everything down. In addition to switching game-modes, you can change the color-scheme, set the minimum word length, toggle sound-effects and vibration, and even swap handedness from right to left.
Verdict
If you're a word-Nazi looking to brush-up on your skills, this is a great little casual word-game... especially since it's free! The tiles are only slightly blurry (nit-picking), but I was saddened by the plain-Jane solid colors and lack of background graphics or music. The only other irritation I had was that you can't get to the High-Scores or the Word-Suggestion screens without starting a game and quitting. Lastly, according to some Market users the game dictionary is missing some words, but I haven't experienced this phenomenon. Those minor issues aside, you "wordies" will have a good time with Letter Rip!
PS: Multiplayer online would have been awesome.
Get Letter Rip! on AppBrain!
Title: Letter Rip! | Developer: Anthrological | Genre: Brain & Puzzle |
Players: 1 | Version: 1.0 | Size: 1.1MB | Price: Free
Letter Rip! is a tight little word-game that's something like Scrabble-meets-Tetris. No, letters aren't falling from the sky, but they're popping-up on a fixed-size board... at a faster and faster rate. Your goal in this game is simple: score the most points possible with every word you make. However, the pressure ramps-up as you run out of precious space.
As in Scrabble, each letter-tile is worth a varying number of points; the more difficult-to-place ones being the most valuable. Using your finger (or your nose, if you're really good), drag tiles around the board to arrange them into a word - horizontal, diagonal, or vertical - then swipe the word to score it. In the beginning, new tiles pop on the board rather slowly, but the longer you play, the faster they pop. Once you've reached your limit and simply can't find any new words, you'll find yourself swamped in tiles... thus triggering the second phase of the game!
Once the board is full of tiles, you enter into a final round of elimination where every word is worth half of the original points. No new tiles will pop, but you're given a small bank of black letter-tiles to work with, just in-case you're missing a couple critical letters. In this final round, you work your way backwards from a full to an (hopefully) empty board. When you've hit your limit, and you're left with a smattering of nouns but no consonants, hit the Finish Game button and see how you did!
After your game, you'll land on the High-Scores screen which shows you your final score, as well as a list of the words you submitted. If you really suck at making words, there's a Word Ideas option (requires data connection) which will show you some more obtuse combinations of letters.
Controls
Tap-hold and drag tiles around, then swipe your word from first-letter to last. No complaints here!
Graphics
The over-all feel of this game fits the theme - very book'ish, like a Scrabble Board. They're rather simplistic, but do the job. The glow-effect on the tiles as you swipe a word works nicely, but I feel like the tiles themselves are a bit blurry and could use a bit of sharpening. You're given the option to change the style (themes), but this merely serves to swap-out the basic color-scheme... no glitz or glamour here! The game is functional, but could use some sprucing-up for sure.
Sound
The sound-effects are marvelous, and feel like a well-made game. The "tick" sound that triggers as you drag a tile around is nice and tight, as are the scoring effects. Unfortunately, there is no background music. Why are there so many games without background music?
Options
If playing in Practice mode (Options menu), you have a myriad of game-tweaks at your disposal, including board size and game speed. Tournament mode, the main-mode which allows you to save high-scores, locks everything down. In addition to switching game-modes, you can change the color-scheme, set the minimum word length, toggle sound-effects and vibration, and even swap handedness from right to left.
Verdict
If you're a word-Nazi looking to brush-up on your skills, this is a great little casual word-game... especially since it's free! The tiles are only slightly blurry (nit-picking), but I was saddened by the plain-Jane solid colors and lack of background graphics or music. The only other irritation I had was that you can't get to the High-Scores or the Word-Suggestion screens without starting a game and quitting. Lastly, according to some Market users the game dictionary is missing some words, but I haven't experienced this phenomenon. Those minor issues aside, you "wordies" will have a good time with Letter Rip!
PS: Multiplayer online would have been awesome.
Get Letter Rip! on AppBrain!
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