Ruzzle

Playing against friends and randoms in simple challenges seems to be the only type of gaming people do these days.

Just look at Ruzzle's stats: more than 2 million people have - according to publisher MAG Interactive - played the Boggle-derived word game. That's the same as the population of Slovenia.

Admittedly, the straightforward find-as-many-words-as-you-can-in-a-grid-in-two-minutes gameplay is frantically competitive, but it lacks the creative charms of Draw Something or the Scrabble-like strategy of Words With Friends.

Rubble does a good job of easing you into the surprisingly hectic matches with a decent tutorial and the chance to practise offline before braving real word opponents on Android or iOS (cross-platform play is a major boon here).

The aim is simple: you and an opponent take it in turns over three rounds to find as many words as possible in a 4x4 grid. And, in vintage Scrabble style, there are different bonuses for using particular letters as well (highlighted with little icons).

Longer words earn you more points, but having a gargantuan vocabulary at your disposal will only get you so far.

The real skill in Ruzzle is being able to spot short words and then adding extra letters to create new ones. Fortunately, the in-built dictionary has no trouble recognising every word you can throw at it - to the point that some typos unearth ones you might have never heard of.

Meanwhile, the intuitive swipe-to-select controls make moving horizontally, vertically, and diagonally a breeze and so it's rare to stumble because of a touchscreen fumble.

You can play against friends, providing you know their usernames (as there's no Facebook or similar search function to find existing chums with the game), or challenge random opponents.

At one point, I was managing ten different games and it was while juggling these matches that some of Ruzzle's flaws started to surface.

As well as a lack of different modes, and the repetitiveness of the core idea (which has been done in many formats before - not least as a literacy-boosting classroom game), there's a criminal lack of a notification system.

This forces you to regularly check the app, which - although not game breaking - automatically makes this game less compelling than many ofthe other social games around.

Ruzzle might have 2 million players now, but unless it can start playing like the big boys that number could dwindle fast.