Word Mole

Until RIM finally conceded that touchscreens are not a fad with the Torch, the only game worth wearing out your BlackBerry’s nub for was Word Mole.

Pre-installed on most devices, it offered a simple spin on PopCap’s Bookworm template, and it was infinitely more entertaining than answering endless emails from your boss about sales targets.

Word Mole on Android, meanwhile, is a (presumably unofficial) porting travesty of the original game that substitutes simple word-making fun for squished, low-res graphics and some serious game-breaking quirks.

Oh, and unless you hit 'mute' it also reads out every letter you input in a robot-woman voice, which is good for clearing a train carriage but not so good if you want to survive in polite society.

All you need to get going with Word Mole is a solid knowledge of three-letter words and the patience of a saint.

While there is a Practice mode with no time limit, you’ll need to read the text instructions in the help section if you’re going to have a clue what you’re supposed to do.

Playing against the clock, you have to tap out words made from jumbled letters in a graphically squeezed, six-by-six oblong grid that looks a tiny bit like a garden.

There’s a score target to reach, which starts at ten words and presumably should increase with each level, but doesn’t. Instead, you’re just given the opportunity to play again and again, and - if you’ve not abandoned all hope yet - again.

Constant consonants

Adding a hint of challenge is the fact that you can't simply make words using letters from all over the grid-shaped garden.

Letters you tap need to be adjacent to one another in order for them to be replaced by new ones after they're used up. Meanwhile, any letters taken from further afield on the garden will be replaced with shovelled-over earth, which means you have less space (and letters) to make future words.

This is where this incarnation of World Mole really breaks down. There are rarely opportunities to create words of more than three letters in the same area, so you’re forced into making short words like a precocious primary school child.

And any letters you are given tend to be consonants and the screen quickly fills up with useless Ps and Qs to mind, leaving you unable to make anything.

Adding insult to injury, while Word Mole allegedly has three difficulty modes to master there’s no discernible difference beyond their names.

This pesky mole deserves a good shovelling back to the depths of the Android Market.