Rummage

A cross between a wordsearch and a tile-matching game puzzler in the vein of Bejeweled, Rummage is an interesting wordplay title. It hold familiar appeal by combining two notable styles of gameplay, though it's not entirely satisfactory. Problems impeding some puzzles from being completed diminish this challenging, contemplative game.

Rummage fills the screen with lettered tiles from which you make words. Each puzzle comes with a themed list of words that must be formed. Generating these terms, however, is not as straightforward as sliding a finger across the screen.

The random arrangement of tiles requires you to reposition them to form words. A tap of a tile allows you to swap it within another in any of four directions (up, down, left, and right). Moving a letter shifts those tiles in the row or column selected.

You're allowed just ten moves to craft a word before you forfeit the game. As such, Rummage forces you to play conservatively. Early puzzles are filled with three- and four-letter words, though longer terms make completing later stages a real challenge.

Whenever you successfully enter a word and the tiles disappear from the screen, new ones descend from the top to fill the space. In this way, you're able to piece together new words. Unfortunately, the random letters supplied in these drops make finishing some puzzles impossible.

Several times we weren't able to complete a puzzle because the letters needed to form the last word on the level's list were not provided. Even with blank tiles that enable you to generate a letter of your choosing, it's still a problem.

It's clear that this occurs because of the somewhat random nature of the tiles. To be fair, most puzzles are completed without issue. However, the annoyance of having nearly finished a puzzle only to be forced to repeat it due to a single letter not being supplied is enough to have you exit the game and not return for a day or two.