Game Reviews

Wordament

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Wordament

No matter how complex and enthralling modern video games may be, it's unlikely that they'll ever eclipse the appeal of the humble wordsearch.

A hangover from the back page of newspapers and idle days in primary school, wordsearch games stimulate the basic linguistic portion of our brains while tapping into a primitive, competitive impulse as we try to beat our friends and classmates.

Wordament - which has been available on Windows Phones for some time - builds upon both of these elements by adding an interesting new twist to the competitive wordsearch puzzle game: Xbox Live integration.

Spellbinding

Wordament's gameplay is as simple as it is challenging. Each game is a two-minute long affair in which you have a grid of letters from which you have to create as many words as possible.

Like Scrabble, each letter has a point total assigned to it. Commonly used letters like vowels and ubiquitous consonants like S, L, R, and D are worth a point or two while rarer letters (W, V, and Q) are worth far more.

Words in Wordament are created by tracing a route from one letter to another in any direction available on a game's grid. This creates a fun and fast-paced search element that will have you scrambling to find words among the letters.

B-I-N-D-I-N-G

The real hook to Wordament, however, is not found in its familiar gameplay, but rather in its competitive nature.

Each two-minute game is shared by players across the world, who compete against one another to earn the top ranks. Because Wordament supports full Xbox Live integration, you can easily log in and compete against your more loquacious Xbox friends.

Unfortunately, this shared-board gameplay makes Wordament an online-only game, which is quite annoying if you're in an area without reception or are travelling by airplane.

Worse, because the game has an always-live connection it can - and will - deplete your battery life quite quickly after a couple of rounds, which is rather deceptive for such a small and simple game.

Still, Wordament plays brilliantly with controls that are fast and intuitive. It delivers exactly what it promises - simple wordsearch fun. And there's nothing silly to distract you from the gameplay, as there was in other recent word games like Writer Rumble.

Wordplay

If you're looking for a great, low-investment wordsearch game to enjoy on the go, Wordament is tough to beat - especially at its asking price of nothing.

The online-only nature of the gameplay and the very real probability the first game you join will already be well in progress make for a few choppy moments here and there, but ultimately Wordament is worth checking out if you're looking to test your linguistic abilities.

Wordament

Challenging, competitive word-searching make Wordament a game worth playing whether you're padding your Live stats or not
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Matthew Diener
Matthew Diener
Representing the former colonies, Matt keeps the Pocket Gamer news feed updated when sleepy Europeans are sleeping. As a frustrated journalist, diehard gamer and recovering MMO addict, this is pretty much his dream job.