App Spotlight: Word Games!

If you love casual word games, today’s Amazon Free App of the Day, Scramble Touch, is a good one to try. From Amazon:

Calling All Word Warriors

Are you a self-appointed Scrabble master? Do you lie awake all night obsessing over Boggle? Are you just an unrepentant word game junkie? If so, you need Scramble Touch on your Android device.

Scrambled Words, Sunny Side Up

The rules of Scramble Touch are easy enough. You face a grid of letters, with an allotted amount of time to form words. You spell out words by connecting adjacent letters. The longer the word, the more points you score. If you misspell a word, Scramble Touch will let you know. The easiest level is a 4×4 grid; a second, more difficult grid is 5×5.

Ready, Set, Spell!

You’ll soon experience the joys of forcing your brain into hyper-drive as you race against the clock, your eyes frantically darting over letters to ferret out words. Once time is up, Scramble Touch serves up a list of every possible word from the grid you played.

Scramble Touch features three game modes. In the Classic and Bonus modes, you’ll play a classic word hunt game, forming as many words as possible on the grid within a given amount of time. In Guided mode, you’ll be given words to locate on the grid; see how many of them you can find! You keep track of your vocabulary skills on a personal high score list, which are categorized by mode, size, and time.

There Can Be Only One

Feeling competitive? Scramble Touch features Play & Pass mode, which allows you to take on your friends. This mode gives each player a turn each round, and you decide how many rounds you wish to play. Once you finish you turn, you hand the phone [or Fire] over to the next competitor.

Willing to invest a buck? Take a look at the very popular Word to Word. It carries an average review rating of 4.5/5 stars across over 750 reviews, and is currently ranked #21 in Games overall. From Amazon:

Challenge yourself with this fun and addictive free word association game.
Hot… Cold. Smart… Intelligent. Fire… Truck. Dog… Cat. Sugar… Coffee.

Words can be opposite. Words can mean the same thing. Words can be compound words. Words just have to be related!

Be careful though! As puzzles get harder, a word can have multiple matches so you’ll have to get the right combination of words to complete each puzzle and solve all the pairs.

Play for a few minutes or a few hours. You’ll get 10 packs with 400 puzzles in this version!

Word game traditionalists: for you, there’s Scrabble (Kindle Fire Edition)! It’s the game you know and love, but with some high tech and social media enhancements. From Amazon:

Always Get a Game

Now you don’t have to wait until you are in front of a computer or your son finishes his homework to show off your amazing SCRABBLE skills. Just fire up this high-quality app from Electronic Arts and you’re in SCRABBLE Heaven. Of course, you can always take on someone in the flesh using the two-person Pass ‘N Play mode. But online there are millions of challengers out there–some of whom you probably already know. Play anyone from around the corner to across the country with this app. [Note: you can also play solo, against the computer].

Even though you will be playing SCRABBLE on your Kindle Fire, you can take on anyone else, no matter what device they are using (as long as they have the app). Go ahead and challenge your sister, the iPhone freak. Connect your SCRABBLE account with Facebook and play your current games on that site right from your device. Now you literally have no excuse when someone wants to challenge you to a game–if they even dare.

Find a Friend, Then Play

It’s easy to find friends who are playing SCRABBLE online. Connect and play via user name, e-mail address, or even send an invitation using your Android contact list. Post invitations to play via Facebook and e-mail, too!

Up to Fifty (Count ’em) Games at Once

Why stop at just one? With this turn-based SCRABBLE app, you can have up to 50 different games going at the same time. As in five-zero. That’s a little bit obsessive, but hey–this is SCRABBLE we’re talking about. It’s only the greatest word game ever invented.

You Can Look It Up

It’s generally acceptable in online SCRABBLE to look up words as you play (although not everyone would probably agree). So the app includes a built-in dictionary feature. Want to know if AGIO is a word? How about NOPAL? If you check the dictionary you’ll see that both are acceptable in SCRABBLE. Go ahead and play them!

Learn as You Go With the Teacher Feature

Playing SCRABBLE for Android is pretty much like playing online (and, let’s face it, even better than real life). In addition to the standard gameplay, this app includes a Teacher feature that shows you what your best move was after you’ve completed your turn. This nifty tool really helps you become a better player and actually teaches you new words as you play.

Talk a Good Game

Feel like doing a little trash talking with your opponent during the game? No problem. This app allows you to chat with your rival while you play. And when you’re not playing, you’ll receive notifications when a game is created, when it’s your turn in a game, or when a game ends.

The Scrabble (Kindle Fire Edition) app, developed by the video game wizards at Electronic Arts, is a real bargain at just $2.99.