It’s been a long time since I genuinely enjoyed playing a word game as they tend to make me think of something from the GCSE bitesize website I used to have to suffer through at school. At long last however, a game that requires me to string letters together to form words has broken me out of this mental block and it took barely any time at all for me to be fully engaged in this cute, well-crafted and charming game.
Developer: Bacon Bandit Games
Genre: Word game
Release date: Feburary 5th 2014
Platforms: iOS and Android
Age rating: Rated 9+ for the following: Mild horror themes, mild cartoon/fantasy violence.
'Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey' is a fresh and vibrant game with plenty of adventure game features such as quests, turn based combat and a stack load of upgrades, potions and items to help you advance your way through its numerous stages. To play a word game that’s not just about the spelling but about the overall gaming experience is such a relief as it’s very easy for a game to get wrapped up in its educational value and forget that games are supposed to be fun and engaging. As you progress through the game you must spell out words, the letters you pick and the length of the word all have a direct impact on the amount of damage you’ll do to monsters so the better the word, the higher the damage. It’s very easy to get caught up at the start of the game in bashing out some simple words but the difficulty level is quickly ramped up and you must adjust to this by exercising those brain muscles and coming up with better, more complex words. In this sense the game maintains its stance as a game about learning since it encourages you to polish your English and expand your vocabulary but, thankfully, this has no negative impact on how enjoyable the game is.
My only current irk with the game is that many words are unrecognized and, whilst these are being patched over, this could prove irritating to players. The reason for this mostly seems to be that this is a game from North America and many of the words not included are British but, to be fair, there are still over 190,000 words in the game and the developers are working to update the dictionary. Something to look forward in this game is not just these guaranteed dictionary updates but the likelihood of additional levels and features so even when you’ve completed the game there’s still reason to keep checking back. Currently though the amount of content available is very impressive and, though there is some 'pay to win' features you don't have to buy any of them and everything can be obtained legitimately. Besides, it's a free game so you can forgive them for attempting to get even a little bit of their investment back. As you move through the levels you'll notice a large array of enemies and backgrounds which greatly enhances the overall experience as one too many mobile games tend to have repeating, scrolling background and listless, cloned creatures so it's refreshing to see someone put some hard work into the atmosphere and content of their game.
The room for expansion in this game is fairly large as even though the game currently remains simple but not simplistic it would be still be nice to see a few extra mechanics to make combat a little more varied. Overall, this is a reasonably challenging game that’s extremely fun and very professional looking. You wouldn’t believe this was an indie free game as it is incredibly polished with crystal clear graphics and fun, upbeat music. There’s no timer on battles so there’s very little pressure to defeat the monsters quickly making this a casual game that is as fast paced as you want it to be so and its easy to use controls, simple game logic and its overall charming nature makes 'Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey' very accessible for not just grownups but kids too. I highly recommend this game for anyone to play.
The Good:
- Looks fantastic, vibrant and professional
- Makes spelling fun! No, really.
- Good assortment of enemies, all of whom are well animated
- Detailed levels in different locations
- Use of quests, storyline and items gives the game a nice RPG feel
- Quite challenging, use of items essential to not die
- Achievements for added playability
- Very accessible, easy to get into
- Lots of stages and I liked the inclusion of a world map
- Could use different attacks to make combat more fun
- Needs a bit of bug fixing here and there
The Score: 9/10
Final thoughts: "This has changed my opinion of word games, this is a really fun game. ...I can't believe they're not charging people for this."
