Boy oh boy! It seems like these past 2 weeks have been endless with big releases. Tonight, Ng:Moco unleashes their latest game, and it comes kicking and flying… literally.

Word Fu ($0.99 Sale Price)

The string of great releases this week have been great but Ng:Moco had been solid performers from the beginning. From Mazefinger to Rolando, they have created and/or published some of the biggest titles in the store. With Word Fu, they continue the tradition of bringing iPhone gamers great quality games.

Forums Link: Word Fu

Design

Take a look at their main page and a sample of their tutorial video:

What do you see? Images of great design and UI? Well you should. The 3D rendering of the dice is perfect. Thanks to Ng:Moco using the MachDice technology that gives us both realistic dice rendering and pretty darn awesome dice physics.

Everybody Let’s Get Word Fu Fighting

The game disguises itself as word game but it’s definitely more than that. It not only adds a twist to the game but creates a higher level of finess and quality to the popular iPhone gaming genre.

When you press Play, the game opens up with your highest and last scores:

Word Fu then gives you precisely 20 seconds to choose the 10 letters you want to work with. If you want to jumble all the dice, you simply shake your iPhone. You can also flick any of the dice if you want to only change a couple of letters. Hint: make sure you only have ONE letter of each kind per dice. You can reuse the letter (even if it’s just one dice) as many times you like.

After selecting the dice you want to work with, the game begins. You simply tap the letter dice to create words then shake to finalize the word. Pay great attention to the sound effects as you tap the letters, create words, and miss words. You’ll hear hiyaaahhh, ouccchhaa and little sound nuisances as the dice get rattled. The dice engine reminds us of MotionX’s actually.

Words are graded per length and per the value of the word itself (currently epoch is our highest graded word).

Power Ups

Here’s where Word Fu gets REALLY interesting… the special dice power ups. Currently there are three kinds of power ups. First is the “Freeze Time” dice. What it does is, as you guessed it, stops time. Watch how it freezes time though… After you tap the special dice, it bursts into ice and literally freezes the gameboard.

Second is the “Double Score” symbolized by fire that doubles up your points. Lastly, the flick one dice that let’s you change one of your letters during gameplay. These special dice show up as you fill the circle surrounding the Word Fu logo at dead center.

Bonus

The typical Ng:Moco achievements page are included in the form of belts.

We hear multiplayer is great as well as evidenced by this video but have not personally tried it:

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/3359447[/vimeo]

Suggestion

Maybe have the ability to finalize word by douple tapping and empty part of the board. I imagine people getting a little strained from shaking due to over playing because it gets A-D-D-I-C-T-I-N-G!

Other than that, Ng:Moco’s got this in the bag. It actually caught us off guard since the first teaser video showed very little info. It seems at this point Ng:Moco just understands the market and knows how to handle games point per point. It wouldn’t surprise us if we wake up tomorrow and find out Word Fu’s on top. This game is just one of those gems you HAVE to have.

PS. When you feel like a blackbelter, try switching to Shaolin Mode. We’ll have this screenshot do the explainin’