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99Games is back with another heaping of words and game! Is it as great as their first?

Wordulous ($0.99)

Wordulous is a new take on the old concept of TextTwist, which has its own iPhone app. While Text Twist is true to the original, Wordulous is something new. It just may want a name change. The jailbreak community will understand the confusion that I got when I was asked to review this game.

My Take

First with the name confusion. Wordulous is a great name. And nothing wrong with it. If it weren’t for Hackulous’ line of jailbreak apps and such that have negative connotations. Such as stealing applications. Installous and Crackulous are two such jailbreak app. This confused me immensely. I thought it was an iPhone dictionary plugin. Regardless, 99Games, please come up with a new name. It’ll be best for the business of this game.

Presentation

The graphics are simple, and well thought out. The game is set up as an elementary school look, and it’s fitting of the type of game and it’s a very consistent UI. The graphics are appropriate for the type of word game. In fact, all word games should adopt this look. It’s very smooth and looks nice. The SFX isn’t the best considering it’s possibly a 10 second WAV file on loop. It’s almost the same formula they did with WordsWorth.

Gameplay

Wordulous offers three modes of play: Examination, Practice and Challenge. Examination is the main mode where you get to continuously play against yourself and scores posted online. Practice is self explanatory while Challenge lets you challenge friends through Facebook or phone contacts.

The levels are nonexistant. You just play though a board and go to the next. The motivation to continue playing is in beating global and local high scores. Not all that much motivation to keep playing. A level system would be greatly appreciated. It also needs word groups, and definitions for words, two glaring lacking features.

The controls are blatant and simple. Tap a letter to select, and it goes to the word creation section. Tap the letter again to return it to the main box. Use the scramble button to mix up the letters. Placement of the buttons is odd. In practice, I often accidentally hit the ABC button which gives me a new board and new letters. That gets annoying, but the button doesn’t function in the main mode, so it’s really not a big deal. A simple switch of the scramble and ABC button would solve those issues. It’s difficult to critique controls in word games, since they have none.

Conclusion

All in all, it’s a new take on the old concept of Text Twist. Nice concept, nice application. The caveats are the small things that add up. Word games aren’t broadly appealing (apart from the runaway hits of Scrabble and Bookworm), and it’s the repetitiveness and limitations that are the downfall of most words game. Wordulous doesn’t offer anything drastically new. It’s well polished and put together in the molds of its 99Games predecessor (WordsWorth). If you’re a fan of WW, then without a doubt, grab Wordulous.

Contest

Simply comment below and tell us why you want the game. Closes June 3, 7PM.