Word Play

Word Play is a spelling game about combining random letters into discerning words. The game includes several roguelike deckbuilding elements: you’ll have to leverage various perks in order to meet the ever-increasing target scores of each round. It’s a mix of traditional word games and modern video game design that is meant to appeal to both the language curious and the spelling veterans.

A game of Word Play is structured in multiple rounds. You get from one round to the next by scoring enough points, with the score requirement increasing after each round. The main way to score points is by spelling English words from a board of 16 letter tiles. Each tile has a default value equal to its Scrabble value, e.g. common letters like E, R and S are worth 1 point, but a Z is worth 10 points. You also get significant bonus points for long words: +5 points for each tile starting from the fifth letter, +10 points starting from the eighth letter, etc.

After clearing each round, you get to pick one of three random perks. Some of them are straightforward, like adding a few points to the value of a tile, but others are very language-specific, like being allowed to use Z’s instead of S’s, or multiplying scores by the number of R’s in a word (this one is a big earner, but it also means that words with no R’s are completely voided!). These perks will alter the course of your run and you’ll have to combine them strategically in order to reach the final rounds, although you shouldn’t expect game-breaking changes from them — you’ll still have to find words adroitly.

Compared with Balatro, Word Play commits to a lean, finely balanced design of forgoing mechanics of money and interest. Instead, it relies only on plays (Balatro’s hands) and refreshes (Balatro’s discards) to build up continuity and tension between the rounds. You start a run with a number of plays and they carry across rounds; you earn back a few plays after clearing each round, but you’ll have to be careful not to deplete them before the end of the run. Similarly, you can only refresh your tile board for a small number of times over the entire run, but the perks act like shop items that you can skip or sell in order to retrieve a few of these refreshes.

The game unlocks several modes after you’ve completed a run on the easiest difficulty. Harder modes have more rounds to clear with higher target scores, and you also start with less plays and refreshes at the beginning of the run. There’s an option to offer a spelling suggestion whenever your submission is off from a valid word by one letter, along with various other accessibility settings. The game’s UX feels as smooth as Mind Over Magnet’s, and the music strikes a nice balance between jazzy catchiness and ambient contemplation.

This description was written by Oriane Tury.