What fun. I've never seen these mechanics together previously. What appeared to be a simple Tetris game was instead a word-hunting extravaganza. My first few attempts were rocky to say the least, but on my fourth game, something clicked. I was suddenly a being of pure vocabulary. I saw the letters as puzzle pieces, and the connections became obvious. Minutes flew by, as I moved into a "flow state," creating terms I hadn't used but knew were words. On that play, I reached the 20th level and realized I could've kept going. What a wonderful game to allow me this experience.
That said, the game may need some adjustments to difficulty. The first level demands that the player reach 600 points before a timer hits 0. They have two minutes to do so. This is hard! I failed a few times. When succeeding, though, level 2 again asks the player to produce 600 points within two additional minutes. This demand continues in each additional level. After awhile, an effective player has saved up multiple minutes, allowing afk breaks and creating far too simple a situation. This difficulty could be remedied by making each new level require more points in the same time period.
Another trouble is that columns completely filling the board do not end the game. Adding this mechanic would require the player to worry about what area of the board they're using rather than potentially ignoring excessively piling stacks. Likewise, the drops' speed does not increase quickly enough to challenge skilled players. While faster drops would make the game more difficult, without such an increase, there's a certain degree of repetition.
That said, the game really works well, and I'm glad to have found played. Even if it's no longer in development, the current price ($1.99) seems fair for a simple treat.
(NB: I was terrible at the math mode, and my math and science friends said that it was also too easy, because the player is able to multiply any answer by zero to complete it. That said, I was terrible and almost never solved a single puzzle. Oops.)
