decent concept, iffy execution, scummy dev. silently hiked the price of one of their other games and when called out on it, immediately reached for the permaban button. ♥♥♥♥ off. this only has a single toggle for the way too loud audio. no music and they couldn't even normalize those few sound effects. windowed mode is resizable, the background can be moving, stopped or disabled and there are a few themes, darker too. no preview or pull-down menu, click to cycle through them one by one and see what's what. that's not how multiple options should be implemented.
the first level tells you what to do and the pause menu has slightly more detailed instructions with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mobile tapping, hints revealing one word after another, and a [b]tutorial video opening a browser to play a video on youtube[/b]. ♥♥♥♥ off. reset is only available there because why have a convenient icon and hotkey to avoid clicking all the words one by one. settings can only be accessed from the main menu, 15 clicks away from a puzzle.
216 levels in 6 collections, everything is unlocked from the start, except the last level in each sub-pack and the final sub-pack per collection. grids with letters on the left and top, make words using letters from both places until every square is filled. so if the top has an 'n' and a 't' and there's an 'o' on the side, 'not' would fill the intersecting squares, and so on. words have to be at least 3 letters and squares can't overlap, but words can be removed if you change your mind. the same word can be used with letters in different positions and just because it's a 3x3 grid, words can be longer, so 'ball' works if there are 2 instances of 'l' and they cover squares unobstructed.
[b]there are multiple solutions[/b], which I always find lazy. depending on letter location 'not' or 'ton' shouldn't necessarily make a difference, but with more effort it could've been more deductive and satisfying. less frustrating too, as often I found nice longish words, then ended up with a single square and had to re-do the whole thing with 3-letter ones. tedious and lame.
[b]daily puzzles[/b] unlock after a few levels and take the first spot instead of the last on level select. 3 levels a day with the 3rd locked, going back 2 days, so checking back every 3 days nets 9 random levels. seeing as it's a mobile game originally, why not have a calendar with all of them, like most mobile titles with dailies?
[b]mid-level progress is saved on exit[/b] (solutions also remain intact if you go back) and the level preview shows filled squares, but no indication of levels in progress on collection select, nor sub-pack select, so gotta click (sorry, [i]tap[/i] because it's mobile trash) through everything to see if there's anything needs finishing. and gotta click through everything anyway because there's [b]no keyboard support in a word game[/b]. ♥♥♥♥ off. not necessarily typing but arrows/wasd to select letters, backspace, etc. as it stands, esc, instead of bringing up the pause menu, leaves the level immediately and keeps going back a screen until the main menu, where it does nothing. well done.
[i]quads[/i] is a bonus game. didn't like it but I hate sliding puzzles. 4x4 grid, lots of letters off-screen, no idea what you're working with, already lost me there. keep sliding left and right until there are enough letters but only adjacent to the selected ones are available, diagonally too. there are 'quad' tiles, removed by making a word on every side. only those are worth points, run out of moves and it's game over, except the game doesn't tell you. you can also make custom puzzles, instructions are in the install folder, but it's just as half-assed as everything else. they didn't even raise the 36-puzzle limit per pack, gotta keep moving files around.
it's $3 on mobile, so almost doubling it to $5 on pc is another ♥♥♥♥ move. there used to be a website with a different daily level that doesn't seem to be working anymore. gave it a fair shot, [b]went through a bunch of levels but didn't end up enjoying it[/b]. still could've been recommendable on sale with a bit more work (cloud saves are also missing) and coming from a non-scummy dev, but here we are.
