Spellspire

From the developers/publishers of other mobile style games such as Tennis to the Face and King Oddball, Spellspire is in a very similar mould. This is a spelling game dressed up (very loosely) as a dungeon crawler, whereby spelt words damage enemies encountered, who each have a timer before attacking you. There are wands to unlock, some having elemental bonus that will help against particular enemies, and armor that will also help with reducing damage, or maximising coin gain etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with the design of the game, but there are two main drawbacks. 1. You are at the mercy of the random letters granted at the beginning of the game. You can only use a word once, and if you are unlucky enough to find very few vowels or an abundance of useless letters (x, z etc) then you are doomed to failure. 2. There are far too many floor to navigate without any variety on offer. The enemies might change a little, but the gameplay will never change, so beating level 1, will be like beating level 51, and that gets old fast. Changing the wand/armor doesn't change how you play, and aside from some enemies freezing your letters, the gameplay becomes old fast. Of course, keep in mind this game is really designed with mobile in mind, and spending 10 minutes playing whilst on a lunch break or on a bus will be fine, but judged purely as a Steam game, it can't be recommended unless you plan to only play for an hour or two (and at a full price of £6.99 that is far too much to ask) Best for: Oxford English Wizards

Its Boggle with a life bar, monsters and an item shop. There's nothing revolutionary here, but what it does it does well. You purchase weapons/armor and power'em up with the magic of grinding to slaughter an ever increasingly difficult hodgepodge of children's pop-up book looking monsters. Go back and replay previous levels with the goal of finishing with full health to win stars that unlock new weapons/armor (just use a potion after the last enemy's down and viola! Won a star.). Its all fairly straight forward, make as many words as you can, as quickly as you can, before the timer runs out and your enemy attacks. If you start a level with crappy letters you can simply restart it to get fresh ones. A fun spelling game to kill some time while waiting for the pizza guy to show up.

I enjoyed 90% of the game but then at the end it got extremely grindy. I mean it was gruesomely tedious. Might be just me, but I felt like grind was an intentional part of Spellspire's design. That said, I enjoyed the first 90% so it is a nice time-filler if you are into spelling games.

Addicting and competitive.

A great game! Super addictive and lots of fun, with clear progression and surprising number of levels to explore. A great game for anyone who likes word-based games and character progression.

CHALLENGING AND FUN

Fun tower crawl spelling game. Only infurating thing is my lack of vocabulary.

Cute game. Almost really good for practicing English as well. Except for the really out-there words it has as the big ones.

I recommend Spellspire to all! Though, I think this game is especially for fans of Bookworm Adventures. Fun and challenging at times. Must use strategy, build your inventory of useful items, gain power-ups, upgrade attire through spending coins and jewels wisely to pass levels and get to the next stage. Nice colorful graphics and it's also available for Android. I only wish there was more Spellspire titles released or maybe even just a sequel.

I cheat playing with my wife, so she can throw words at me and release stress.