Word Wonders: The Tower of Babel

Fans of word games don't have too many options on Steam. This is a fairly decent game, easy to learn but with some interesting strategy. I'd definitely call it more of a strategy game than a game that tests one's word knowledge. It reminds me most of Puzzle Quest, since nearly all of the gameplay consists of fighting battles using a standard casual-game mechanic, but this game is simpler. It's a small thing, but after the first level, you can choose to play a male or female avatar, an option I always appreciate. You're on a quest of some kind, I don't know. The art style doesn't stand out, either. You battle against a series of AI enemies, and you place words alternately on a game board. You're trying to get your opponent to do things that will benefit you. Upwords and Wordox are the word games which this one most resembles, but again, this game is far simpler. The enemy AI really needs improving. It's easy to dominate most of the enemies just by making more than one word at once (e.g., CAT is on the board, you play DOGS, making CATS). You can also rack up a lot of energy (spell points) and skulls (which harm your enemy) just by stacking two-letter words. I don't know what dictionary this game is using; it isn't one I've seen used in word games before. But there's no penalty for guessing, so it doesn't really matter. Mostly, the game is a little bit too easy for a word game junkie. I just started the "second round" thing where you can go back and replay old levels with challenges. This mode seems like it's going to be fun. The first challenge is that you lose health for making less than three letter words. There's another set of challenges, too, but I haven't gotten that far yet. There is also a board that you can buy tiles for and try to get as high of a score as you can, which gives your character more health and spell points. I really like this version of leveling up a character. It definitely makes me want to get the best possible score. It's very much like gearing up in an RPG. There are spells and potions, also, but I haven't needed to use them much. I would really like to see achievements added, as well as multiplayer. I could see this as a fun, fast multiplayer game. But overall, the price is low, and the mechanics are different enough from other word games I've played to keep my interest.

tl;dr: Players who are looking for another Bookworm will likely be disappointed, as WW:TToB has more in common with Puzzle Quest than the usual "create-a-word" games. Those players who are looking for an extra layer of strategy will find much to enjoy here. From the very first level, it's clear that Word Wonders:The Tower of Babel started its life as a tablet/cell game. Once the expected tappable bonuses appeared on the main map screen, I very nearly shut it off, convinced it would be dull and slow. I'm glad I didn't, as it quickly becomes much more than expected. [b][i]What it is:[/i][/b] WW:TToB has a simple storyline that takes the player through 50 different battles, similar to Puzzle Quest. Just as in that game, energy can be collected and used to cast offensive and defensive spells. The difference here is that instead of matching gems, you'll be creating words on a board, building them off of the previous word(s) placed. Unlike most other word games, space is extremely limited, and only word(s) placed in the most recent turn remain on the board. You have a typical rack of 7 letter tiles; each tile has up to 4 lightning bolts (spell energy that works like mana) or skulls (does direct damage to your opponent) or a combination of both. Placing a word activates those elements. When it is your turn, you may activate as many spells as you have energy for (spells are used on a turn cooldown system). Likewise, enemies can also use spells (such as Paralyze, which removes half of your tiles for a few turns). There is, thankfully, no time limit for turns. The game is made up of 5 tower "floors," each containing several boards. Starting with floor 2, branching paths appear, although you will still need to complete all boards on the floor before progressing to the next floor. Each board can change as the round progresses, adding letter modifiers or coins (collected by creating words over them). There also may be stone pillars in the way (breakable with a specific spell). As the game progresses, components can be obtained to create unlockable potions, and letters on the man map can be collected to place in a "Boost Board." The Boost Board is a solitaire Scrabble-like game in and of itself: placing your collected tiles in the best way possible opens up additional points that increase your overall health and spell energy levels, and unlocks new spells. An in-game shop allows you to buy power-ups for your tiles and alterations for your board, as well as potion ingredients (if you don't feel like waiting for them to appear on the main map). All real-money purchases have been removed for this version. [b][i]Thoughts:[/i][/b] There are a few things that could have been better implemented. The game does seem to favor difficult racks; it's not uncommon to see racks such as QWZWSMX or OUOUJKX, particularly on Boss rounds. If exploits are your thing, you can end a round by simply casting a damage-causing spell instead of playing a word, and you can restart a level as many times as you'd like until you get the rack you want. US players should know that the game seems to use the UK Scrabble dictionary; thus words such as "soho" are acceptable (a word that does not appear in the North American dictionary), but this really hasn't been a problem for me yet (3 floors in). A more surprising find is that there is no way to resize the screen; whether you choose Windowed or Fullscreen mode, the playing field is the same size. One final strange note: Once you reach level 7, an on-screen message informs you that Duel Mode (a local two-player battle mode) has been unlocked. As there does not seem to be any way to access it, I assume this is a holdover from the tablet version of the game. (EDIT on 2 Jan, 2019: Apparently, this actually refers to [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1611661201&tscn=1546453159]the opening up of a higher difficulty level[/url], and not multiplayer.) Overall though, if those things don't bother you, this is a pretty fun, unusual word game, and the genre mashup works pretty well. If you're willing to get past the early hand-holding, there's a fair bit of fun to be had here. Recommended.

It's alright, probably better to pick it up in a sale as the price is a little steep for what it is. It's an enjoyable word game, one done quite a few times over, only the plot line seems to change. Basic graphics and the sound seems a little flaky, but I like these casual time wasters that test your mind rather than your reactions. Use your word prowess to battle thrugh levels, utilise power ups, sound familiar? Bookworm did it better, the price is a little too high, sound a little dodgy and basic graphics. Should really be a thumbs down .... However I like it, it has its charm and so ... Thumbs up .... Just. We really need a wavy thumb.

it might not look like much, I was skeptical at first too, but [b]word wonders[/b] has become one of my favorite word games ever, second only to the excellent [b]letter quest[/b]. it plays kinda like scrabble, as in the word you create has to connect to the one on the board, then your word becomes the base for the next turn, and so on. the idea isn't necessarily to create the longest word, but one that does the most damage and/or gives the most energy to cast spells, indicated by their icon on the letters. the presentation is fine, I liked the graphics and the music was surprisingly good as well, didn't get on my nerves even after many hours. the story is what it is, but I enjoyed the cheesy writing, as usual. no volume sliders, only music and effects on/off, and sadly resolution doesn't scale, the active game area is only 1024x768 no matter what resolution you play on, but in 1080p it wasn't a huge problem and the game fills in the background, it's not just blackness everywhere. the 50 stages can (and should) be played on 3 different difficulties to get the maximum amount of stars. they make you level up and get more hp, energy and new recipes for potions and ingredients. harder difficulties open up as you progress and you can always replay levels, but the game is not grindy at all. I only defeated every enemy once on each difficulty and had more than enough of everything. there's absolutely no need to buy ingredients or potions, plenty of them drop after fights, though I only used a few consumables during the final boss fights. what you want to spend money on instead are letter packs and letter and board upgrades, because the game's unique selling point (as far as I know anyway) is the boost board, which, for all intents and purposes, plays even more like scrabble (again, as far as I know): place words connected to each other to gain more hp, energy and spells to use in combat. I had almost as much fun with this as the main game. restarting from scratch might be painful, but I decided to just expand on what I already had, only making slight changes to the 'outer layer' to be able to expand further. you get letters from chests and the shop and can upgrade bronze first to silver, then gold for more points, and these cost the same throughout the game, but the 4 board upgrades for more space get more and more pricey, though the last one is totally unnecessary, and with more liberal potion use I'm sure even the 3rd can be skipped, but I didn't mind a few hundred extra points. the game is a lot of fun, with some frustration coming from bosses, who may or may not be cheating. it might just be rng being rng, but I certainly found their constant 5-8-letter words suspicious, though as said above, size doesn't necessarily matter, plus each retry is different, and if you have a better vocabulary than me, you'll have an easier time anyway. it'd be nice if there were a combat speed option, watching all the numbers slowly go up and down gets old after a while, but it's mostly a relaxing experience, no need to rush, there's no timer or punishment for making a word that doesn't exist (at all or in the game's dictionary). so it's highly recommended for fans of the genre, especially since there aren't many worthwhile games like this around.

Nice little game, with lots of specials like spells and potions and a boost board for raising your stats (also done with making words with available letters), all to customize your strategy; go for healing, or doing more damage, or focus on stats, or any mix you like. Each level is a pre-designed board with its own enemy. They have 3 difficulties (each giving 1 star), starting with normal and the others have to be unlocked by levelling up. (You level up by collecting stars.) When enemies get too strong, it's a good time to go back and replay earlier levels on the next higher difficulty, gaining more resources for the above mentioned potions and boost board. Playable in a window (yay). The graphics are acceptable. Music/sound have separate on/off settings. You can have up to 3 profiles. There are 5 floors with 10 levels each, making 50 differnt boards and opponents, x3 difficulties. Well worth more than the 49 cent I paid during the Halloween sale, but that price is also very friendly for those with a limited budget. Oh, and it knows a ton of words that I have to look up in the dictionary. :)

[h1] Word game without much story. [/h1]

Duration: 11 hours (many with the TV on) 134/150 stars completed. Simple mini-scrabble style word game where letters have energy and damage symbols to defeat the enemy. There are 50 enemies to defeat of increasing difficulty. Okay game for the 50 cents I spent on sale.

Basically 'Words with friends combined with Pokémon and a little bit of the Bible throw in', but with one major flaw. It isn’t multiplayer and this game would just be peachy for multiplayer, it would go right off. The story is that the protagonist has decided to try and climb the Tower of Babel to try and find the original language and reunite the world again. To do this he must battle against various Gods using his skill of words, basically scrabble. The word scoring does not work the same way scrabble does, instead each letter tile has a unique number of skulls and lightning bolts awarded to it. The lightning acts as your power ups to cast magical spells to change either the board or to affect your nemesis direct in some way. The skulls is the hit points you will score against your enemies health bar. So the more skulls you combine on double word scores or triple letter scores, the more health you will hack away and vice versa when he attacks you. I'm not actually sure how the developer ( http://www.chimera-entertainment.de/games.html ) has made the game to accept words as personally I found that the game did not accept some words that are definitely in the English language for instance the word 'false' and on the other hand it accepted words that definitely isn't part of the English language such as 'cpu'. The game itself even had several spelling mistakes in certain speech bubbles which made me cringe since the whole game is about spelling. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=860370862 The secret to being good with scrabble and word games is that you 'need to know' all the small words, the two letter words so that you can run words parallel to words already put down making every letter a double letter score. This is something the ai can't do and the secret on how to easily defeat them. The second tactic you need to do is magically enchant your letter tiles to be more powerful as you hit those double word score places to really slay the health off your enemy. In the end you have to defeat the real evil behind it all which for me ended up being a 50 hp VS 125 hp battle. Personally I found it very challenging and had to use practically everything in my arsenal to destroy him, but even the last boss has a major flaw, he can't regenerate his own health and as soon as you work out how to stop him from performing a serious attack on you, then the whole thing becomes a relative no brainer. There are 50 levels with 3 difficulties, every boss has a unique attack and defence and the board changes shape the higher you go making it slightly that more challenging at times. The speech bubbles often try and deliver a tongue in cheek view of boss battles and when you eventually get to the top the game will try and deliver a twist to the ending which personally just did not work for me and found it to be both corny and inaccurate as I know any Gods associated with Babel in the official version of the story were NEVER GOOD Gods, they were only FALSE, but again the game doesn't accept the word 'false' so maybe that is why they think their good. https://youtu.be/QeMAQa3CMow

Fun word puzzle battle game with RPG-ish elements. Battles are conducted by adding words Scrabble style to the board, but unlike Scrabble the previous word disappears at the end of your turn, so your opponent (i.e. the monster) can only chain their word to yours, and vice versa. Each letter is marked with damage and mana symbols, signifying how much damage you do or mana you'll gain from placing words with those letters. Like in Scrabble, there are also letter and word multipier tiles on the board, but unlike Scrabble they jump to another random square each time they're triggered. You can only make one new words out of your letters, but it's allowed for that word to make additional words using the word on the board. For a simple example, if there's a horizontal "HOUSE" and you add "EGG" vertically from the E, you deal damage/gain mana from the letters in EGG. But if you add "SOY" vertically from E, it countts HOUSES and EGG. And if you add "OH" horizontally either below HO, it counts the horizontal OH, and the vertical HO and OH. Mana is used to cast spells. There are several of these, and most are if not all are unlocked as you level up. For the tougher battles, the spells can add a lot to strategy. You start the battle with half of your max mana, unlike health which is always full at the start. There are also consummable items, such as health and mana potions, which can be found, bought with in-game gold, or crafted from bought or found ingredients using formulas that unlock as you level up. There's no XP to level up - it's strictly based on "stars" earned by beating the levels. Each level can give 3 stars - 1 for beating it normally, and 1 for beating it in each of the 2 avalable challenge modes, which themselves unlock as you level up. Each time you level up you get 1 point to max HP and Mana. With 50 levels there are 150 stars, and if you get them all you'll get to level 20. That's not a whole lot of extra HP and Mana. To get more, you'll need to use the Boost Board. The Boost Board is a giant Scrabble-like board where you place words (again, Scrabble style) using letters you've found in chests or bought with gold (packs of 3 random consonants or vowels at a time). Every 10 points on the board adds a point to your max HP or Mana. You can also spend gold to upgrade the point values of 3 random letters. Each letter can be upgraded twice. 4 sections of the Boost board need to be unloked with game gold, each one more expensive than the last. You can reorganize the boost board at any time, so nothing is lost by putting in dead-ended 2 letter words for short term gain since it will not stop you from expanding later on. You can say the difficulty is Casual - there is no time limit in the battles, no penalty to trying invalid words, and no penalty for being defeated (though any used consumables used will not be refunded). Having said that, some later battles become very tough, and I ended up using an AI exploit to beat the overpowered final boss. The story, while not exactly a masterpiece, isn't bad, and some of the pre-battle banter is amusing. Not everything is rosy. I'm not sure if this is a mobile app, but it feels like one, particularly in the limited play area. It's not an issue with battles all of which take place on boards small enough to fit on the screen, but the large Boost board requires a lot of annoying scrolling around. The loading times were also annoying. Sure, 5-8 seconds isn't a long time objectively, but in a game like this you'd typically expect to load the map or the battle in a fraction of a second. And, I know this will be a dealbreaker for some, there are no Steam achievements. It took me 13 hours to beat the final boss, 11 more to 100% the game. I have a feeling that at least half that time was spent on the "Boost" board. And I don't regret any of it. Though it was a bit (or more than a bit) of a grind in those 11 hours, sure would've been nice to be able to get 2 stars at a time by playing a new level in a Challenge mode instead of always having to do a Normal battle for one of the stars.

Some major downsides for me: Animations during battle can't be skipped, you have to wait for spell and damage animations every time. Only about 1/3 of my 1080 screen is used and you can't zoom out, so the "Boost Board" is frustrating to work with. Wasted potential, it should be fun to work on a big Scrabble board over time as you earn more letters. But the mini-Scrabble battle gameplay is fun otherwise, and the RPG progression is done well.