find words in a grid, matching the theme. the number of words and their length are provided hangman-style. wish it had numbers in brackets as well, so _____ (5) instead of _____. they're not even in any order. obviously alphabetical would be too much but why not length? and there should be an option for bigger letters on top, plenty of room. and more space between columns, longer ones tend to blend together.
not all letters are visible initially, an unnecessary restriction. click one to reveal adjacent tiles but pretty soon the whole thing becomes visible and words and paths still have to be found. any combination of letters can be submitted, as long as they start with one next to the worm, not diagonally. doesn't even have to be a word but if it's not on the wanted list, it'll [b]increase the wasted letters counter that does absolutely nothing[/b]. no fail state or rating system, it isn't even shown anywhere outside the current stage, and revealed letters don't go back into hiding.
unskippable and replayable multi-stage tutorial with a silent typewriter effect. the game is 100% mousable (click letters or hold and drag to highlight more) but [b]it's barely keyboardable[/b]. arrows and wasd both work to select letters (the tutorial fails to mention it) but for a while I couldn't submit a word with enter or anything, had to click. why, pray tell, when enter works in the menus? then I tried again a few levels later and enter started working, so at the very least it's buggy. esc does nothing, no pause menu either, can only adjust volumes and windowed mode from the main menu. these are the only settings, the window is mobile-shaped and non-resizable. and since a level can only be quit with the mouse and there are no hotkeys, [b]the keyboard only option under accessibility features on the store page is a lie[/b].
[b]letters can't be deselected, another unnecessary and frustrating restriction.[/b] one could argue it'd make things easier, reveal a letter, then go back and in another direction, but like I said, the reveal part is very temporary, and why have any functionality at all if they just ruin your perfectly designed game? except [b]there's a hint system[/b] (no hotkey once again), so it makes even less sense to limit interactions like this. even though keys can't be held to move more than one tile, [b]controls are too sensitive, so it's very easy to accidentally select the wrong tile[/b] and ♥♥♥♥ the whole word up. asking to reveal random letters in the words you're looking for adds to the pointless wasted counter as well.
[b]another store page lie is claming there are 'over 60 levels'[/b] when there are only 58 grids in 9 packs, with only the first pack available initially. they just about don't fit the screen, looks bad. complete the first pack to unlock the next couple, and so on. not sure why additional clicking/enter is necessary to open them. and another, bigger problem: [b]individual grids can't be selected, nor replayed or even restarted, so effectively the game only has 8 levels, each with multiple parts[/b]. once a pack is started, the only way is forward. some packs have a shared theme but there are no mechanics or anything to build on or discover, so [b]not having reset and a basic individual level select, not even after finishing a pack, is unacceptable[/b].
[b]progress is saved on exit[/b], don't even have to restart the current grid, so it's both mid-pack and mid-level, which is good (finally something). the progress bar on top is just that, a bar filling up, once again missing a simple '3/8' or similar for those who can recognize numbers, not only letters. another baffling decision, as level select has both.
the price would be reasonable at 3 eur (rare) and the demo didn't get removed after release (even rarer), but it's so poorly designed (based on what they said about undo in the forum, it's mostly down to incompetence) that it can't be recommended. also, [b]there's very little trivia here, unlike it says on the store page[/b]. you're looking for colors, trees, palindromes and whatnot, it's just word search, all about vocab, with some appearing in multiple levels. lazy. only a few levels need songs, movies or characters. if you're looking for something similar but done better and providing more fun, [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/dohi64/recommended/826660]rosette and words[/url] is an option.
