WORDLAND

[b]wordland[/b] is a great word game/crossword/tetris hybrid. there are various shapes with letters on a grid and they have to be arranged to form all the words described on the bottom. no diagonals, only left to right or downward, but they don't all have to be connected to each other. in fact, the game accepts layouts that wouldn't fly in a real crossword (e.g. 'sir' horizontally, 'pure' above it vertically, so it's technically 'purei' but it's fine here). [b]150 levels[/b] unlocked one by one (50 of them were added after release), the [b]3 difficulty levels[/b] control the amount of revealed letters (more on easy, only the first letter on normal, none on hard). there's no indication of any of this in the game, and what will drive achievement people up the wall is playing on hard doesn't unlock easy and normal achievements, so 3 full playthroughs for them, while the rest of us can enjoy playing however we please. [b]controls are very convenient[/b], left click to pick a piece up, mouse wheel to rotate in either direction, another left click to place. my biggest gripe with the game was the size of the board, lots of tedium when the word was one letter too long and the entire thing had to be moved a tile to the left piece by piece. plenty of space on the screen, not sure why only a small area was used if it's not a lazy mobile port, but after a while the boards got resized to 20x12, good enough. [b]excellent music and background images[/b], and while the former might get a bit repetitive after a while (I liked it enough to keep on it during the entire playthrough), there's a good variety of the latter. some of them are animated, but a surprising amount is a bit dark and might interfere with the grid and pieces a bit. they change after every restart or new level, and can be changed manually, and also locked so they stay the same all the way. [b]a gallery of them could be a great reward for completing the game.[/b] settings-wise all the neccessities are present, separate volume settings, windowed mode with a couple resolution options (there could be a few more), and level selection is also a thing. these are all accessible from the main menu and while playing. I think a bit more could've been done with the game, more elegant solutions and whatnot, plus [b]difficulty is all over the place[/b], though it obviously also depends on your vocabulary. still, it's really pleasant overall, and [b]a dollar is an absolute steal to become a citizen of wordland[/b]. can't say I approve of [b]releasing not one but two sequels within a short time[/b] though. one after a month, another following shortly, and based on the store pages backgrounds are the same. couldn't be lazier, even solitaires change them while offering the same exact thing otherwise.