Slowly but surely the iPhone has been building a repertoire of apps that though based on real world concepts they actually enhance the experience. This is particularly true of boardgame apps, since their real world equivalents tend to take time and patience not only to setup but adjust to the rules and keep score (if you’ve ever played 13 Dead End Drive then you no exactly what I’m talking about…I want those hours of my life back Milton Bradley!). And while titles like Scrabble and Risk have been available on PCs for years, there’s something about the hands-on, portable approach the iPhone offers that really makes old games seem new and captivating all over again. And then there’s Wurdle; a title that is in many ways a carbon-copy of the popular word-finding game Boggle. And yet it’s much more.
Wurdle initially presents a 5×5 grid of tiles, providing 25 letters with which the user forms as many words as possible. Words are formed by dragging your finger from one tile to the next until you’ve connected the requisite letters to form a word. The challenge is to score as high as you can in two minutes with more points being handed out for longer words. Sounds simple enough and if Wurdle-creators’ Semi Secret Software had stopped there droves of puzzle-gaming addicts would still be shelling out the $2 cover charge. But Wurdle is one of those rare games where the developers simply did everything right and it’s all in the features.
First off, the level of customization is impressive given the basic premise of the game is to just find words randomly composed on screen. Wurdle offers 5 different grid sizes (4×4 through 8×8), 12 different tile sets (one of which actually allows you to use any image stored on your iPhone, in which case all tiles become transparent and are set against that background image), 5 different time limits (1min, 2min, 3min, 5min, and unlimited), two different dictionaries (each an official word list for Scrabble tournaments that are divided based on your region), and lastly the choice of minimum word length (3-5). Truly, this is a veritable laundry list of most-wanted features one might find listed in some forum and yet Wurdle has them all, fully functional right from the outset.
What’s more, Wurdle knows you love stats. So it tracks your high-scores, grouping them based on grid-size and time limits, so as not to conflate scores. High-scores can even be uploaded online to compare with others. Wurdle also tracks your longest words in an ongoing ‘top 5’ list. What was the longest word in that last puzzle? Just tap ‘Word List’ at the end of the round and Wurdle calculates all possible words.
Compare this with the officially licensed Scrabble for the iPhone. One need only peruse the user reviews to see there’s a lack of dictionaries (American-only so far, and why Wurdle has a better grasp on the Scrabble dictionaries then Scrabble themselves is beyond me). Add to that the inability to save and a sheer lack of customization, and Wurdle begins to look far more polished and professional, especially given the fact that Scrabble was developed by gaming monolith Electronic Arts.
Obviously, Scrabble is a more complex title than the Boggle-inspired Wurdle, but it isn’t so much about the game mechanics themselves but the adaptation to the medium that makes a puzzle app worth the digital upgrade. And in that respect, Wurdle is surely undervalued at just $1.99.
