Review: Word Blast
Score:
60%
It starts off looking rather familiar - a big grid of tiles, and you can swap over two of them to try and make something. The difference here is that Word Blast is built up around letters and words rather than colours, and that adds a level of complexity to what promises to be an interesting puzzle game.
Version Reviewed: 1.00(0)
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Unfortunately, Word Blast doesn't quite live up to its billing. It all starts wonderfully, with a subdued yet striking splash screen and menu. The help option is direct and to the point, and you can start a new game or continue with an existing one. It all looks right.
Get into the game, and the wood effect theme is there, and everything remains clear. Tap two adjacent letters to swap them over, and keep doing this till you get a word, which you can then swipe over to score points as the letters disappear and others fall in to replace them.
My issue with that way of playing the game is a small one, and it's that you can switch letters without having to have a word made up or a penalty applied. That means if I need a "Q" and it's in the opposite corner of the board, I can simply shuffle around (a lot) till it's next to the "intar" to make one of my favourite puzzle words (qintar, an Albanian coin that, yes, has no "u" in it).
And then, after about ten minutes, you hit the fatal flaw in Word Blast. It's just not fun.
There's no ticking clock to put pressure on you to find a word, or make a really short one in another area of the grid so you can keep building the eight letter masterpiece of "criminal" along the bottom; there's no burning fire removing letter tiles giving you fewer options if you spend time thinking; there's no ominous music; there's nothing to limit you.
Without some sort of limit, Word Blast fails to get the adrenaline going. And that reduces what could have been a wonderful game of tension, struggling with your brain and the board layout to, well, a sedate little box of chocolates while sitting down in a comfy chair.
I really want the designers to do two things. The first is sit down and play Bejeweled. A lot. They'll find they want to play just one more game of the tile swapping master. They'll also spot the timer and other elements in the "classic" game. I'm not saying they need to lift these wholesale, but they've got an inventive board game here. If they can tweak the mechanics to work as an electronic game, I think they'll have something that could be remembered for ages. At the moment, it's just... there.
-- Ewan Spence, Oct 2011.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at