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Reader Reviews
5 reviews. Average Rating: 4.8
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Publisher:  Genre: Arcade
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Mac OS X: 10.2.8 Mac OS Classic: Not Supported
CPU: G3 RAM: 128 MB Hard Disk: 10 MB Graphics: 16 MB VRAM |
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I
am a huge lover of board games. Monopoly, Life, Chutes and Ladders,
Clue, I loved playing them all growing up, and even now. One of my
all-time favorites has to be the classic tile game Scrabble, though. It
is a truly intellectual game, not depending on the random roll of the
dice or spin of the spinner to proceed and take the lead. Take those
seven tiles in front of you, and try and make a word out of them. What
better challenge could there be? What more frustrating challenge could
there be? Especially when you are left with a tray that looks like Old
MacDonald's chorus. What word do you expect me to spell with six vowels
and a "Y"?
It is with much the same mix of joy and frustration that I come to you with MacPlay's latest offering from the puzzling minds at PopCap Games, Bookworm Deluxe.
For the uninitiated, Bookworm is not your usual puzzle fare of matching
colors, picking shapes, or swapping gems. The object of the game is to
take the ultimate Scrabble tray and make as many words as you can.
Sounds pretty daunting, doesn't it?
The playing board consists of
lettered tiles laid in seven columns of tiles alternating between seven
and eight tiles, so that a single tile in one column actually touches
two different tiles on each side, giving a total of 6 different
directions that you can go when making words. Start with a given
letter, and try to make your word by clicking on adjacent tiles. If you
make a word that the game recognizes, it will display the word and the
points that the word is worth. Double-clicking on the last letter tile
of the word will accept the word and send the tiles flying off the
board, into the mouth of the bookworm watching your every move from the
sidebar. Just like its puzzler brother Bejeweled, the tiles
above will drop into place, and new letters will take their place at
the top of the board. Your completion meter will also fill a certain
amount according to the complexity of the word you created. The idea,
of course, is to fill the bar and head to the next level.
As
in Scrabble, each of the tiles has a different value when used in a
word, based on the number of pips displayed in the lower left-hand
corner of the tile. Tiles with no pips are worth fewer points than
those with one, two, or three pips. Therefore, finding words to use
those "x", "v", and "Qu" tiles is in your best interest. Creating some
of the more obscure words in the English language can elicit a
definition of the word from the bookworm. Unfortunately, it doesn't do
it with all words I would consider obscure. I wish it was an always or
nothing option that you could turn on and off, but I guess this is
better than nothing. Some of the obscure words that I have seen
definitions for have been very interesting.
In addition to
combining high-scoring tiles, bonus tiles can also help you with your
scoring endeavors. At times during the game, especially after making
larger words, colored tiles will appear on the board. Making words
using these tiles will make for larger scores. The green and yellow
tiles from the web version are here, as well as other colors, such as
blue, which are much rarer, but really rack up the points if you can
use them. Another way of gaining points is to find the bonus word. Not
long after you progress to the second level, our friendly neighborhood
bookworm will announce the bonus word, a small word that, if found,
will lead to many points and the adoration of millions. Okay, maybe
just the points. It may take a while to jockey the tiles into position
to make one of the bonus words, but when you finally do, it's worth it.
Clever usage of all of these scoring options will allow you to rack up
the high scores to compete with the best of them.
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