Hangman RSS

I am going through a faze at the moment of playing word games on my iPhone. I started off with one but now I am playing another one also, Hangman RSS.  Now before you stop reading here thinking it is going to be a boring word game, it isn’t just your everyday kind of Hangman. This time you guess the words from the most recent news headlines.

 Let me explain more, the word that you are guessing is a word from a news headline. Everytime you play a game it is fresh and recent news that is happening right now around the world! So each time you play, it is all new words and you won’t find any repeated which is quite common in puzzle word games of this kind.

The game starts on the easy mode and to play medium and hard mode you have to unlock them. When you first start the game you will see a news headline with one of the words missing and that is the one you are obviously guessing. When you play medium you guess two words, hard mode three and expert four words. You score points depending how quick you are at solving the word and what level you are on. The game is OpenFeint enabled so you can compete with your online friends with the scores you achieve. You can also see how many you get right in a row which in the game is called ”˜runs’.

 Playing the game is easy. First of all in the options section you can change the language you are wanting and they do cover about 14 countries. Once that is set you are ready to play. The page launches with a sentence at the top and your keypad at the bottom. You choose the letter you think is missing. If it is right it appears in the word if it is wrong it shows the words ”˜wrong letter’ and your hanging man starts to appear. Its just like how you would normally play, head first then body, arms and legs. You keep doing this until you get all the letters in the word. If you succeed it will then tell you your score and if you don’t it shows your poor man hung and the words DEAD! You keep doing this each game you play and work your way through the different levels once you have unlocked them.

An added and great unique feature to the game, as well as being able to see the sentence of the news headline at the top of your screen, is the ability to see the source of where that news headline came from, complete with snippet from the article. If you want to know more about it you press ”˜Dig’ and the news headline will appear with a few sentences. Now if you want to read it further you tap the headline and it loads the actual website page with the news article on for you to read in full. It also gives you the option to come out of the game and read it via Safari. I think this is an excellent feature to have within the game because once you do read the little snippets it makes you want to find out more. You are keeping up with the news yet playing a game at the same time — how great is that?

 The graphics are fairly plain but you really don’t want a background that is full of fuss and distraction. It is not to say that it isn’t nice though because it is. Its clear, easy to use and the keys are a good size that you have to tap. There are a few sound effects within the game which add to the great game play and you even get a round of applause if you complete your word.

Overall, Hangman RSS is a unique, addictive puzzle game with the offer of that little bit extra to keep you re-playing the game time and time again.