{"id":16709,"date":"2010-04-03T11:48:40","date_gmt":"2010-04-03T10:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.razorianfly.com\/?p=16709"},"modified":"2010-04-03T11:48:40","modified_gmt":"2010-04-03T10:48:40","slug":"words-with-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/03\/words-with-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Words With Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Gameplay [rating:4\/5]
\nControls [rating:3.5\/5]
\nGraphics\/Sound [rating:3\/5]<\/p>\n

[rating:overall]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Just because a game isn’t new, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth a download. Recently I stumbled across an app by Newtoy Inc. called Words With Friends, and I haven’t stopped playing it since. <\/p>\n

For those of you not familiar with the game of Scrabble, it’s easy to learn, but rather difficult to master. At any one time you have a selection of letters with which to make words from. Each letter scores a set number of points based on the rarity of said letter. The only stipulation is your word must use at least one letter from a word that has already been played.<\/p>\n

Words With Friends uses the same concept as original scrabble, but limited to just two players. The main drawing point of the game is that you can play anyone in the world (providing they also have an iPhone or iPod Touch and a copy of the game of course).<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

When you start the game for the first time, you need to register a username so others can locate you, then you’re free to start your online scrabble experience. If you know your friends username’s you can jump straight into a new game with them. Alternatively, you can invite friends to join you over both Twitter and Facebook. Don’t have any friends playing the game? Never fear, you can choose to be hooked up with a random opponent so everyone has a chance to enjoy Words With Friends.<\/p>\n

once in a game, the gameplay is very simple, each taking it in turn to play there best word, if you can’t make a word, you can choose to pass, or swap some tiles in the hope of getting some better letters. You also never need worry about missing your turn as the game employs push notifications to alert you as to when it’s your turn. Interestingly though, for me at least, the game uses the default SMS message tone for it’s push notifications, which has confused me a couple of times as I rummage for my iPhone expecting to see a text message and instead see that it’s my turn to play the game.<\/p>\n

Visually, this game is nothing special, I’m not a big fan of the background on the game select screen. Thankfully, once in a game, the graphics improve somewhat, still nothing groundbreaking, but more than sufficient for this type of game. The controls are responsive and whilst you can zoom in and out, on most of occasions, when dragging a tile whilst zoomed out, it seems to instinctively know where i wanted to place it.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Newtoy\u00c2\u00a0Inc. could have left the game there, called it job done, and been very proud of themselves. But as a final piece of the puzzle they added in-game chat so not only can you play scrabble with your friends, you can talk to them as well. So far, the only use I’ve found for this is to rub salt into the wound when you get a particularly high scoring word.<\/p>\n

So far, I’ve been really enjoying my time with this game and have had games running non-stop since I installed it. The only issue I’ve really come across is the placement of the bonus tiles, these give you various points bonuses ranging from a double letter score to a triple word score. It seems all too easy to plan your game around these to get scores that would not be achievable by the layman in the original scrabble game.<\/p>\n

With the ability to play up to 20 games at any one time you don’t have to worry too much if you’re playing people in different time zones as chances are with that many games on the go, somebody will be awake to make a move.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The game is available in two versions, a premium version and a free ad-support version. I’ve been spending time with the free version which pops up an ad after every move. Other than that, there are no limitations put in place compared to the full version. So, if you don’t mind the ads you can play for free. Personally, I’ll be picking up the premium version as soon as i can afford it, partially for the convenience of not having ads, but mostly to support the developers who have provided us with something that belongs on every iPhone.<\/p>\n

As a final note, there is also an iPad specific version available for all those who are lucky enough to be getting one of these new devices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just because a game isn’t new, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth a download. Recently I stumbled across an app by Newtoy Inc. called Words With Friends, and I haven’t stopped playing it since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":441,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2127,2028,16,17],"tags":[137,2247,2296],"class_list":["post-16709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-app-store","category-games-app-store","category-ipad","category-iphone","category-ipod","tag-appstore","tag-hereistrev","tag-newtoy-inc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16709"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16722,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709\/revisions\/16722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}