Bookworm (Video Game Review)

Video Game Review
Bookworm
Nintendo DSi (DSiWare)
2009
Developers: Black Lantern Studios and PopCap Games
Publisher: PopCap Games

Pop Cap’s Bookworm is a game for Scrabble and Boggle fiends in mind; make as many words as you can from scrambled letters before time runs out. There isn’t much to this game although you may lose a few hours at a time with this silent timewaster.

On the surface, there doesn’t appear to be much going on with Bookworm. You have a display of mixed-up letters and you need to make words from the letters. The only catch is that the letters must be next to each other for them to be used. Points are given based on the amount of letter used and which ones are used (the letter ‘z’ earns more points than the letter ‘s’). Making words with large letter counts or ones that give you lots of points will make letters on your board turn gold or blue like a gem. Using these or green letter tiles will score bonus points. There are also bonus points to be scored if you are able to make the bonus word displayed on the screen. New tiles fall from the top as letters disappear after being used. The tiles obey gravity as higher tiles fall down to fill the holes left over. Game over happens when fire tiles are able to sink to the bottom. If they are not used in a word, they burn the tile underneath it and keep sinking until it burns the bottom.

The DS is held like a book with the touch screen on the right side. You drag the stylus along the tiles to make the word. The buttons are not used at all. The controls work fine although there are times were you might use letters by mistake by highlighting the wrong letter and spoiling your strategy (like spelling monk instead of monkey) because the stylus slipped. There’s no undo so any mistake you make is made for good.

The game is hit or miss when it comes to satisfaction. Most of the time you’ll be spelling out three to four letter words which isn’t that thrilling. It feels great when you pull off a six letter or longer word but these things rarely happen especially in later levels with higher diffculty and more fire tiles to extinguish. There are times whenb you might use the same three letter words several times in a row to get rid of junk letters stuck at the bottom of the playing area. It can be a bit repetitive at times.

The dictionary is solid although there are a few words that I tried using that the computer did not register. Also, it can be a bit annoying if your comfortable in more than just the English language because you’ll find yourself scratching your head why a word isn’t registering until you realize it’s French or Spanish that you’re using. Swear words don’t work which would have made the game more entertaining for some. The dictionary is robust enough though that there will be few problems over missed words.

The way the letters are distributed is a bit uneven. Sometimes you’ll be inundated with rare letters like ‘Qu’ (the two letters are together on one tile), X, or Z. While this would be a good thing when it happens in earlier levels to boost scores, it happens at any time and can cause big problems when your trying to combat multiple fire tiles at a time; or worse, they come out as fire tiles. Because you can only use letters in a string, it can be quite difficult to make words from some of the more uncommon letters. There is an option to reshuffle letters if you get stuck at the cost of spontaneously creating fire tiles but this option doesn’t help all that often and there were a couple of instances where after using it, I was stuck with ten of the same vowel in the general vicinity of each other making thm impossible to use.

Bookworm is a funny game is that it isn’t all that amazing a game but picking it up to play will make you lose about an hour at the very least. It just doesn’t beg for an repeated playthroughs because some games can last several hours. It’s a good game to play in small doses when waiting for a bus but is not a game you would want to sit and play with if you have anything of substance in your game collection.

☆☆