Letterpress is word-making at its simple best against an online opponent, with some neat strategic twists thrown in. It is pretty much a must-have for all those mad about word play.
What makes Letterpress click is the fact that it is a very potent mix of three very popular word games – Boggle (where you make words from a random collection of letters), Scrabble (where you make interconnected words from a limited set of letters) and Words With Friends (a sort of online Scrabble). It is a game that is played over a 5×5 letter grid. And your jobs is to use the letters available in the grid to make words that can be of any length in excess of two letters.
You can take letters from any part of the grid – they need not be grouped together. You cannot use a word more than once in one game and the word you make cannot a prefix of one that has already been made – so, if someone has made the word “belts,” you cannot make the word “belt,” although if someone has made the word “bat”, you can go right ahead and make “bats.” You can pick letters from anywhere on the grid – the only clause being that each letter can be used just once in your word. So if you have two “e”s on the grid, you can use both in a word if you wish, but if there is only one, you will not be able to use it more than once. And of course, all of your words must be legitimate ones – slang and abbreviations are a no-no, and the game itself will tell you so if you transgress in this regard.
Operating within all these rules and restrictions, your task is to get downright territorial and occupy as many letters within the grid as possible. Every time you make a word, the letters you use take on your colour (either red or blue). And if you use a letter that has been used by your opponent to make a word, it gets converted into your colour. This dye-fication continues until all the letters un the grid are of one colour or the other. At which point, the person whose colours adorn the most letters wins. And if you can surround a letter with other letters containing your colours, the hemmed-in letter’s colour will not change even when your adversary uses it.
All of which would make this sound like a bit of a grammatical grid-grabbing exercise – make huge words, occupy spaces and finish the game quickly. But ah, that’s where you would be wrong. After being thumped royally in our first three outings, we cottoned on to the fact that there is actually something to be said for occupying your opponents’ letters rather than the blank ones. There were times when we ended up battling for a single row of letters again and again – turning blue on one turn and red on another. Which brings us to the matter of one’s adversary. Yes, this is totally a player vs player game, so you cannot really play it without a network connection, but that said, you will always run across players and can invite your friends to play it as well. The problem, unfortunately, lies not in finding players, but ensuring that they stay in the game – many was the time when we found our adversary wandering off right in the thick of battle. Irritating. We really wish there was some sort of time restriction for a move – this is not grandmaster chess, is it? That said, you CAN always start a new game with another opponent, if you are fed up of getting thumped in one or simply want to take on many comers at one go (ah, that Grandmaster-y feeling again).
Those addicted to the likes of the sleek interfaces of Scrabble and W.E.L.D.E.R. will also find the predominantly white interface of Letterpress to be on the dull side, and well, there’s no music or sounds at all. No, this is a very Plain Jane word game. Some will love it, others will complain about the same, but we minded it not, simply because it made the game simple and unobtrusive to play anywhere. And that actually is the greatest charm of Letterpress. It is simple, easy to play and extremely addictive. No, we do not see it going out of vogue like Draw Something, simply because it has a real strategic and grey cell workout feel to it. And well, it’s free. A lot of people would not ask for more.
Available from: iTunes App Store
Price: Free