Game Review: Word Solitare

Word Solitaire by Candywriter

Much like this name suggests, instead of playing solitare with numbers, in this game you play with letters— and it's a lot more challenging than it sounds. At least, it was for me. So many tries and I still couldn't get past the first level! Some word fanatic I am.

I really enjoy this game, being such a big fan of regular solitaire. Your objective is to use every single card on the board to make words. Like solitaire, you can move selections of cards from the row. Drag and drop letter cards onto a row to either build a word, or be in the process of building a word; if no words start with the letters you're placing (like trying to put an R over an N or vice versa), you will not be able to place the letter on that row. When you've made a valid word, a purple circle will appear over top the row with a number inside. This number adds to your score at the bottom of the screen.

You need to reorganize your letters and words continually until you've revealed both every card and used them all to make words, so don't be afraid to break things up. Odds are that even that snazzy eight or nine-letter word you've made will make your game hell in trying to work around it, even though longer words are worth so much more than shorter ones. If a green arrow appears at the upper right corner of the screen, you're free to advance to the next level; you can always choose to stick around and make longer words and improve your score before moving on.

If you get stuck with a letter you simply can't find a place for, you may burn it. You can burn up to three cards per level, though you take a penalty to your score for each one. And choose carefully! The cards you burn might end up being the cards you needed to complete the level.

The game saves automatically; this is both a blessing and a curse, I've found. When you get so fed up and you press the home button to end the game and do something else without tapping the white flag of surrender, the next time you open the game, it will come back to your unfinished progress.

If you've got patience and some time to kill, this definitely is the game to get. It's fun, simple and highly addictive. See how many words you can make! The full version is only $0.99, but check out the free version to try before you buy. 5/5