Overall 6.5 Graphics 4 Sound 7 Addictive 8 Depth 6 Difficulty 7
6.7
A decent word game, but the GB port is better Kistaro
"Wordtris" is approximately what it sounds like: a game where you play Tetris with words. Except it has nothing of the "tetr-" prefix in it, since there's no four to be had here. Letters fall from the top of the screen; line them up to make words. There is little more to the game than that.
There's slightly more, though. Spell the "magic word", shown at the top of the screen, to clear your entire well, scoring points for each- essentially, begin a new game with a score bonus. (If you're playing under the clock- which I highly recommend doing- this does not reset the clock, so it's not quite a new game.) Round bombs destroy one tile they hit; dynamite also destroys surrounding tiles; acid erases a column.
Every word you make scores some function of the value of its letters times the number of letters in the word. I think. I know that long words are worth more points far disproportionate to the value of just the added letters, but I'm not sure what that relation is. It's worth going for long ones; when you create a word of 6 letters or longer, you are given an acid vial before your next tile, and can clean up some of the mess you've made.
The game is forgiving to error. Forming words is pickier than forming solid lines, so some way to replace a misplaced letter needs to be provided. The bombs help, but more important is that the well is half full of water. A tile stops when it lands on the water, floating upon it. If a tile lands on another tile instead, that tile sinks below the water; every column of letters has exactly one tile above the water, unless it is empty, or unless it is full: after the column of letters has been pushed all the way down, then and only then do letters stack up.
It's a fun game. Not a deep game, but a fun game. The best multiplayer mode is actually the simplest: Tournament mode, where players take turns, playing separately. Everybody gets the same letters in the same order, however, so everybody has an equal shot. Compare word lists at the end!
This game has one bizarre thing, though: it's worse than its Game Boy counterpart.
On the Game Boy, the entire screen is your well. It's a little square screen, but on the original system, you held it reasonably close to where you could see it; here, it's zoomed in to the same size as the display for any other system. Gameplay is identical, if monochromatic. But the SNES version plays in only brown and yellow, with pictures of a Russian circus filling half the screen; your playfield is condemned to a tiny square, surrounded by an unnecessarily large frame and useless graphical debris. The constraints of the Game Boy screen made for a legitimately better game, and that's the version I have to recommend. It's a good word challenge, but Tournament mode makes it more interesting, since you have a score to compare to under the same conditions.
The game sort of drags on and on and on in Endless mode. The tension of rapidly falling blocks honestly doesn't feel interesting. You're better off setting one of the time limits in the game- 5 minutes seems about right for a standard game, 10 minutes is good for one where speed pressure should be worse, and 2 minute blitz is interesting but doesn't support much long-term building. They're surprisingly different games with the different speeds, though.
Overall: The GB version is recommended, and recommended in favor of this. Up-and-coming game designers should definitely try both to understand how, sometimes, restrictions in a system inspire a better game- and how to make sure that what's important to your game actually gets enough of the display space.
Graphics 4 Sound 7 Addictive 8 Depth 6 Difficulty 7
Review Rating: 2.5/5
Submitted: 11-25-11
Review Replies: 0
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