Scrabble Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

What took it so long?

Since the dawn of colour mobile games, board game conversions have always played a big roll. Monopoly, Chess and of course Backgammon have had various incarnations but never Scrabble. RealNnetworks have finally managed to bag the rights to this one.

In this day of electronic gaming, Scrabble may have lost a few new followers so here's a quick outline of the game. It's a word game for up to four players; each player randomly picks 7 lettered tiles and they have to try and make a two letter word or longer. The first player places his word in the middle of the board and the next player has to form their word by tagging onto the existing letters on the board. After each go, players keeping picking random letters to maintain their 7 letter bank. The game continues until all the spare tiles are used and the first person has used all the tiles in their stockpile. Each letter has a points value (vowels are worth 1 point and less common words are worth more). The board is littered with bonus squares which can double or triple words or letters. The winner is not the one who finishes first but that the one with the highest score.

The game can be daunting for newbies but after a few games, a bit of confidence will hopefully build. The mobile game follows the standard rules of Scrabble and there's a little bit of customisation on offer as well. 4 player human play is available by passing the phone to each other and you can also play against the cpu. The cpu has 4 levels of AI but even the second level, 'average', is pretty tough. Along with a large vocabulary, there are some tactics to learn which Beginner has already mastered. A strong knowledge of two letter words can pay dividends, this will allow you to tag your own long words onto the board and create some multiple hits.

As tough as the game is, it does allow you to try a few words. If you enter a dodgy word, you will be challenge but you do get another chance to try a new word, rather than forfeiting. One of the first versions I played on the Spectrum allowed you to override the challenge but thankfully that cheat has been removed.

In addition to the versus game you can also play a game of solitaire where you try and get the highest score when playing all the moves yourself. You still only have you set of 7 tiles but it's a good way to practice and get used to tagging and extending words.

A mobile version of Scrabble is only as good as the board you have to play on. A 15x15 grid is a lot to cover on the screen in one go, but it did work a treat on the N81. There is a zoom function if you want to get a close look at the points and squares. The controls work pretty well and it's all cursor based as you pick letters from your tile rack to place on the board. It's not always the most intuitive but it does the job.

It would seem that RealNetworks have pitched this at the existing Scrabble fans and with the millions of fans already out there, why bother recruit the txt generation who can't even spell. Fans should enjoy the game; it's an accurate conversion and comes with difficulty levels to suit all players.