From Blue ox Games
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Woven words Review!
This game offers a few firsts for me here on the blog. This is my first review of an Iphone game. It is also the first time I have reviewed a game that wasn’t designed for the blind community as its main target.
Introduction
So the blog’s own Smoke put me on to this game. He apparently heard about it some where and thought it might be my type of game.
So I went and got it to review for the blog.
So a poetry jump and then a review.
Are poets all just artists, Painting pictures with some words,
Can the lines take you deep below, or higher then the birds.
Have you read epic tales, then let your mind run free,
Or do you think these are but stories, with no place in reality.
Do my words weave patterns, deep with in your head,
Or do you wish I’d just move on, and blog in fucking stead.
So sit back and enjoy my words, though rime they will not,
Because this is but a humble blog post, not a fucking poetry spot!
What is woven words?
Did I really just put a random little poem in this blog. Yes yes I did.
But never the less, let us move on. Woven words is a game that provides all the frustration of a crossword with out any of the help of clues!
That is a bad way to describe it really but it is kind of what it is.
You start with a grid. the simplest just 3 by 3. In these grids you have to place words so that each row from left to right, and each column going from top to bottom spells a word.
As the difficulty levels get harder your simple 3 by 3 grids can become amazingly complicated from 7 by 7 grids that have gaps, to grids that are all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes.
your grid will have random letters placed across it. Your job is to fill in letters till each row and column has a completed word. For some of the easy puzzles this isn’t too hard. But it can get very difficult later on.
I admit starting out I wasn’t sure I would enjoy this game but it has brought me a lot of entertainment in different ways over the past few days. But more about that as we move along.
Starting out.
So when you first start out you have 18 puzzles. 6 tutorial level puzzles. These are all relatively simple puzzles. Basic stuff to give you a feel for how the game works. Handy little hints will also be given through out this process. You can also get a chance to play around with 2 features that can help you on your way.
Check the board. This can allow you to check if the letters you have put in are right or not. It will tell you if any are wrong although it won’t say which ones so you could have 1 or several wrong. The other is the hint button which will give you a letter. But while theoretically later on you could just use that to solve the puzzle it would be a little pointless.
After the 6 tutorial puzzles you get 12 basic puzzles. These range in difficulty to the relatively easy to the some what hard.
So this is what you get for free when you download the game. As I said above wasn’t really sure what to expect or if I would like this game. But these first 18 puzzles brought loads of joy. As I sat with smoke in team talk and we struggled our way through the opening levels. And even if smoke refuses to accept the words ills as an actual word we had a few laughs and it was quite a bit of fun.
So this game gets a tick from me right there. Any game that you can kick back have a few laughs while playing with some friends is ok with me. It is no Crazy Party but still some fun.
Accessibility
So here is an important part of this game that I felt needed to be talked about.
This game as I said in my opening statement wasn’t designed for the blind. It is just a simple Iphone game that the developer Blue Ox games had the idea of making voice over friendly.
Now I will admit when the grid gets complicated it can be a little difficult. But the lay out is super simple and I can’t deny that it works.
The grids appear in grid form on the screen and you can tap around the screen to look at it. How ever you can also swipe through letter by letter.
Each spot can tell you if it is blank or if there is already a letter in it. If a letter is fixed it will let you know as well, meaning it can’t be changed. or if it’s just there cause you put it there and it can be changed.
The check board and hint buttons are both at the bottom and easy to get to. Otherwise the accessibility works quite well. It is super simple, and very affective.
I think that is all I really need to say on this. It is accessible and it works well.
More puzzles and pricing.
Yes I know this will turn some of you away right now. But all things considered it is actually pretty reasonably priced. After the first 18 puzzles you can buy packs in 3 categories.
Standard: 8 packs here all named after different types of wood.
Advanced: All named after planets and again 8 packs.
Extreme: 8 more packs named after metals.
Each pack contains 24 more puzzles and each pack costs 1 dollar and 49 cents Australian. Or you can buy all 24 packs and get over 500 puzzles for just 14 dollars and 99 cents.
I will admit right here I have paid that 15 dollars and got all the puzzles. I have spent well over 2 hours playing and have not completed even a 10th of the puzzles. I predict I will spend many hours of the coming months every now and then cracking out this game and playing for a bit. It doesn’t seem that expensive for so many puzzles at least to me.
The difficulty levels.
So the opening 18 puzzles presented some challenges especially in the last few. But really they weren’t super hard. The real difficulty I felt is trying out the different levels.
Having bought all the packs I tried 1 pack out in each level. the standard ones weren’t to hard. a few challenges here and there. but over all nothing to tough.
The advanced puzzles stumped me a few times but over all these offered a challenge some what like the higher difficulties shown in the free puzzles.
Finally we step up to the extreme difficulty and this is correctly named. Some of these puzzles have left me stumped for quite a while. and I used the hint and check board button many times.
This game offers a wide variety of skill levels to allow any one to play.
rating
I think when it comes to rating I have to take 2 things in to account. 1 is how well it works. and 2 how much I enjoyed playing it.
So for that reason I am going to score it quite well.
9 out of 10.
I love this game and to any one that likes word puzzles I can’t recommend it enough.
I think that it does what it says it should do. For me personally I have really enjoyed it as well.
Final thoughts.
I really hope that if you like the sound of this game you go check it out. and if you like what you find you consider buying it. We need to support developers willing to take us in to account especially when they do such a good job like blue ox games.