For the past few weeks I have had an ongoing love affair with an iPhone game.
Words With Friends has found itself as a regularly running app on my iPhone, as I compete with several of my friends – and some strangers – in a friendly, Scrabble-like game. I can’t call this a Scrabble game, probably for some obscure legal reasons, but for reference, that is just what this game is. A two player, word creation game, with mechanics just like that of Scrabble. Sure there are some point differences, and I would bet that the board layout is slightly different than that of Scrabble, but if it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be Scrabble.
In my time playing, I have logged around twenty matches, most of them against my friends, but Words offers a great feature – random opponent matches. Rounds are played in a chess-through-the-mail fashion. Each player has nearly unlimited time to make a play, allowing them to think, plan, or just get on with their daily life before they make a play. The system checks to make sure that you have played a valid word, gives you the word score, then sends a push notification to your opponent alerting them it their time to play.
There is integrated chat for the match, allowing you to taunt or congratulate your opponent, however, the chat messages do not get push notifications, and you are left to simply notice there is a message waiting for you on your game board.
Words With Friends is a great way to pass a few minutes of your day, anytime you have a free moment. In an effort to discourage games from stalling out, the publisher has implemented an auto-resign feature that kicks in after more than a week of inactivity.
Some users complain about how long the time-out feature is for inactive players, but really, I have not experienced an issue with players abandoning a game for days at a time, nor do I see a reason to complain. Most of the complaints are from people that want someone to play “live” passing moves back and forth as fast as possible, and don’t seem to understand that one of the big appeals of this game is the ability to put it down, and pick it up at will, and to not be tied down, playing it for minutes or hours at a time.
Like any game, there are those out there who will drop a game if they start loosing. I had one random player resign only three turns in when they went down 15 points. 15 points is not that hard to come up with, and with no way to block a player you had a bad experience with, or report them for poor conduct, you will likely run into some of these people if you choose to venture outside your friends.
As fun as Words is to play, its not as challenging as playing a live game of Scrabble. Why? Because this one lets you play tiles until it takes your word. So you can try combinations of letters to get the most bang for your buck, and reach for the triple word score tile. Also, you are on the honor system with your opponents to not venture out and utilize some of the many anagram and scrabble applications that live on the web.
There are some technical issues, especially on older 3G phones running iOS4. Its prone to crashing on my 3G, but plays beautifully on newer hardware. Other users report issues with slow word submissions, but this could be attributed to the increasing popularity of the application straining the publishers systems, as I have experienced the slowdown most often at night.
It would be great to have an in-game contact list, and not just refer to your iPhone contact list, so you can keep a quick link to players you enjoy playing with. However, there is a great feature that allows you to challenge your friends on Twitter and Facebook, sending out a link to get the game for their iPhone/iTouch/iPad.
If you are looking for a casual game to take on your friends that does not require both of you to be ready to play at the same time, I highly recommend Words With Friends. And if you are looking for someone to play, hit SmartpigGA up. Just be ready for a tough match.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Availability: App Store
Price: $2.99 (ad free)
Reviewed at version: 3.09
Guest post by: E. Lee Cunningham, MBA, is a small business technology consultant and Apple enthusiast. You can follow him on twitter @smartpig, or check out his other writing at his consulting company’s website – ELCInnovations.com
