Letterpress
Letterpress is one of those creative games that comes along once in a blue moon. Although it came out more than a year ago, I thought I would give it a mention for the iOS users that haven’t heard of it yet (which I find hard to believe). This game came out of pure necessity from the developer, Loren Brichter, and his wife one night when they were out having dinner. Their table wasn’t ready and they were both playing SpellTower, a single-player game that Brichter found hard to believe wasn’t muliplayer.
He took idea of creating a multiplayer game similar to SpellTower and ran with it, creating an unique game that is hard to put down once you start.Because after all, Letterpress isn’t just a SpellTower-spinoff with online functionality, it’s a frankenstein creation made from a variation of Tetris and Scrabble.
Gameplay
Playing Letterpress is really simple. Just invite an iOS friend from gamecenter to a game or choose to get matched randomly with another player. Once a game is started, each player gets a turn and once they finish, the other player gets another turn and so forth. The game starts off with a grid of random letters. To finish your turn you have to tap on letters that make up a valid word consisting of at least two letters.If you user letters that the other player has used (indicated by their color) then you lose a point. The only exception to this is when you use one of their letters that is an outlier (a letter that is not surrounded by other letters with their colors).
There are plenty of rules to this game, but overall it’s really balanced and simple. Getting started with it shouldn’t take too long, you’ll be on your way and enjoying it very quickly.
Mission Accomplished
Letterpress is an explanatory iOS game, there is no doubt about it. I don’t know what’s more impressive, the amount of followers and sub-culture it has gained, or the fact that the game is made up of 6,346 lines of codes.
Along with all of the great features and following of this game, its design has even been recognized as the leader in UI along with big-name apps such as Google+ and eBay.
Room to improve
While playing Letterpress I didn’t find an option to invite friends to the game that didn’t already have it. I may have missed something, but it seems as if you can only invite friends from Gamecenter that already have the app.
Conclusion
If you haven’t heard of Letterpress yet then you have to try it out. If you love word games then Letterpress is a must-have. If you don’t, then this might change your mind about it.
Genre: Price: Developer: Size: NAN Age Rating: | |
| Creative app idea | |
| User interface | |
| Value | |
Summary | 5 |