[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/aquawords/cover.jpg[/floatleft]One word can describe this word puzzle game to anyone who asks – addicting. I lost about three hours of my life in one sitting thanks to the giant water blob man (you’ll see him if you play). That is what makes or breaks a downloadable puzzle game; the addiction factor, not the blob man.
Aqua Words is a word puzzle game put out by Realore Studios. The object of the game is to form words using the letters provided to you in water bubbles, hence aqua words. The letters have to be in bubbles that are touching each other. You can go left to right, right to left, up and down, in a circle, in an inch worm fashion all across the screen. As long as the bubbles touch and it forms a word, it works. The game consists of three modes to play under; time mode, arcade mode, and strategy mode. In time mode you obviously play against the clock forming words before your time runs out. In arcade mode, you play as more letter bubbles drop. You play until, like Tetris the bubbles touch the top of the screen. In strategy mode, you have to carefully choose your words so that certain bubbles (marked by a different color) don’t fall off screen.
The scoring is the same in all three modes. Each word is worth a certain number of points. The longer the word, the more points it is worth. You can use a word as many times as you can find it in the puzzle which is nice. Although, I kept finding the word sin…I wonder if the water blob man is trying to tell me something… Another little trick I noticed is that you can add the letter ‘s’ to a word and make it worth more points. Why just form the word cat when you can make it plural??? Once you get to a certain score you level up and the board resets itself. The levels obviously get trickier to maneuver with the addition of the ‘Qu’ and ‘x’ bubbles. In the time mode, time runs out quicker and in the arcade mode the bubbles drop with more frequency. I also noticed there were fewer vowels present in the higher levels.
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/aquawords/ss03_thumb.jpg[/floatleft]There is truly only one “bad” thing I have to say about the game and it is this – there were no freaking directions. I mean, not that it was all that difficult to figure out, but still a little help would have been nice.
If you are looking for something to do at the office when things are slow or just love word puzzle games then I would suggest giving Aqua Words a try. Visit www.realore.com to find it. You can download the free demo version or pay $19.95 for the full version. You may be asking me “Dots, is it worth the $19.95 to play?” My answer is this: if you a true word puzzle fan and will actually play it then yes. If you are looking for an hour of love it then leave it, one night stand, word making fun, then don’t. The nice thing is that they offer a demo for people like you.
