After playing Wordzy for a little while, I came up with a title I thought was a bit more fitting.  I call  this game: “How Many Five Letter Words Do You Know?”

That’s not to say it’s a bad game.  Just that the question of how many five letter words one knows has a direct bearing on the playability of this simple little Xbox Live Indie game by by John Sepulveres.  As it turns out, Geoff knows very few, and I know quite a bit.  So our discussion went something like this:

Geoff: You want to review that game?

Me: What game?

Geoff: Check the contact email.

Me: Yeah, I’ll review it.

Geoff: I tried the demo.

I fucking failed.

First word… buhhhhhhhhhh

Second word rooooooooooooooks is going to have to play this.

And so I did.

Gameplay

Wordzy is a word puzzle game.  The basic premise is to attempt to determine the randomly selected word by inputting letters.  Letters you get right are marked and move on to the next attempt for you to use.  Letters that are in the word, but are in the wrong place are marked with a different color so you have a bit of a hint.  A sort of Mastermind using more symbols but with the actual answer limited to a dictionary of words.  In this case, as you may have guessed, this dictionary is limited to five letter words. When guessing words, the default options only give you the color-coded clues if your attempt is itself a word found in the dictionary.  This keeps you from using a strategy of entering common letters merely to determine if they are part of the word.  This can also be a problem if your diction isn’t quite up to snuff, so there is an option to turn this off.  There is also a difficulty option which lets you set the random word to something from the game’s entire dictionary or merely a subset of more common words.

The game includes options for both playing alone, or playing with another person, whereby you take turns entering guesses until someone gets it right.  You can do this in person or over Xbox Live with a gold account.  There are also options to play against a timer or without it.

One thing I can’t help but notice is how much easier this game would be with a keyboard.  I type exceedingly fast, think even faster, and the fact you have to enter letters by scrolling slowly through a list using the Xbox controller slows me down considerably.  There’s not much that can be done about this, however, and the timer is usually more than sufficient to solve the puzzle using the supplied input method.

Visual

Wordzy has a very simple look to it to go along with its simple gameplay.  I must admit I was slightly disappointed with the graphics.  The look of the “letter tiles” can be selected from a set of three, with the white you see above being the most readable.  The solid black letters were hard to distinguish against the green background on my tv.  The background is a static image of a jumble of letters, and the UI is very utilitarian.  Considering the interesting stuff that some other indie developers have been putting out graphics-wise, I would have liked to see something a bit more visually interesting.  The letters in the background could float and dance and light up when used, for example.  The graphics aren’t terrible by any means, but they aren’t top notch either.  They simply are graphics.

Audio

The audio present in Wordzy matches up with the rest of the game, it is simple.  There are small incidental noises for letter tile selection and placement or errors, and these work alright.

The game also contains a pair of music tracks.  One, a light, poppy number played over the menu, and the other a jazzy tune which accompanies the actual gameplay.  Both, I think, fit the game fairly well.  The game supports custom soundtracks though, in case you prefer playing your own music.

Summary

For a mere 80 Microsoft Currency Units, Wordzy is accurately priced.  If you know a lot of five letter words and enjoy a simple puzzle game, you’ll find Wordzy diverting for a time.  But I can’t help to think that with some extra visual flair, a couple more twists on the game play and perhaps options to play with 6 or 7 letter words, the game could have been something much more unique and generally better.