7 Little Words
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Red Herring: A terrific little game from 7 Little Words creator
Last night, my daughters and I spent several hours working our way through the first levels of Red Herring (free, with in-app purchases), a twistedly difficult new game from the creator of 7 Little Words and Moxie. The game presents you with 16 phrases at a time, which you categorize into 3 meaningful groups of 4, plus a "red herrings" column for the extras. If you're playing the most difficult level -- and the game isn't nearly as much fun unless you are -- it's a true challenge to sort out the meaningful groupings from the red herrings. Like 7 Little Words, you get the initial puzzle pack for free. In Red Herring, this consists of 50 challenging puzzles to start with. Once hooked, you pay for additional packs. The puzzles can be fiendish, especially if you choose to work without the built-in categories or partial solutions offered by the easy and medium levels. 10 gateway hints are offered for free. After that you pay US$1.99 for unlimited hints. My family had a ball with this -- it was tons of fun and involved lots of brainstorming. Throw the display over to a TV via Air Play and it's the perfect party game as well. We really liked it. Recommended.
Daily iPhone App: 7 Little Words for Kids is a well-made word game for youngsters
I'm a big fan of 7 Little Words, a word game that's different from the rest, in that you need to simply figure out vocabulary clues and match up syllables rather than playing Scrabble yet again or lining up letters. Now, the app's creator has returned with a version for children called (surprise) 7 Little Words for Kids. As you'd imagine, the Kids' version is a bit more colorful and easier than the serene and challenging original, but it offers the same very addictive and rewarding gameplay of being given clues for just seven little words, and then assembling a collection of syllables up to form them. The Kids' app features a number of themed stages, colors up the characters a little bit and offers stars as a reward to open up different worlds, but none of these changes are annoying, and all of them should help the game appeal to children. Plus, I couldn't imagine a better-designed game for kids to play -- there are zero ads or in-app purchases in the app, which is very notable considering how successful Seven Little Words has been with IAP. The devs really went out of their way here to make sure this app was kid-friendly and parent-approved, and while I don't have kids of my own, this is one that I'd make sure was in their hands on a long car trip or plane ride. The one qualm I have with the app was that it wasn't formatted correctly on my iPhone 5's longer screen -- again, I'm not sure how you release an app these day without making sure it works on that display. But despite that small issue, 7 Little Words for Kids is a great app for just US$0.99, and a must-buy if you've got some young minds around looking to boost their vocabularies.
Daily iPhone App: 7 Little Words will cast a spell on you
Puzzlejuice adds all kinds of bells, whistles and fun to the "word game" genre. The equally excellent 7 Little Words (free) goes in the opposite direction, boiling wordplay down to its core. It offers just seven words and a series of letters (in groups of two or three at a time) to spell them with. 7 Little Words is one of those games that's super easy to play but fiendishly difficult to master. There are 50 puzzles in each of the game's pack (each with their own set of seven words and grid of letters to choose from), and you have to make guesses for each word from clues like "bunny food" (CA-RR-OTS), or "make dirty" (SO-IL). It's a "pure" experience, in that there's no timer, no extra points...no points at all, in fact. It's just you, some letters, and the words you need to make with them. 7 Little Words a very "Zen" experience, yet there's a lot of pleasure to be had in sitting down, thinking hard, and hopefully coming up with the words you need. The game comes with 50 puzzles, and extra packs can be bought for 99 cents each (more have been added since we last looked at 7 Little Words, as well as a new shuffle option). If you like crossword puzzles or just word puzzles at all, 7 Little Words is worth the download for sure. It might frustrate you a little bit (seriously, some of the puzzles will have you forehead slapping when you finally figure them out), but most word game fans like a good challenge anyway.
7 Little Words offers great fluffy fun but not enough content
Recently, developer Christopher York pinged me and asked me to take a look at his latest offering, 7 Little Words. He's the developer who brought us the well-designed Moxie 2 last year. Being a word-aholic, I was happy to take a peek at this new title. A freemium-styled game, 7 Little Words ropes you in with a sampler of 25 short word puzzles, which you can then upgrade to a paid set. The game play is simple but engaging. The app splits seven words into component letters. It's up to you to recombine those words using the clue list. "Four score" is EI + GH + TY, six letters long. Some of the clues are a bit pop-culture-y and over-thirties may be at an advantage for these. It's really easy to play in short spurts, and there are 25 free levels in total. The problem is that those levels go very quickly, and there's only a single premium upgrade set currently available for purchase, with more promised on the horizon. I really enjoyed 7 Little Words -- I just wish there were more of it available for in-app purchase today.
