Impressions: Word Spin

If you’ve ever perused the world of casual games, you’ll be quite familiar with the abundance of word games available. There are plenty to choose from, alright, and for good reason. They’re all great sellers! The latest iPhone word game, Word Spin, has apparently been around a good while, selling millions of copies. It should follow that the mobile iteration should be no stranger to success, especially with its addictive nature and low price.

The premise is simple: you’re presented with three rows of letters that you can spin at will before finally settling on the combination that you want to attempt to solve. You may manipulate the letter wheels in order to form sets of words simply by tapping on the letters and submitting them for a score. You can move the rows around if you don’t see any words in your immediate vicinity. Each round will add on another wheel that you can spin in order to scout out new letters to make even longer words. All of this twisting and turning can net you larger, much more admirable scores the longer you puzzle over which words are available to make.

While there isn’t much to the game per se except for a few small plain white letter wheels, I like to think of Word Spin as an interactive variation on Boggle. You’re essentially performing the same actions, only doing it in a new and fascinating way. Selecting your letters can be a little touchy on the iPod’s screen, which I did find fault with, but applying a little more pressure or picking up a stylus made for the unit works wonders when making your words to score mass pointage. It’s hard to put the game down when you think of all the small words you were missing out on with each spin of the wheel!

Three game modes – Solitaire, Practice, and Challenge – let you brush up your game in order to score higher and higher each go you have with the ivory word wheels. Word Spin is a riff on a simple classic that’s easy to pick up and ridiculously difficult to put down.

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