Word Morph! Review

Developer: Nimble Minds
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 1.0.6
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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I’ve never been huge on spelling or word games, but I have fun with them on occasion. I’ve had a decent amount of fun with Word Morph! as well, but it’s got a few problems - some of which really shouldn’t exist - that hold it back.

The idea behind Word Morph! is for you to change words into other words one letter at a time, as fast as you can. For example, “sap” can become “tap” can become “tab” can become “tub” and so on. You can earn tokens (the game’s premium currency) as a reward for various things, and those tokens may be used to activate special power-ups and unlock new modes like longer words (from three to up t seven letters) and a “relaxed” mode that does away with the timer.

I like this general idea, and it can be fun, but I’ve got some problems with it, too. First, only having initial access to timed three-letter games seems a bit too limited. It doesn’t take much to earn the tokens you need to at least unlock Relax Mode or a new tier of letter limits, but I still feel like it could do with just a little bit more available at the start. A bigger problem I stumbled upon is that the token system is kind of broken.

First I earned five tokens for doing well on a particular playthrough but never actually received those tokens. After that I wanted to see precisely what the power-ups do and found there aren’t actually descriptions anywhere - after tapping on a couple and accidentally paying for them with my tokens, no less. So much for those tokens. And if you don’t use the power-ups you buy in your next game you apparently lose them, so that’s fantastic.

Then there are the “these really shouldn’t be here” problems of not being able to pause the game and the mute switch not actually muting anything. What the heck? It seems like you can pause by locking your iPhone or pressing the Home button, but that’s hardly an ideal solution. You can also go into the options to turn off the music and sound effects, which isn’t great, but those sound options don’t affect the video ads that occasionally play between games so you’ll unexpectedly get a face full of loud slot machine adverts.

The core game that’s hiding underneath all of Word Morph!’s problems is a fairly good one, but it’s really difficult to have fun when so many things aren’t working properly.