Who doesn’t love a good word game? Nobody, that’s who! With this in mind EA Mobile is working on Word Smack, a new free-to-play spelling puzzler that takes its cues from Mastermind and Hangman.

Word Smack is, at its core, an asynchronous multiplayer word game where the highest score wins the match. Players will have to guess their assigned words using only a couple of hints and their personal spelling knowledge, with proper guesses leading to new words and potentially more points. Once they’ve exhausted their allotted 15 guesses their turn is over, however, so it pays to stop and think for a bit rather than charge blindly ahead. Of course that’s just the first round. The two that follow get progressively more difficult but also yield higher points. So really, it’s the final round that can make all the difference. Assuming someone hasn’t totally botched the first two, anyway.

Word Smack is due out this fall, and it won’t set you back a single pe–y.

A lot of people enjoy Scrabble. Like a lot. But while the current official iOS rendition is doing okay, it’s been in need of a little tweaking for a while. Well the time for tweaking is nigh.

The list of changes includes a much-improved user interface that not only looks nice but makes setting up matches and finding friends a lot easier. In fact, it makes the act of setting up a game into about as painless a process as I’ve seen yet. The chat features have also been updated, and even include some pretty wacky emoticons. There’s also a rather handy new feature that will allow players to see what other words they might have made with their letters after (emphasis on after) their turn is submitted, which should help to even out the playing field a little for the less spell-savvy while still keeping things fair during multiplayer matches.

However, the most exciting change by far has got to be the cross-platform integration. The Facebook rendition is already available, but once the iOS and Android updates are ready to roll out players will be able to get their spell on across all three platforms. This means PC/Mac users can play against iOS/Android users, and that one user’s account can span multiple devices. So one could play a few rounds on their mobile device, then come home and continue the game on the computer via Facebook. Effectively, just about anyone will be able to play Scrabble with just about anyone else just about anywhere.

Scrabble is already available and is free, but these changes won’t hit until sometime this summer. Do any of these changes have you current players excited? Then chime in below!

FREE!

SCRABBLE Free

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-12-15 :: Category: Games

Who can resist a word game? I know I can’t which is exactly why I immediately checked out BetterLetter.

BetterLetter is a very simple word game but that’s often all that’s needed for a potent and enjoyable title. Available for free, it’s a game all about adding letters and forming increasingly more complex words from the line up. Pitting the player against another human player or with the AI, each player takes turns in adding letters in their efforts to create the longest word possible and gain the most points.

It’s a simple idea and one that I’m sure I’ve played before as a pen and paper game, but a great way to pass the time. The dictionary included with the game is pretty comprehensive coming up with all manners of words that I didn’t even know existed. Curse my average vocabulary.

BetterLetter also provides themes soon, in order to inspire creativity. These will include a Christmas theme as well as a Breakfast theme amongst others.

BetterLetter is available now for the grand price of nothing. Players can also pay out $0.99 to remove the ads that support the free version, and they can buy a Science Fiction theme for the same price.

FREE!

$0.99

BetterLetter

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-12-14 :: Category: Education

People have created bizarre apps to turn iOS devices into all manner of random things. Random things like mirrors, fake X-ray machines, flashlights and more. Now Echolot has thrown their hat into the ring with SkyScribe, a strange little app that’s probably a bit more practical than some of those other oddball apps.

Remember those weird clocks they always seem to have at stores like Brookstone? The ones that display the date, time and sometimes messages by using a small arm that wags back-and-forth and some LED lights? The ones that look like they’re displaying the time in mid-air without the use of a physical display, right. Well SkyScribe does something similar with the iPhone. Users can type words or a message, set a color and speed, then wave their phone from side to side to display their chosen text.

Granted, it doesn’t work exactly the same as those strange clocks. The text scrolls on the screen at a chosen speed, then it’s up to the user to practice their own pacing in order to display it properly. That said, I can see this app being pretty useful in somewhat dim, crowded rooms. Such as during a concert, or in movie theater (prior to the start of the movie, of course) or something like that.

SkyScribe is available right now for a buck.

$0.99

SkyScribe

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-08-17 :: Category: Entertainment

I like to think I’m a fairly well read person. In every day speech and writing, there’s hardly ever a word I struggle to understand. It only takes a quick flick through a dictionary to realise however that there’s a whole wealth of different words out there that are both fascinating and quite cool to know. In every day speech, it’s easy to stick to the same variety of words so along comes Vocabology hoping to buck that trend.

Vocabology is a free app that allows you to view the word of the day from various different sources on the internet. All located in the one place, it’s easy to quickly look up and learn new things. The app covers everything from Merriam Webster, Yahoo Education and even Urban Dictionary. Urban Dictionary makes for a particularly intriguing one offering up some terms that I can safely admit I’ve never heard of before.

For those hoping to learn even more than English, there’s also the addition of words of the day in Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portugese.

In the case of each entry, Vocabology also provides a definition, often an explanation of how to pronounce it and an audio clip saying it. Users can save their favorite words to a favorite list to consult at a later date.

Finally, there’s also a quiz game that enables users to test their knowledge of words that have been covered previously on the app.

Within no time at all, users of Vocabology are destined to learn more and more new words which they’ll hopefully use in every day life. Along the way, users should also learn a few new words in different languages too which is bound to be convenient.

Vocabology looks set to be a great app to check in on a daily basis.

It’s available now for all iOS devices and is a free download.

$0.99

Vocabology - Word of the Day

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-08-13 :: Category: Education

Newtoy Inc has been picking up some great press of late for its brilliant Words With Friends game, including our four star review. The popular multiplayer app is reminiscent of a word-based board game you may know (that rhymes with dabble) and is now available for the iPad as Words With Friends HD.

The biggest print title in Dallas, Texas, D Magazine, recently featured Words With Friends and its creators, fellow Texans Paul and David Bettner, as its cover feature and is now launching its own Words With Friends celebrity tournament. With 64 places available, the tournament is open to all and will include D Magazine staff, the Bettner brothers and even Dallas Cowboys’ Martellus Bennet among the players. According to Newtoy, Words With Friends is popular with members of both the Cowboys and Texas Rangers.

For your chance to play, click here and sign up before June 1.

$2.99

Words With Friends

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-07-19 :: Category: Games

$2.99

Words With Friends HD

iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2010-04-01 :: Category: Games