Fire Words Review

Developer: Amuses Me
Price: FREE
Version: 3.0
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Fire Words is a word-building game in the same vein as PopCap's classic, Bookworm. Players slide their finger along groups of tiles and spell words for points. The longer and fancier a word, the more points it garners.

Fire Words has a few twists to keep the action hot, however. As players spell, the remaining tiles on the board gradually heat up. Each new word pumps up the other letters by a degree. If a letter gets too hot, it overwhelms the board and the game is over.

There are ways to keep cool, of course. Spelling with red-hot words replaces them with neutral letters. Spelling larger words also create ice tiles, which stay cold even as other letters heat up. If all else fails, players can sacrifice some points to shuffle the game board and hopefully gain some new inspiration.

As the player's level goes up, shuffling letters and creating ice tiles becomes more difficult. Before long, staying in the game takes some serious brain power. Keep a thesaurus handy.

Fire Words's fiery letter tiles offer an urgent challenge that few other word-building games have. Players need to deal with more than the simple challenge of spelling big, cool-sounding words for lots of points. They also need to consider timing and survival. Before they get too far into a game, they have to begin asking themselves questions. Is it better to spell big words and build up ice tiles for when things start to get hot? Or is it more efficient to get rid of the actual tiles that are warming up? What about shuffling? Is it worth sacrificing a decent score to take a chance on possibly surviving for a bit longer?

Fire Words is a good choice for anyone that likes a bit of a spicy challenge with their word games - though it's not a recommended play for anyone that ever froze up under the intense pressure of a spelling bee.

Just kidding. Fire Words is good practice for wordsmiths of all levels.