Kalimat Review

Word games have entered a renaissance on the App Store, as asynchronous multiplayer has allowed people to play at Kalimat works similarly to Scrabble and Words with Friends - you try to lay down tiles on a crossword board either left to right or up to down, with a variety of bonus tiles available including double and triple letter, as well as double and triple word tiles. The game differentiates itself in featuring another random tile called the Ali Baba square that is randomly placed on the board, and if you land on it, then you get a 50 point bonus. As well, the game features its own dictionary that does away with some of the more obscure words in the dictionary. Depending on your thoughts on the word "QI" this is either a good thing or a bad thing.

The game supports asynchronous multiplayer with push notifications through OpenFeint, which update almost instantaneously as a move is made. This is one of the first games available that uses OpenFeint to power its asynchronous multiplayer component, and it works well - you can easily challenge your OpenFeint friends list to a game, and unlock achievements, and see leaderboards for high scores of games. Kalimat's Remix mode is also a nice change of pace - it encourages thinking on your feet and making quick plays instead of sitting back and brooding on your moves, rewarding with you point bonuses for making your moves quickly. The game also claims to allow you to play up to 1000 games at once; while I wasn't able to start up 1000 games to test this feature out, the idea of having no more pesky game limits excites me, especially if a game like Disc Drivin' could raise its limit that high.

Of course, change isn't always good; because of the modified dictionary, it can be challenging to make plays in endgame situations because a lot of short words that you may be used to playing in other games are no longer usable here. The Remix mode is fun to play, but it would do better if the timer was sped up to a certain degree, as having a whole minute to make a move with the 3X bonus still feels like enough time to think up a decent move, though it still does pressure you. The game needs a free version - right now it can be hard to find players, though there is a random opponent search function to help expand your games list.

If you've grown sick of Scrabble and Words with Friends' specific rules and want something a bit different, then Kalimat is a familiar but different change of pace, though this game may get a lot more play when the free version is released. Check out the entertaining trailer for the game below, as well.