Phrazzle Review

GameFly’s second mobile game, Phrazzle, is one that will appeal to those like myself who like a good word game; one that challenges their creativity and allows them to play with the English language and semantics. No worries though, there’s isn't a chance of getting carried away since there is only one active game per day. Players can vote on other submissions and check results of past games, but that’s the extent of it. In short, it’s a quickie - something to squeeze in before or after checking Facebook or Twitter. Something to add a little competitive spice to the day.

The top of the screen shows the countdown to each new game. Players are offered one topic per day, which is accompanied by a three or four letter acronym. The goal is to come up with a clever, creative phrase that will win the most votes. For example, for the topic “The Next Diet Fad,” and the acronym T-C-O, the winning submission was "Tapeworms Cure Obesity." The topic “The Royal Family,” and the acronym I-S-O generated these top three: "International Soap Opera" (winner), "Inbred, Spoiled Offspring," and "Is Seriously Outdated." Some submissions can be quite witty.

Players can knock themselves out and submit several funny phrases per topic. Once they’ve either hit the number limit (not sure what that is yet) or their creative limit, their entered submissions will be grouped with four other players. The next day, each member of the group can rank the submissions 1 through 5. To encourage fair ranking, players are awarded bonus points for matching the group consensus. The top phrases are put into a two-round playoff system where everyone can vote. The winning submission is deemed The Phrase of the Day.

Players earn or can purchase coins in order to buy the ability to reorder the letters in the acronym, or to receive ideas (a common word list) for each letter. Experience points are also learned; I assume they are put toward leveling up somehow? It isn’t clear, but after several games I am still a “noob;” although it looks like I’m almost at the next level. There is a Game Center leaderboard where players can compare their stats to their Facebook friends or to all who play.

A word of warning: Be careful when playing this around kids. Some of the words or phrases expressed are not for virgin eyes. Not that it’s a dirty free-for-all; I don’t want to steer anyone away. It’s just that I learned from experience.

Another quick note - the music is catchy, but gets old fast. The app has also frozen a couple of times on me. Nothing hugely negative, though. Mute the music and it’s all good. So fire up the brainpower and sharpen that wit. Phrazzle is a quick and fairly engaging game. And bonus - it won’t suck away a bunch of free time.