Word Hack Review

A little like Hangman and a little like Wheel of Fortune comes Word Hack - a quite fun word game that tests your knowledge as well as your vocabulary skills.

The idea is that you're given a few words with a couple of letters filled in, alongside a simple thematic clue, and you're left to figure out what the word could be. To help you along the way, different colors are given to certain letters and tiles - meaning your options are cut down to a handful rather than the full 26 letters of the alphabet. Using deductive reasoning you can then try to narrow down what each letter could be. For instance, if the preceding letter is a Q, you know the next letter is going to be a U.

Of course, throughout all this you're constrained by a time limit that can make you twitchy and liable to make mistakes. There are boosts to help you along the way, such as timer extensions and some that help narrow down what letter could be next. Ultimately though, you need to rely on your language skills.

Word Hack is pretty fun thanks to that, and it's particularly interesting concluding each level with a high score list that tells you how you're performing against the rest of the world. The only real issue is that Word Hack is a bit unstable. I found it crashed or froze up a few times on my iPhone 5 upon finishing a game, forcing me to hard reset the app. It's worth sticking with but I'm hopeful that a future update corrects such problems.

As a free take on a familiar format, Word Hack is certainly enjoyable enough to return to.