A working knowledge of the English language is all you really need to blast through it. Easy to learn, slightly more difficult to master and all that - but never that difficult. Little in the way of time limits and a super-intuitive click-what-you-obviously-need-to-click control system means the challenge is not of your reflexes or technological aptitude, but simply of your mental acuity - both in terms of constructing impressively big words, and in terms of augmenting them with coloured powertiles and the occasional potion to manage your health and better whittle down the enemy's. It works marvellously as a casual game because it doesn't require any gaming ability, but it works equally marvellously as a more traditional game because it nonetheless conjures up the peaks of triumph and troughs of defeat as chasing around a bunch of guys with guns. The longer the word you manage to construct out of your random grid of letters, the more devastating the titular Bookworm's next attack upon whichever fictional character made flesh he's currently having a spell-off against. I was much happier when I defeated a murderous gingerbread house by typing 'gardening', or a drooling, ogre-like Tweedle Dee with 'xanax.' Two Xs, mofo! MEGA-POINTS.Įssentially, it's violent Scrabble. Such a thing isn't terribly satisfying, of course.
If I'm ever stuck for a word in Bookworm Adventures 2, sequel to Popcap's much-admired 'toon spelling/roleplaying game, I can generally tap in two consonants and a vowel and I'll get through, despite having learned precisely nothing. Turns out there's an awful lot of acronyms and three-letter Latin words I've never heard of. I kan spel reel gud! Hear iz mi reevoo off Popcaps brand nu puzzle-actchun gaym Bookworm Adventures: Volume 2, wich haz mayd mee evun betta at spellink.