PRESS RELEASE : WORD TOWER
Word Tower: A challenging, fast-paced word play game for the iPhone/iTouch
June 6th, 2009 - PORTLAND, ORE. – What do you get when you mix up Scrabble, Boggle and Tetris and add the flipping, shaking and sliding that only the iPhone/iTouch can do? WORD TOWER!
In this one-of-a-kind word game, create words out of stacks of letters before they pile up and form a tower. But don’t look down too long; more letters are falling your way! Catch them on the way down to place them strategically. As you advance through levels, an array of special tiles will challenge your strategic skills and quick thinking.
Four modes, basic to genius, will keep you challenged and coming back for more. WORD TOWER is ideal for quick breaks, epic sessions and everything in between. You can also compare your scores online with players around the world.
About the creator
Mac Martine is a software engineer and musician living in Portland, Ore. Contact Mac at littleredbikemedia at gmail dot com
Word Tower Review for iPhone and iPod Touch
July 14, 2009
http://appmodo.com
Word Tower, by
Little Red Bike Media, has gained a loyal following since its release earlier this year. The game incorporates many different, and popular, word and puzzle games to create a wickedly addictive scrabble/crossword/tetris experience you can’t find anywhere else. Read on to see just what makes Word Tower a winner!
Review
It’s alright. We can’t all be math wizards. So NineGaps might not be the best game for you. But have no fear, because a new brain buster has arrived and enters full force on the iTunes app scene.
The goal is simple: Rack up as many points as possible per level, by spelling whatever words you can with the ever falling letters. Don’t let the stack of letters reach the top of the screen or its game overt!
When I first cracked open this game, I did not know what to expect. But after a few rounds I quickly picked up on the strategy to help get me through each level. You begin with a pile of letters at the bottom of your screen, as more fall from above. Just as in tetris, they fall in lines, but you can tap and drag each falling letter to whichever stack you like. The bigger the word you spell, the more points you receive. There are power-ups and bonuses available as well.
The most common bonus is the Star, and when used as part of a word, triples your point bonus. The snowflake must be used while it is falling, or else it turns to ice and blocks your path once it hits the stacks. Shake the phone to change the snowflake letter. Brick tiles can only be destroyed by spelling four letter words with them. Select a Bomb in a word, and it will blow up random tiles for you, and as a bonus, you get points! The key and keyhole are sometimes the gateway to new levels. Make both of them touch, by either spelling the words around them or catching them while they are falling.
Word Tower provides you with 5 different difficulty levels: Starter, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Genius. Each difficulty level increases speed and amount of vowels that drop. ANd let me warn you now, Genius difficulty is there for just that, geniuses. Very fun to attempt, but extremely difficult to master. I felt that the difficulty settings increased at a steady pace, and didn’t jump from too easy to insanely difficult too fast.
There is online scorekeeping available, so that you may compare your best score to other gamers online.
The graphics and interface are simple and smooth, and did not lock up or freeze during games. Navigation is simple and the different pages are well labeled. Audio for Word Tower is simple and does not get in the way or gameplay, or really add anything to the game experience.
I did find that during the easier levels, there seemed to be an abnormal amount of vowels that would drop. While I do understand that the easy levels provide more vowels to help players create words, but there were times when the only letters available on screen were those well known few: A, E, I, O, and U.
Overall, Word Tower is a great game to pick up and play whenever there is a free moment, or you are looking for a challenging game to stretch those brain muscles.
Tips
1. Can’t find a word in all the clutter?? Flip your iPhone over! The letters will reverse and give you a new look on things.
2. Conquered all that there is on the starting difficulty? Oh don’t worry, there is sure to be one setting that will put you in your spelling place. Hit up the settings to pick one of 5 challenging difficulties.
Recommendation
I would recommend Word Tower to tetris junkies, sudoku fanatics, crossword addicts, and everyone in between.
iPhone Word Game: Word Tower
June, 2009
4 stars
http://slapapp.com
Word Tower by
Little Red Bike Media is a challenging word game that puts your nerves, vocabulary, and hand-eye coordination to the test. The object of Word Tower is simple! Don’t let falling letter filled tiles stack up to the top of the screen. If you do…GAME OVER. In order to keep tiles from stacking too high you’re forced to quickly identify words. Using your fingers you must trace out as many words as you can find, as quickly as possible. Correctly identified words disappear; clearing out more space and buying you more time. To add to the challenge, Word Tower not only drops letters more quickly as you advance through the game, but it seemingly drops letters at random, forcing you to quickly identify existing words on your screen and to navigate letters in an effort to spell out more words. If you don’t spell words and navigate letters successfully, your game will end in a hurry! One word best describes Word Tower; tough!
If asked about Word Tower we’d respond with, think of it as Tetris® mates with crossword puzzles; only without the clues. There are four levels of play to help you gauge your skill level (basic – genius). Just an FYI, we found even the “basic” level to be a formidable challenge.
Don’t think you can sleep after passing through a couple of levels. The further you advance through Word Tower the harder it gets. Multiple varieties of special tiles essentually throw curve balls into the action. Long story short…please don’t think you can get into a groove and just breeze through the levels. You either know you’re stuff or you don’t. You’ll learn pretty quickly if you’re up to the Word Tower challenge!
At first try we immediately recognized Word Tower to be a difficult app. Why is it hard? Well, we’d like to tell you it’s because the gameplay is poor, or that the app has noticeable bugs that interfere, but unfortunately the app performed flawlessly. We can only blame our impression on one thing…our skill level. That’s right, Word Tower is a legitimately challenging word game. Like most wordies you probably think you’re the shiznit. Well smarty pants, why not put your skills to the test and try you’re luck against Word Tower’s best. Even at the basic level we found ourselves adequately challenged. If you give the game a shot you’ll probably notice SlapApp on the leaderboard. Unfortunately, we’re not exactly the top scoring playas in the game.
Overall we enjoyed Word Tower. The graphics and sound effects aren’t exactly captivating, but Word Tower is such an addictive and challenging iPhone app that we’ve got to recommend it to every crossword puzzle lover, sudoku junky, or self professed word guru. If you love killing time with your iPhone, and love word games and crossword puzzles, then it’s worth your time to check out Word Tower!
iPhone Review: Word Tower
Written by Jennifer Allen on June 17, 2009
http://theportablegamer.com
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Word Tower, I felt a little uncertain. It looked like a curious mess of Boggle and Tetris, with a hint of Scrabble. All excellent games in their own right, I just wasn’t sure how well they would combine. Fortunately,
Word Tower turned out to be good fun and the ideal distraction for five minutes, as well as a game that could keep you playing for hours if you so wish.
The concept is pretty simple to get to grips with. Letter tiles come down the screen like Tetris, but instead of lining up blocks, you line up letters to create words. You can move the tiles about to be more strategical, as well as select the word you’ve created with your finger. The longer you play the game, the faster the tiles come down meaning you have to keep your wits about you. Unlike Tetris, you have a lot more to think about than simply matching up blocks. You must concentrate on what words to create, placements of letters to give you the best chance of being able to create other words in a few moves time. The key to doing well at this game is most definitely thinking and planning ahead. For example, there’s no point dumping a load of ‘i’ letter tiles together as you can’t make a word out of that, so it’s best to aim ahead and come up with a strategy. As well as creating words, to progress through the level faster, you have to line up a key and a keyhole to go onto the next level. Again this requires careful planning, as it can be a long wait for the key to appear. Finally, if all else fails, you can flip the action around. Just turn your device upside down and the tiles all flip around, giving you another way of approaching the action.
As you can probably tell, Word Tower has a lot going on. I didn’t find it relaxing at all times but I did find it extremely compelling. It was the sort of game I’d play for five minutes, then realise an hour had passed. Praise indeed for such a game. If, unlike me, you become an expert at the Basic mode of play, there are four difficulty levels with the hardest being Genius level where a 4 letter word is the minimum accepted rather than 3. Along with the obligatory online high scores, there is plenty to keep you interested.
Word Tower offers some great longevity for a game that costs a mere $0.99, with a free lite version also available. If you fancy a word game that requires a bit more strategy and quick thinking, you just can’t go wrong with Word Tower.
Word Tower - Think Tetris With Letters
June 25, 2009
http://appleiphoneschool.com
Word Tower is like playing Tetris with letters. I love the developer’s description of the app - “What do you get when you mix up Scrabble, Boggle and Tetris and add the flipping, shaking and sliding that only the iPhone/iTouch can do? WORD TOWER!”
That is exactly what it is…you have to created words from the letters. You create words by dragging your finger over the letters that form a word. If you create a word, the letters will disappear however, you have to do it quickly because more letters are falling. The cool part is that you can “grab” the letters and move them around as they are falling so that you can strategically create more words.
As you move through the levels, new blocks are introduced. Some of the blocks give you additional points when used, some have to be used a certain number of times before they disappear…etc. The one that gets me is the snowflake. When a snowflake drops you have to shake your device, before it touches another letter, which then changes all your letters. So here you are building a strategy and along comes a snowflake and messes it all up!
After the first level, you move on to the next level by matching up the key with the key hole. At some point during the level a key hole will drop down then some time later a key will drop…you have to match them up to move on. Your current score, level and the last word you created are all displayed on the play screen. You lose when your blocks pile up and hit the top of the screen.
One cool feature of the game is that you can flip it over. If you find that you are stuck and cannot seem to find any words to create, just flip your iPhone or iPod Touch over and tada…a whole new arrangement! The game contains four levels; Basic, Intermediate, Advances and Genius. It also has a Local and Global scores list. I also like that when you exit the game using the Home Button, it pauses your current game and allows you to continue where you left off when you reopen it.
At first I found it to be a little tricky to create words plus watch/move the letters that are falling but, after a few tries, I totally had a strategy! Personally, I’m a word game junky and I have added Word Tower to my favorite word game list. It is well designed and fun to play. Definitely a game you will go back to again and again.
Test your vocabulary with Word Tower on the iPhone
June 25, 2009
http://iphonefootprint.com
Word Tower; going by the name I thought this got to be another word game that has been replicated from some popular one. Most applications in the App Store has this copycat attribute. For word-towerWord Tower, my presumption turn out to be a total prediction failure. I am glad I made the purchase despite my skepticism.
Word Tower, as the title suggests is a word game but with a difference. Like Tetris, cubes rain down from above, not only colored but with letters inscribed on them. You’ve to move the blocks left or right before they settle down to make words. Swipe your finger across adjacent letters to identify valid words and to make the letters vanish. You can swipe from either top or bottom and left or right.
You can tap and hold a particular block from falling to the bottom. This is particularly handy when you want to figure out where to place the block.
Try not to let the screen get filled. The game ends when there is no more space for new blocks to fall. As the game progress, the dropping speed of cubes also increases. There, you need to be strategically quick.
As you progress from one level to the other, secret and special tiles would be unlocked. When you see snowflake blocks falling, you’ve to shake the device for new letters. Ice blocks should be placed in the outer edge of the screen so that they don’t interfere in forming of words. There are also bombs, bricks and keys having special effects and rules to deal.
If you are done finding words in one position, you can invert your device to let the letters get re-arranged in the other direction. You get a new view of the letters.
There are four game modes that are exciting in their own ways. Basic mode, Intermediate, Advanced and Genius mode are clubbed in Word Tower to test your vocabulary and quickness. The advance modes are for real geniuses. Do not go in there if you are not one.
Graphically the game is passable but the game sound is a little disappointing. You got to hear some sound only while sliding across the boards and when you have formed words. However, you have the option to play your own music. So no hard feelings there.
By now you could have piled up many word games, but you will not regret including Word Towers in your collection.
iPhone App: Word Tower
June 18, 2009
4 stars
http://webomatica.com
Word puzzle game where you spell words from falling tiles.
The Good
* A neat combination of word search (Wurdle) and falling blocks (Shivering Kittens). Trace your finger over the tiled letters to spell words. A correctly spelled word of three letters or more removes those blocks and earns points. New blocks steadily fall from the top of the screen. You can move falling blocks by touching and dragging, adding a bit of strategy as their placement can help you spell words. Once a block touches the bottom of a column, it can only be removed by using it in a word or passing the level.
* Special blocks add variety: a snowflake lets you shake the iPhone and shuffle existing letters, while a brick can’t be removed and its letter is limited to use in four letter words. Lastly, levels are passed by landing a lock block adjacent to a key block - meaning a clear pathway to either must be maintained. Also adding variety are four levels of difficulty, including “Genius” in which all your words must contain four letters or more, and the blocks fall at a much faster rate.
* The end result is like playing two games simultaneously: if you concentrate too hard on the word spelling part, the block falling quickly gets out of control. Mentally flipping between the two tasks is a fun challenge.
* Neat trick: Rotate the iPhone 180 degrees to flip the entire game upside down. All the blocks fall accordingly, giving your grid of letters a different arrangement.
The Bad
* Graphics and sound effects could use a little extra polish.
* Literal “hanging” when dragging the blocks around - they occasionally get stuck in mid-air for a few moments and then resume falling.
Conclusion
While slightly derivative, Word Tower’s combination of word search and falling blocks actually creates a compelling variation on the genre. This combination just works, like peanut butter and chocolate. Recommended.
