Genre:  Word
Platform:  XBone

I found this game two days ago on the XBox Store.  I am already declaring it an awesome game.  I’ve spent a total of about 8 hours playing it, although it feels like a lot more.  I love a good word game and will easily get sucked into one.  This particular word game combines a typical word game with an RPG!

You start the game playing as Grimm, a little dude working his way through a monster-filled realm.  You can play in either story mode or endless mode.  Both are fun.  Endless is just what it sounds like – a survival mode where you work your way through monster after monster.  You earn coins as you go and can occasionally buy upgrades and potions to help with the increasing difficulty.

As with most games, story mode is where it’s at.  You work through a map of levels, earning stars as you go.  This is where it gets cool – the stars aren’t just given for varying levels of “good job”.  Instead, you need to play through each level four times to get all of the stars.  Each is an objective.  For example, the first is simply beat the monsters.  The second is a time trial.  The third is some sort of challenge like “can’t use E” or something equally as challenging.  The fourth is a special challenge where the monsters are much tougher and have specific requirements like “takes damage only from words starting with a vowel”.

As you play through story mode, you can spend crystals you earn on permanent upgrades.  There are a lot of them and they all help to make you more awesome.  Of course, if you’re not good at the core of the game, it’s not going to matter much.  The game play is simple – find words from a block given to do damage to monsters.  It sounds simple and is, but when I spelled out the word “AFFIDAVIT” the other night, I felt pretty awesome.  Some monsters will make tiles unusable or make it so you take damage when you use them.

It also keeps track of your stats!  This is a feature I always like.  It shows you how many of pretty much everything you’ve done.  I’ve spelled the word “BACON” five times and spelled out 25 palindromes.  And for the fellow achievement whores – this game is going to be a breeze to complete.  I’ve gotten 40 achievements in just under 8 hours.

This all leads to a really fun and highly re-playable game.  If you like word games, find it!