Word Challenge by eSoft Interactive, Price: $9.95
Reviewed December 2003

From the creators of Tower of Mogul, here is a collection of word games that will build your vocabulary rather than high rise empires. eSoft Interactive's Word Challenge is a bundle of four popular word games: Word Jumble, Hungman, Hunt-A-Word and Word Whiz. Word puzzle fans will find familiar gameplay in these games, but will be tested by the time limit and required score to enter higher levels.

In Word Jumble, you will be given a group of seven letters. All you have to do is to figure what the seven-letter word is. The more letters you complete, the higher your score. Hungman game keeps the exact traditional Hangman gameplay: you guess the right word or your Hungman dies. Hunt-A-Word resembles the traditional word search games where you are given a large grid of letters and a list of words you much hunt from the board. And lastly Word Whiz gives you 25 letters on a 5x5 grid and you must find the required number of words to move to the next levels. The traditional gameplay is spiced up by time limits, the limited number of moves and required quota to advance. If you are used to deep thinking when playing word games, you will run out of the time in each and every one of these games. Mad tapping and go for broke is a better strategy here. Of course, all four games require your absolute attention and concentration. Solving the puzzles isn't hard in Word Challenge, the real challenge lies in beating the timer. eSoft Interactive hosts a high score board for those who are masters of word puzzles.

The graphics in Word Challenge are sharp and the interface is easy to use. The frontier/western style shows through the puzzle board design and word fonts. When there is need and space, the developers added some nice drawings as the background (found in the man game which is lighthearted and comical). You will notice some little nice touches such as in-game battery meter, and you can access to the help, menu and pause game easier via the shortcut buttons below the puzzle screen.

The sound tracks fit the mood of this fast-paced puzzle game. Since there aren't a lot of sound effects, the groovy music fills in the void. You will find some sound bites corresponding to your actions however. Word Challenge game supports ARM/XScale devise and takes less than 2MB of space.

For word nuts, Word Challenge is certain a worthy title to try. It contains over 10K words in its database, and is set up to add more words. Four popular puzzles in one game is always a good deal and provides variety. I wish there were different difficulty levels which would allow it to appeal to a larger fan base. It would also be fun if the timer reset when you got an answer right.

Playing Hints and Tips

In Word Whiz, don't look for too long; just start clicking as soon as the timer starts. Don't be afraid of using 3-letter words, even though longer letters will give you better scores. You will need both to get pass the quota.