Game Stooge

REVIEW: Bookworm Adventures (PC)

• Scribbled on February 23rd, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in PC, Puzzle, Reviews

Bookworm was one of Popcap games’ best reviewed games, taking Word Search to a new and addictive level. In that game, you were tasked with building words from letters on a grid. The only constraint was that the letters had to be juxtaposed vertically, horizontally or diagonally, similar to Boggle. Long words added jewel letter tiles that increased the value of the word containing it. Additionally, flaming letter tile would appear that would slowly drop to the bottom of the grid. When a flaming tile passed through the bottom, the game ended. Bookworm Adventures is a sequel of sorts.

The worm mascot, Lex, is now the protagonist of a story arc in which his friend Cassandra is kidnapped by a mysterious figure, taking her into a literary realm where stories come to life and words have power. This is the premise behind the game - you spell words to defeat adversaries. A minor (very minor) RPG element is introduced in that Lex has hearts that represent his hit points, and can wield artifacts to enhance his abilities in one way or another. Some items lessen the damage of a creatures attack, some add damage under special conditions (such as make a word that’s a metal, contains the letter X, Y or Z, and so forth), or prevent Lex from being stunned, and so forth. These artifacts come from facing off against an end boss of any given level.

In the main adventure game, the grid that Lex chooses his letters from is now smaller and Boggle-sized, only 4×4 for a grand total of 16 letter tiles, but now the player is free to build words from any tiles, regardless of where the tiles are placed. Therefore, words of less than 5 letters are seldom used. Long words now not only grant bonus jewel tiles, but also various items that can aid Lex. Green potions can heal Lex and restore hearts, a power-up potion increases Lex’s power for one word, and a white potion dismisses all negative effects on Lex. Creatures have various inherent powers, too, such as poisoning, bleeding, and so forth. Even jeweled tiles grant effects, too, as well as increase word power; emerald tiles heal Lex like potions, red tiles burn creatures over a period of time, etc.

There are also mini-games that appear - and always appear after Lex “dies” - that can grant additional items and opening jewelled tiles. One is a word variation of Mastermind, in which a player is given five chances to correctly guess a word, only being told after each guess if the letter(s) are present, and if the player guessed the correct position of the letter(s). Another word game is basically a Jumble puzzle in which a player must find as many words contained within a large word as possible. The third is a game in which the player must make words with a large grid, using each letter twice to make it gold - a gold line of letters grants a specific prize. The mini-games unto themselves are fun, and can be played seperately after the player finishes one “Book” of the adventure mode. All of the high-scores earned in mini-games can uploaded to the main server, just like in Bookworm, for an online leaderboard.

While the entire game is fun, and addictive as hell, there are a few irritating, if not game-breaking, problems. The first is that the Adventure can only be fully completed once. After the Third Book is finished and the main villain is vanquished, the Adventure is inaccessible, and a “twitch” version of the adventure mode is unlocked, in which you fight all of the bosses in real-time, which means your 3- and 4-letter word making becomes important, since you want to spell as many words as possible before they can attack. While this game is fun, the adventure mode is far more fun, and it’s quite annoying to create a new profile just to play the adventure over again.

Another minor irritation is the complete dependence on the mouse. While you can ‘enter’ a word by pressing ‘return’, you still must select individual letters via mouse click, which can be arduous. While it’s true there are duplicate letters in the adventure mode, it would still be nice for the game to automatically select the best variation of a letter when typed, and just be corrected with the mouse.

Right now, Bookworm Adventures can only be purchased online at PopCap’s website, though a boxed version will probably eventually end up on store shelves someday, perhaps bundled with the original Bookworm. Regardless, if you’re looking for an addictive word puzzle game, you will find no better than Bookworm Adventures.

SCREENSHOTS