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Product
Review
Bookworm
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4-4-05 - Contributing Editor
When I first saw Bookworm, I said “Hey! That’s Wiggins!”. For those of you without kids, Wiggins is a character from an old computer game that allowed kids to write their own books with animations. I know my kids loved that program. However, Bookworm isn’t the old Wiggins game. In this game, his name happens to be ‘Lex’, but don’t all worms look alike anyway? The object of Bookworm is to build words at least three letters long by clicking on the tiles. The dictionary contains over 35,000 words, so it’s easier than you think. After you’ve played for a while, you will get green, golden and even blue letter blocks by making longer and more complex words. Those are bonus blocks. By making a word with those letters, your score will be increased. So, you’ll want to make more than just three letter words. As the game progresses, you’ll have burning letters dropping into the playfield. Those letters need to be used as soon as possible. The longer you leave those burning letters on the screen, they will drop further down. Eventually they will burn up the entire library if you’re not careful. Don’t let them drop to the bottom of the screen.
If you notice, in the above screens I have created TARS on the Pocket PC. The word shows GREEN in the upper left with a score. That means I used a bonus tile. If a score is not shown, it’s not a real word. By clicking the last letter, the entire word will disappear and more letters will be dropped. It sounds easy…. and it is. Anyone can play this game! Well.. you do need to know how to spell at least. There are no hints within this game. It’s all word skills. In order to make a word, you can either click on each connecting letter or drag the stylus/mouse to connect the letters. The words can be made up from any direction (left to right, right to left and even diagonal). If it’s a real word, a score will appear in the upper left of the screen. The blocks will disappear and new letters will be dropped on the top of stacks. On the left, you’ll see a stack of books appearing. Each time it reaches the top (or the right on the Windows version), the level goes up. You are also given a “Bonus” word. If you can make that word, it means big points! Those points double each time you make a bonus word! You may even find words that you didn’t know existed. If you get stuck, you can click on Wiggins and he’ll scramble the board for you. I don’t recommend doing that often. When you scramble the board, some of the letters start burning. You’ll have to be smart to get rid of them quickly. One additional feature that doesn’t come up very often is the definitions. Occasionally, Wiggins will tell you the definitions of a word. So I guess this game is also educational! Creating blue letter blocks is done by making a word using two of the other bonus blocks (gold ones I believe). It’s rather difficult to do and sometimes it doesn’t always work. The longer the word, the better score you’ll get.
Sounds like a game you could play for a very long time. Trust me, it is. Bookworm will automatically save your game when you quit. It will be there when you return. You can play for weeks at a time. It’s one of those games you can start, but find very difficult to stop. The other night I started at game around 7 o’clock. I had a great score going too. By the time I looked at the clock, it was 10 o’clock! I had been playing for three hours! Where did the time go? The Windows version of Bookworm Deluxe will also allow you to compare your scores with others from the internet. You’ll have to be very good in order to become one of the elite word makers. Bookworm isn’t new. It’s been out for some time now. I opted to do this review after hearing a friend of mine talking about the game. I wanted to compare the Pocket PC version against the Windows version. I’ll have to admit, they are nearly identical in game play. I believe that all the same words are available in both versions. All I know is I’m totally addicted now. If you love word games, you’ll absolutely fall in love with Bookworm. Whether you get it for your Windows desktop or your Pocket PC, either will be a great addition to your games collection. The Pocket PC version takes up an astonishing 632KB of space for storage! How did they fit 35,000 words in that small of a space? The Windows version requires about 10MB of space on your hard drive. Both versions sell for $19.95 and are available
on Astraware's
site. The Windows version is available separately for $19.95. PopCap & Astraware just keep coming up with great ideas to keep us playing instead of working. Let’s hope they never stop! Download a trial version of either and start making some words! The game is also available for Palm OS devices as well. Pocket PC version is 1.08 and the Windows version is 1.02 on Astraware’s site. However you can upgrade to version 1.03 by downloading the same game for Windows from PopCap’s website. It contains a couple bug fixes and possibly a few additional words. Special
thanks goes to Alison from Astraware for pulling strings and fighting
red tape to supply us Discuss
this Review!
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