Lex, the book loving parasite has gnawed his way back into our hearts with this clever new word game from “Popcap” called “Bookworm Adventures” it is a sequel to their very successful 2002 game “Bookworm Deluxe”. How successful could a simple word game be you might be asking yourselves. Well, it has become the best-selling digital word puzzle game of all time, available for the Web, PC, Mac, Gameboy, and is even played on major airlines! So, what intended to be just a nice, little, quiet vocabulary game had everyone, including me, hooked on phonics!
"Bookworm Adventures," is now known as the most expensive title developed for the casual game genre to date.“PopCap” has spent $700,000 and over 2 1/2 years developing this game, wow, with mind boggling stats like that, it better be good!
They burrowed in a storyline this time around, so it plays like a word/puzzle/ RPG adventure/action game, what’s that you say ? So you’re confused about how a word game with a worm as its lead character can become the ultimate fighting machine! So was I.
In case you’ve never played the original “Bookworm”, I’ll sound it out for you, it simply involved you creating words out of a jumble of letters, the longer the word or the higher the letter value (think Scrabble) the more points you earned.
Lex, the bookworm, in all his nerdy, nasally glory is back (think Urkel), except now he must battle in order keep the Great Library safe. You help lead him through a bunch of classic books and famous mythological monsters to form words that will ultimately fight off these centuries old literary enemies! We will come up against Dracula, the Wolfman, Roman soldiers, Medusa and mystical sea serpents!
Hehe, no longer a nice, little, quiet vocabulary game now is it?
By making longer more complex words you will be give Lex greater fighting powers (you see being smart can be sexy!) as well as earning special letter tiles that provide helpful power up effects that include potions, and treasures which will hand over more strength and defense abilities to our limbless friend. Sure you can get by with just spelling out lame unimaginative words like"cat" and "dog" to complete a level, but what fun would that be? Challenge yourself!
Unlike a “serious” fighting game, you don’t directly control the violence, you just create a word then click the “Attack” button. Fighting involves Lex charging, head butting literally towards his enemy in a duel, the bad guy then takes his turn inflicting damage on our invertebrate buddy. There are more than 150 enemies and each have their own fighting style some will stun, some will poison and some will take away your turn. Besides the turn based combat, there are many leveling up opportunities, for example playing mini games. Yup, minigames! As if all the other stuff wasn’t enough there are 3 minigames that inched their way into the game, called word master, letter rip, and line and spell. This gives us greater strength needed to defeat the boss characters at the end of each chapter in addition to giving us an added incentive to continue on and SPELL, SPELL, SPELL! Brains vs. Brawn!
“Bookworm Adventures” is a new kind of word game combining the classic word making past-time with RPG elements and often times funny storyline. In other words. it gives us a nice sense of accomplishment and a high level of replayability! It never forgets about its main audience ,word gamers, that helped get them where they are today while mixing in a scramble of linguistics (good word, must remember to use that next time!)to attract a new audience.
Normally sequels suck,S-U-C-K, rehash and rewind (yawn) is how I view them , but not this time. This big budget $700,000 sequel, was worth every penny. It was warm hearted fun from a cold
blooded pal!
But don’t take my word for it, dust off your dictionaries and polish up your armor it’s time to play “Bookworm Adventures”!
Get Bookworm Adventures Here
Graphics
B
Sound
B
Pickup & Play
B
Overall Fun
B
Posted by oxyjen on Dec 13, 2006
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