We’re trying something a bit different this week. We asked five game critics for a piece on a mobile game they play regularly, but never get to never get to actually write about.
First up, it’s Guardian games writer and author Keith Stuart on the classic word game SpellTower:
There is only one game that I have faithfully installed on every phone I’ve owned since 2011 and that is SpellTower by Zach Gage. As far as I am concerned it is part of the holy trinity of early iPhone titles, alongside Adam Saltsman’s Canabalt and Asher Vollmer’s Threes, which set the standard for accessible intellectual game design in the smartphone era.
It’s also a surprisingly successful project considering that, at the time of its development Zach Gage hated word puzzles. It came about because a friend of his described a demo she had seen at the IndieCade festival in Culver City, California, which combined Boggle and Tetris; Gage liked the sound of it but when he saw the final game (I think it was Asher Vollmer’s PuzzleJuice), he realised his conception of the idea was vastly different. So he decided to make it.
He later told Game Developer magazine: “Making a game in a genre you hate is actually one of the most interesting experiences ever.” Apparently it also makes for wonderful games.
The original mode in SpellTower (now named Puzzle) has you using adjacent letters in a fixed grid to make words – when you create one successfully those disappear but a new layer of letters is added at the bottom. When the highest letters reach the top of the screen it’s game over.
This is still part of the modern version of the game, but my favourite mode is Tower in which you are given a complete grid of letters and have to use as many words as possible to make words before you run out of tiles. Certain tougher letters take more tiles with them when they go, increasing the points earned – the goal is to score as highly as possible.
There are so many reasons I love SpellTower and particularly the Tower mode. I love how open it is – you can make words backwards, diagonally or upside down, as long as when you’re selecting the letters, your finger doesn’t lift from the screen or go over the same tile twice.
In this way, it has a lovely tactile feel (enhanced by some subtle yet seductive haptic feedback) – as you create words, it’s like you’re casting a little spell with your finger. It’s Fruit Ninja for lexiconographers. On top of that, you, the player, get to define how you approach the challenge: do you just want to make as many long words as possible, or do you want to try to clear the screen entirely. How do you do that? Should you prioritise high-scoring letters or let those tricks Qs and Js be destroyed by building longer words near them?
Brilliantly, most SpellTower modes have no timer – an element often added to puzzle games to add a sense of tension when something else is lacking from the design. I have a game of the Puzzle mode that I’ve been playing on and off for months – it’s something to come back to, to savour, to think about.
Speaking about his excellent puzzle gaming platform Puzzmo recently, Gage said, “Every game I design is meant to be a sandbox…someone coming in should just feel comfortable playing around, and through playing around they should be able to understand what’s exciting about the game.”
That’s what I like about SpellTower – it is not really a word game. It is a game about word games, like an interactive essay on good puzzle design. But more importantly, it’s a fun and fascinating thing to play, and hopefully, I’ll never own a phone that doesn’t have it installed.
