Wordzy

>>Community Game Brief

The audience for quick, casual gaming is expanding at a rapid rate. No one knows that more than the developers and publishers saturating the market with low-budget word games. From the iPhone, to Facebook, and now Xbox Live Community Games, the word genre is inescapable. Wordzy is yet another addition, and while it isn’t offensively bad, it isn’t particularly inspired either.

The object of Wordzy is to guess a five-letter word based on its first letter. Each attempt to guess reveals some clues about how close you are, and guessing the word in the least amount of time is the key to a high score. Again, nothing particularly wrong with that, but when your game could just as easily be played with a pen and paper, presentation is key.

That is where Wordzy utterly fails. Once you guess letters correctly, they aren’t locked in, allowing you to change them for no reason other than forgetting the correct one. Each clue is color-coded, and rather than using some kind of intuitive visual cue, the game assumes you will refer to the “Help & Options” page beforehand and read a color guide. There’s little in the way of animations, sounds, or positive reinforcement. Again, you’d get more out of patting yourself on the shoulder while you scribble away on a sheet of paper.