Letter Rip!

After posting the game's Press Release earlier this week I took the time to download and try out Letter Rip! That's interesting in and of itself because I generally run from word games as I'm far more of a numbers person. Yes, I stink at Scrabble and Word Jumbles. It's not that I want to be poor when it comes to rearranging letters in words... it just comes naturally.

Letter Rip! provides you with a grid of letter tiles much like in Scrabble. However, as you play new, new tiles randomly appears on the board and it's your job to drag them around to form words of three or more letters. Once you create a word you can then drag over it, clear those tiles off of the board, and score points based on the letters used. The game is that simple.

My criticism of the game comes in two forms: minor and major. My minor criticism is that the game start really slow with one tile on the board. Why not three if it takes at least three letters to make a word? My own reason would be that perhaps it gives me time to think of words using that first and second letter. Ok, but then why does the game ramp up so dang fast. Don't get me wrong... I LIKE fast, but only when it's an option. The game needs difficulty levels and the option for slower ramp up speeds. Generally I can get about 4 or 5 words before the board fills with Ys and Zs.

My major criticism is a big one. The game has a nasty, nasty crash bug that deperately needs to be fixed. I'll be playing and doing well and boom... back to the title screen. I'm not the only one either based on Market reviews. I don't know if the author can't reproduce the bug or what, but it's there and it's a major show stopper until it gets fixed. And I sympathize with being in that situation especially if the author can't reproduce the problem and doesn't have a giant budget to purchase all sorts of different Android devices for testing.

I sincerely hope the crash bug can be fixed as this game is good enough to warrant attention. This is a nice, clever little cross between Scrabble and Tetris. And it's a free, ad supported game. I'm going to withhold a review score, though, until the game stops choking right as I'm about the beat my high score.