Feb 18, 2011

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.

qrcodeMy 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.

2 comments:

  1. Hello,

    Thanks for the review! I wanted to address your concerns:

    Regarding the request for difficulty levels: You can do this by first going to the game's options and unchecking "Tournament Game". This will enable changes to the game board size, game speed, and whether or not the game will speed up over time.

    The reason these are turned off for tournament game play is to provide a level playing field for everyone who is trying to get on the leaderboard.

    As for the crash: You're correct that we're a small shop and don't have a lot of resources to test on a wide array of devices. However, I'd love to address this bug and get it fixed. Can you send me a quick support email by going to the game's help and then selecting "Contact Support" in the upper left corner? I gather information about the game's settings as well as your device make and model which should help me figure things out. If you would be so kind as to mention you're the author of this review, that would help too!

    Kind regards,

    Mike
    Owner, Anthrological, Inc.

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  2. FYI: The game slowing down issue has been fixed with version 1.1.9 available in the Android market now.

    Regards,

    Mike
    Owner, Anthrological, Inc.

    ReplyDelete