The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

There is one thing I’ve been doing all day for several days, and that thing is playing Words with Friends. Please note how awful that title is. Words with Friends. Ugh. It sounds like you’re about to confront your friends for something they did wrong. It’s… pretty terrible. However, it is actually a well-implemented Play-By-Email style Scrabble Clone for the iPhone. I’m enjoying it a lot.

I learned about the Words with Friends phenomenon (okay, it probably isn’t a phenomenon) from Cara, who was playing it with her aunt as we sat down to take our awesome final. The final consisted of having lunch, good conversation, and, as it turned out, playing fake iPhone Scrabble, because I downloaded it immediately onto my iPod Touch and had at it. See, the main feature to this game is that it has a fully-featured free version, so you can just tell anyone you want to download it and play with you. This is a really effective feature. The free version isn’t a demo. It’s the full game. The only difference is that it pops up an ad every time you make a move. However, there’s nothing stopping you from immediately hitting the home button, backing out of the program, and not looking at the ad at all. If you are monetarily challenged, you’ll have no problem dealing with these ads and having a good time. Still, they annoyed me, so I splurged and spent the 3 dollars on the ad free version. I didn’t mind: even though the company that made this game obviously had no idea how to title something, they still made a game with a great interface that works very well for a game you play slowly over the course of a day or two.

Basically, you set up anywhere from 1 to 20 games running simultaneously. As I said, it’s done in a casual “play at whatever pace” style: You play your turn, and then it sends a push notification to who you’re playing, who can respond whenever they want. Then you get a push notification, and so on. This works extremely well for Scrabble, especially since it’s often a game where you’d like some time to stare at the board and evaluate your options, options, options. This also works surprisingly well with my iPod touch. When I’m at home, not doing anything, I’m in Wifi, and I get these notifications, so I can play. When I’m out and about doing things, I’m not in Wifi, so I don’t, but they’ll be waiting for me when I get home. Granted, the game can’t entertain me during boring parts of life that way, but it actually still works fairly well when not always connected, like when you’re on an iPhone.

The game lets you challenge Twitter and Facebook contacts, as well as type in usernames on their little service. It also has a matchmaking thing for play against random people, because random people are your friends whom you want to Word with, obviously. You can leave messages after every move to gloat or just talk, and when you finish a game, you just hit the “rematch” button and start a new one with your friend again, immediately. It’s pretty well everything one could want from a mobile, online Scrabble game, and it’s available for the price of free.

I’d have a hard time not recommending that you download the free version. If you enjoy playing it and hate ads, feel free to throw some money the developer’s way, if you want. But you don’t have to to have a great time. If you download it, face me. I’m, shockingly, named poetfox on there. We can words. With friends. All day long. Perhaps.