February 8, 2009
Jongin’
So, I don’t know if you listened to the last 1up Yours, (even though it seems like Listen UP is the exactly same show only it doesn’t have Shane) but if you did you probably heard Luke Smith and John Davidson talk about, what else, an iPhone game. Mr. Davidson likes talking about those, and dammit, I appreciate it, because there just aren’t any good ways to get information about iPhone games. Parish’s iPhone blog is a good help, but at the same time, he’s talking about all things Mac related, whereas I want mostly just an app review portal, you know?
Anyway, so they bring up what they’ve been playing on their iPhones, which is WordJong: Daily Challenge. I’ve heard of the WordJong before, back in the EGM Live days, when they made fun of the DS release, and then found out it was actually kind of respectable. I’m still wanting more killer apps on my iPod, because I find myself playing games on it in between classes all the time, so I snapped it up for $5. It was a good choice, because it is a damn good word game. It’s probably not worth the full price DS release, but it’s hard to pass it up as a $5 download.
The game basically is what the horrible title suggests. You play MahJong solitaire, but instead of the normal tiles, the tiles have letters on them. You have to spell out words, trying to spell long ones to score more points, all the while having to adhere to the rules of what tiles you can use in MahJong, as well as having to clear every last piece from the board. This is made easier by bombs, which can destroy a single tile. You can only hold one bomb at a time, but if you don’t have one, you get another one every time you spell a 5 letter or longer word. Of course, blowing up tiles gets you no points, so it’s perhaps better not to rely on it.
Obviously, if you have no love of word games, this is completely not the game for you, but it’s the perfect game to pull out for 5 minutes if you enjoy word-based action. There is a new puzzle every day, and that puzzle is the same on every copy of WordJong, so you can compare scores with friends. Each puzzle ramps up in difficulty like the daily crossword puzzle in the newspaper. Monday’s score to beat is easy, and then each day gets harder until you reach Sunday’s impossible number.
I agree with the Luke and John that the game desperately needs an online friend leaderboard so you can race for high scores against your friends more easily, but other than that, it’s really hard not to recommend. This is exactly the kind of experience I want on my iPod: a relatively fast, easy to grasp but decently deep little game. If you have an iPhone or a Touch like me, you should really give it a purchase.
…oh my, I just learned there’s a free online version on their website? That’s awesome, although the rules seem a little different. Instead of bombs, you earn wild tiles, which aren’t in the puzzle itself this version. But yeah, that’s great. Just go check it out and try it for yourself.