Bookworm from Popcap Games

It's unbelievable just how happy Popcap Games makes me. I've blogged one or two of their games before, but I'm not sure I talked about just how much I like Popcap in general. Their games are so unabashedly casual. If I want to play one of their games, I pick one, read through rules that don't even take 30 seconds to learn and click play. They always work, they are always fun and there is never a gun or semi-naked girl in sight. Thanks PopCap!

Onto their game that I played this week:

Bookworm is a word game involving a grid of letters. You look at the grid and click on letters that make a word going in any direction. Once you've selected letters and hit the "submit" button to submit the word, the letters disappear, rearranging the grid. Words have to be at least 3 letters in length, and you score points based on how long the word is. My longest word was Foxtrot. Every so often, a flaming letter will appear. If you can't use that letter by the time it gets to the bottom of the screen, the game is over.

I enjoyed this game because I had to be creative with the words I was thinking of, but it was still easier than scrabble because you're not having to fit your words in with other words. It was also fun to be able to connect letters that were adjacent in any direction. Some words were letters I connected that were in a circle, others were backwards and some where diagonal.

There was no timer in this game. I enjoy games with times, it always gives a game more of an action element, but not having the timer in this game allowed me to really ponder the letters in the grid. This game not only stimulated my creativity but was also a nice game for de-stressing.