If you ever managed to track down the elusive official Scrabble Electronics Arts release for Android, you’ll no doubt have found it to be a huge disappointment.
Filled with pointlessly clunky animations and weighing a ton, the official Scrabble app won’t let you play against people online, and comes with three skill levels: an ‘easy’ idiot level which your cat would probably win, a ‘normal’ level which anyone with half a brain should win most times, and a ‘hard’ level which is just ludicrously, pointlessly difficult.
Make way for Wordfeud
Burdened with irritating animations and a yawn inducing start up time, the official app manages to make playing Scrabble a tedious task, so thankfully, the folks at Wordfeud have come up with a far more compelling and fun product, with their multiplayer app letting you challenge your friends or play against random opponents.
Take on 30 people at once
Games can be played at your our own pace, and you can have up to 30 games on the go simultaneously, with your phone’s status bar flagging up your opponent’s moves or any new game invites.
You can invite chums to play via your address book contacts, or you can opt to take on a stranger, with an in-game chat option letting you taunt your opponent when you slam down a 100-pointer word.
The free version is ad-supported but the ads can get mighty intrusive after a while, so keen players will probably give up and fork out the £1.19 for the full version.
It’s not without its glitches though – we’ve found ourselves involuntarily being ‘retired’ from games occasionally, and because of its online nature, you can’t play any games when you’re away from a network/wi-fi signal.
That said, it’s still a heap of fun and easily one of the best Scrabble-like game available on any platform.
[Wordfeud]
