I've always been fond of word games. While not my very favorite, I always enjoyed Boggle. Part of the appeal was the patterns in the game, the need to connect adjacent squares to form words, the geometries that appealed to my mathematical side while still being primarily about language and words. I also loved the noise of all of those dice hitting the hard plastic cover whenever it was time to shake for a new game.
Let me back up and explain Boggle to those of you who haven't played it. It's a fairly basic game meant to test and strengthen spelling and vocabulary. It's played on a 4x4 grid with lettered dice. You shake the dice into the 16 spaces then have three minutes to form as many words based on those letters as you can. Words must be formed by adjacent letters; they can be touching in any direction including diagonally and you can change directions at will. Spaces cannot be reused within words; double letters are allowed only if there are two different dice with those letters in playable locations. You can use multiple tenses of the same word; plurals are your friend. When time is up, each player compares their word list and any words found by more than one player are crossed off the list. The goal is to have more unique words than any other player.
Boggle tests not only your spelling and vocabulary, but also helps you get a feel for usage frequency and makes you expand your horizons so you don't find the same words everyone else will find. While sheer speed may result in a long list of words, that doesn't help if they're the same words everyone else finds. You have to combine speed with depth, hunt for the unique without sacrificing so much time you wind up with too few words to matter. It's a good way to hone judgement and learn how to balance sometimes disparate goals.
This computer version of Boggle captures the basic feel of the traditional dice game and offers quite a bit more. In addition to the classic game, it has four variants, variants that keep the spirit of Boggle intact but provide twists on the game to keep it interesting.
Each type of game offers two levels, original and master. Generally speaking, original games are played on 4x4 grids and allow you to make words of three letters or more. Master games are played on 5x5 grids and require at least four letter words. I'll point out any variations to these rules when I discuss each individual game.
Three of the games allow opponents; one requires them. Two are solo efforts, you against the game board. Opponents may be human or computer players; I've never played more than one human player, but I assume that you just take turns. Computer players can have any of four difficulty levels, but in all honesty I've not seen a great deal of difference in skill or play from level to level. All of the players are fairly stupid; I've never, not once, come close to losing any game against any computer player no matter their supposed skill level.
Boggle shows all the signs of a game too focused on the details to pay attention to the big picture. While the variants themselves are generally well designed and thought out (with a few exceptions I'll mention below), the glue holding the games together is weak. There's no way to stop the current game if you're done with it - you have to sit and wait for time to run out. You also can't stop it and switch to another variation short of exiting Boggle entirely and starting over. You can switch to a different style of play after a game ends, but the method used is very kludgy - you have to start a new game, then cancel it. Then and only then will you find yourself back at the main splash screen and able to select a variant to play.
The classic game is just that - the traditional physical game complete with a fake lid and plastic grid slots. It's a very faithful replica, but I can't help but miss the sounds of the game, the banging of the dice, the scratching of the pencils, the process of reading off words and comparing lists. All of that happens automatically. I wouldn't want to do it manually, but it's still aesthetically bare compared to playing the real way.
Breakaway is a three-dimensional variant. Both the original and master styles are played on a 4x4x4 grid; the only difference is the required size of the words - three letters vs. four. In Breakaway used letters literally break away from the cube, allowing letters previously hiding below them to show. Words must still be formed by moving along a continuous chain of touching letters but the letters may touch in any direction along any dimension. Unfortunately, it gets very hard to see the depth of the letters and thus how the letters connect in the original viewing point of the game. There's an alignment option, but that just gives you a face on view which is even worse. The game might be fun if there were some way to rotate the cube in different directions so you could get a good look at the available letters and how they connect to each other, but without that option it gets unplayable very quickly.
Battle is a really interesting variant. It's always played with two players and the available cubes are split among each player. The original board starts empty, the master board begins with the center cube in place. The players take turns placing one cube at a time anywhere on the board then solving for any available words. Each player is given 5 minutes of playing time, time that starts the instant it's your turn to place a cube and ends when you hit the end turn button. It's up to you to judge whether time is better spent solving for words early or left for finding words later when more letters are in place. As an added variant, words cannot be reused even if they appear on the board more than once, so solving early blocks your opponent from claiming those words you claim. I tend to play this in original mode; five minutes isn't really enough time to play in master mode.
Timing aside, my only real complaint with this variation is that, for some reason, they decided to get fancy and make you drop the cube on the board instead of placing it. This translates to making you look for a shadow on the board to indicate where a cube will land; it won't just be placed where you click your mouse. I frequently have to start turns over because the game didn't think I actually dropped my cube into an available grid slot. This can really eat into your given time.
Despite its promising name, Space is the least interesting Boggle variant in this set. It consists of a bunch of unconnected letters zooming toward you in space. You have to make words from the letters, but unlike the other games, there's no real sense of connection so you can pretty much use any letters you like in any order. To me, that violates the spirit of the game. I also expected to die/have the game end when the nearest letter ran into the screen, but they just happily ran off the screen and the letters kept coming. It's strictly a timed game which seems wrong under the circumstances.
In Your Face is similar to Space but fixes all of those things that didn't work there. You make words in the usual way on a regular square grid of letters. Letters disappear once used and after you've made all of the words you can, you can raise the grid so another layer of letters appears underneath. There's also a timer that will raise the level for you if you don't do it fast enough manually. The game goes on until a letter reaches the top of the screen, about a dozen or so levels up. This is by far the longest of the games and one that relies on strategy more than most. A single game can last as long as 30 minutes and most last at least ten. This is just as much a test of stamina as of vocabulary.
Overall, I like what they did to Boggle in this game. While the original doesn't have the tactile pleasure of the real thing, these variants are mostly interesting and fun. The general UI could have used a bit more thought and Breakaway needed a better design, but most of the games are very playable and a great deal of fun. Whether or not you're a Boggle fan of long standing, if you like words and language you should like this game.
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