Too tired and busy this week to play any full length game, I continued my quest for alternative games for those who prefer less blood and violence on their screen.  This week, I am devoting myself to word games.  As a reader/writer, words are among my very favorite things.  I’ve played word games as a child and with my children.

Word games are a great way to pass time in a moving vehicle–especially when one of your children has a sensitive tummy that is upset by reading or coloring in a car.  We used to play railroad spell (start the game off by spelling “railroad”, next person spells a word that starts with a “d”‘; the following person spells a word that begins with the previous word’s ending letter.  So…if next person spells “dog”, then “goat” might be a good choice.), the Minister’s cat…oh, wait…we were talking about computer games, weren’t we?  Must be the late nights and shortage of sleep…couldn’t be senility setting in.  (Or…no, never mind.)

Anyway, I found three games that were fun.  The first was called Flip Words.  The letters are presented on red coins arranged on a grid.  The player selects from coins that are touching each other to create a word.  Not bad…the concept was a little bland.

Next, I found Word Zen.  Based on MahJong, you must spell a word to remove tiles.  Play is timed, you are given bonus words–more points to you if you can spell them.  Some of the tiles will be visible to you, but unreachable, some are buried so you can’t even tell where they are.  The background music is lovely, and each time you earn points, you get something beautiful added to your Zen garden.  The pressure is on during play, because if you can’t spell the bonus word, you have to spell really, really fast to make your points before time is up!

The third was Word Travels.  I didn’t find this quite as much fun as the other two; but it wasn’t bad.  By spelling the words, you receive points which allow you to travel from place to place.  Some geographical information is added–which is nice if this is being used as part of informal education–and bonus points can be used to purchase souvineers.

Word Zen was my favorite of the three.  It had just enough tension to make it fun, the music was a definite plus and the art work was in keeping with the theme.

All three games are available through Big Fish Games.

Image via Wikipedia