TOP PICK: Wobble Words (via Palm Pre Challenge)

In the three days that I’ve been working on this new project, I have had the most fun working on my first app review. There’s good reason for that, too, since it has been for a really fun game: Wobble Words 2.0 by Gobico Games.

The game, developed by Dave Balmer, is fantastically addicting (and would be a great time-waster, if I wasn’t already so swamped), with beautiful graphics and ethereal music. I really couldn’t get enough of this game and am really excited by the amount of time that Dave (and a few others that he credits) have put into making it outstanding.

You may notice that webOSroundup has already done a review on this app once before, but this newest version has a lot of new features and cleaner gameplay. So sit back and enjoy the very first App review by yours truly. :)

The Gameplay
This app is very very good. With only a few problems (that I’ll mention below), this will be one of the few games that I’ve ever tried that I will continue to play. After buying the game for $2.99 from the app store, and loading it up for the first time, you will immediately see how well designed it is.

The home screen shows the object of the game in simple terms: “Draw 3-6 letter words, use blanks as wildcards, 5+ letter words earn a new shake, 10 minute timer, 5×5 board”. From there you can either start a new game or change the rules (e.g.: size of the board, how many minutes).

Once the game starts the music starts playing and, in a very pleasant way, it alerts you to the clock timing down. Connect as many words as you can (touch and slide your finger through each letter) in a Boggle-like fashion and watch the points rack up. My high score so far: 3,562.

The Good (AKA: The Great)

Besides the game itself being fun and familiar (if you haven’t played boggle, think of a timed word-search), there are some cool features that keep me intrigued as well.

Gameplay features include shaking the phone to reset the board (when you get stuck), turning off ‘drops’ (keeps the blocks stationary to make it more challenging, but also make it easier to find longer words), keeping the blank boxes (which act as wildcards for any letter, and the ability to match multiple words at once), and changing the size of the board from 4×4 to 5×5.

Team Pass Play is a new feature for 2.0 and a great way to get your friends involved on the fun (or keep the kids occupied on a long trip). Each time you finish a game, your score is added up and you have the chance to type your name in. Once your score is locked in, just pass the phone to the next person and they’ll get the chance at the end of playing to change the name to something else.

Separate Score Boards for various difficulty levels means that you don’t get your scores mixed up. If you get 2000 points in a 1 minute game (wow… If you can do that… just, wow), it won’t get confused with that 5000 points another player got in a 10 minute game (so they can’t cheat). This is definitely a good thing, but it really bugged me at first since I didn’t know what was going on. After switching between different difficulties and noticing my scores were resetting, I got worried. So it would probably be a good idea to clarify this somehow.

The Graphics and Audio in the game are fantastic, as I said several times before (really are the best I’ve seen in webOS apps so far). The five different themes are all great in their own ways and allow for a fun playing environment for different types of users (for guys, gals and kids alike). Unlike in the last version, the audio has no problems at all and, in fact, got me even more engrossed in the game.

The Trophy Shelf is a feature added since the last review on webOSroundup, and directly correlates with one of their complaints. Now you can see all earned and unearned trophies from your scoreboard. Since I know you care so much, I’ve earned “OMG LOL!, 1000 Points, Shake Your Money Maker, and We don’t need no stinkin’ U!”

The Bad (There Isn’t Much Here)

Really, the only ‘bad’ thing I can say about this app is the way it sucks down the battery juice. I closed all others apps and turned off notifications, then launched it with my Battery Monitor app (found in Preware) and let it sit for 15 minutes. In the short amount of time, the Batter Monitor was telling me I was losing my battery at a rate of 50% per hour! And I wasn’t even doing anything with the game.

Now granted, it could have something to do with my setup (I can only test it on my phone), but that still seems like a little much. And, unfortunately, that one problem could be the deal breaker for a lot of users, so should probably be fixed.

UPDATE: After speaking with the developer about the battery issues that I described before, we found out that it wasn’t his app at all that was draining my battery, but something else entirely. So really, that knocks out the only real problem that I could find. This game truly is one in a million, and the fast reply from the developer is pretty awesome, too.

The other small issue I had was with the touch-and-drag motion that’s required to play. In odd moments the screen would stop registering my touch, and so would stop before I got to the 5th letter in a word (thus giving me fewer points that I may have earned). ‘Shook’ became ‘Shoo’ in one example. While I don’t think this is exactly a problem with the game, it could be fixed by doing a multi-touch gameplay rather than touch-and-drag.

With how fast the developer is to replying to me (via twitter and email), though, and the number of updates that he has made in recent months to please his users, I have no doubt in my mind that he will look into this and try to make improvements.

Feature Requests

I like to provide some extra value to a developer who’s built something so excellent, so here are some ideas that I would love to see him include in a future version:

1. Create a leaderboard to see scores from players all over the world, as well as a local scoreboard between you and your friends. Add the ability to access profiles of those friends and turn the game into a living community.
2. Allow the creation of profiles that are accessed at the start screen (and on each pass around a group) with specific preferences set to each account (theme, board size and other game rules). Also, allow viewing the trophies/scores of all accounts on that device (goes with the local scoreboard mentioned above).

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