Crossword puzzles have been around for a very long time. They can be found just about anywhere. They are in the newspaper. They’re on your cell phone now. There are whole magazines dedicated to the crossword puzzle. Now, thanks to Digital Leisure and their release of Word Searcher, you can sit in front of your TV and do a crossword puzzle. That is the premise behind the game. There’s nothing more to it. Sit down, open the game and do a crossword puzzle. The game starts with you creating a profile that will be used to save the puzzles that you’ve done. After that you are given a menu with 100 different puzzles that can be picked from. Select one and you are sent straight into the puzzle. The puzzle itself fills the left 2/3 of the screen with the words you need to find on the right side. When you’ve found a word click on the first letter and drag your magnifying glass to the last and let go. The word, if circled properly, will be highlighted in blue and marked of the list of available words. You continue until all the words are found. The timer in the bottom right corner tells you how fast you took to finish a puzzle. Just try to beat that time when you open the puzzle again.
The crossword puzzle part of Word Searcher is brilliant. All of the letters are very easy to read and the cursor is very accurate. There are very few times that you’ll find yourself clicking on a letter you didn’t expect because the cursor jumped at the last second. The difficulty is just about right for anyone that does crossword puzzles on a regular basis. Each time you finish a puzzle it will be highlighted in orange on the main menu to tell you that you’ve completed that one. You can always go back and replay puzzles because they will randomize every time you play them giving you near infinite replayability.
The problems with Word Searcher come after you’ve completed all 100 puzzles, which could take between 10-15 hours. There is nothing more to the game than that. There are 100 puzzles that randomize every time you open them. The menu’s themselves are very bare. You simply click on a profile, then click on a puzzle name. There are not other difficulty levels or puzzle types. If you search any crossword puzzle book you’ll see a number of different types of puzzles from numbers to puzzles where the words are not in the same row or column. Word Searcher would have been made infinitely better with the addition of a few of these additions. Game play modes like blacking out the screen and using the controller as a flashlight to find the words, or adding the ability for a second player to search as well would be very welcome additions.
If you’re a fan of crossword puzzles you will probably really enjoy this game. The puzzle difficulty is great, and there are a lot of them to do. A member of the Digital Leisure team told me there will be a DSi version of the game available in a couple months and that is where I think the game will shine best. I would be very willing to pop open my DSi while I’m sitting around waiting in a doctor’s office or on the bus and do a word search. That’s what puzzles like that are designed for. There is something very fun about sitting on your couch with your son pointing out letters and saying to look at that spot. I’m a very big fan of crosswords and this game has already gotten a lot of play at my house. If you’re looking for a lot of variety, you’re not going to find it here, and that makes it hard to recommend this to anyone that doesn’t enjoy crossword puzzles. A few more puzzle types would have make the game immensely better.
Final Score: 2/5 Below Average
Review copy of the game provided by Digital Leisure.
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