Overview
Drag a finger to string together jumbled letters and form words in this refreshing Boggle variation. Quordy is a relief to those word-game junkies confused by a weak and overpriced App Store market. It’s a solid and fun app.
Gameplay
In Quordy, users string together words in a four-by-four letter grid. It’s simple and works by dragging and releasing a finger.
Each word must be at least three letters long and at the end of each game a list of all word possibilities can be displayed, just in case you were wondering how many lame “oot” and “foh” words you missed out on (which can be pretty frustrating).
Although the game is simple, there is some accelerometer usage as you can shake your iPhone to start a new game or, if you’re too lazy for physical activity, you can bypass the shaking by dragging a finger back and forth across the screen (bo-ring).
Each game has a three-minute time limit and will give you a vibrating jolt when you’ve run down to your final 10 seconds.
Users can challenge others with a “Pass and Play” option or an online mode, which allows you to choose an opponent from your contacts, assuming that person is an iPhone user, owner of Quordy and has registered for online play. There is no option to play in any kind of public online sphere.
Review
Quordy is an entertaining throwback for Boggle and Text Twist fans that is smooth and functions well.
It’s fun, although in one instance I found out that I missed words like oho, ahs, oot and hao (maybe I should have known them?). This led me to string together random assortments of letters that could have potentially looked like possible words.
While such developments can be frustrating, the board's letters seem to generate randomly and there are a lot of word possibilities in each board, so the game does succeed in consistently presenting a challenge.
One setback is that there is no online forum for challenging random users on the web.
The Quordy developers were right to think the game would be great to play against friends, but not everyone has an iPhone or can be in the same room as you for “Pass and Play” when you want a challenge. Some kind of online environment for viewing community scores and challenging strangers would put this game in a league of its own.
An option to adjust the time limit of games would be a good improvement, as would an option to select the dictionary being used or to view the definitions of words after games. It would also be nice to challenge more than one friend in “Pass and Play” mode, or to customize rules in that mode, like if you want to penalize for incorrect words, or add rewards for good ones.
Summary
Quordy is a great word game that is both challenging and relatively inexpensive. If you enjoy a vocabulary challenge, this game is for you.
