Can You Spell 'Mountain Lion' In The Newly Launched SpellTower For Mac?
July 26, 2012
Looking for a new game to get addicted to on your newly Mountain Lion-ized Mac? Well, you can't go wrong with SpellTower for Mac — unless you misspell a word, of course.
Originally available on iOS, Zach Gage's excellent Boggle and Tetris hybrid is finally playable on Mac.
It's one of a handful of games that has been optimized for OS X Mountain Lion on the heels of the operating system's launch. What's more, it fully supports the gorgeous display of the Retina MacBook Pro.
SpellTower for Mac sports optional night colors for playing in the dark, which is exactly what you'll be doing once you get so hooked on the game that you can't help but stay up late for it. Options for volume adjustment are also accessible within the game.
Notably, it also includes the ability to share Game Center leaderboards and achievements between iOS and OS X Mountain Lion. But syncing games between the iOS and Mac versions via iCloud is not yet supported. Rest assured that that particular feature, as well as a multiplayer mode, is coming in a future update.
If you can't see the video embedded above, please click here.
SpellTower works perfectly on an iPhone or iPad's touchscreen. But how does it fare on a Mac's screen?
Let me spell it out to you: it works great.
First of all, SpellTower for Mac differs from most games on the platform in that it's windowed rather than rendered in full screen.
"With it's thin vertical profile," says Gage, "this makes SpellTower ideal for being left up in the background, or played alongside any other Mac activity like browsing the Web, reading Twitter, or doing your homework."
I'm not sure about being able to concentrate on your homework with this game open, though.
SpellTower for Mac also differs in its controls. Adapting to the absence of a touchscreen, the game offers three ways to spell words from a tower of letters:
Compatible with OS X 10.7 Lion or later, SpellTower for Mac is available now in the Mac App Store for $3.99. Its original and universal iOS version, whose trailer appears above, goes for a couple of dollars less in the iOS App Store. Now, I'd like to see you spell "Mountain Lion" in SpellTower.Hold and drag. Click each letter. Click to start spelling, and then click again to submit.