Tough Scrabble-style word game

If you’ve got a way with words, then you’ll probably enjoy Bookworm which challenges your word creation skills in a fun and engaging puzzle.

The aim is to link letter tiles left, right, up and down to build words and keep Lex the bookworm grinning while racking up your points total. It works in the same way as scrabble in that, the bigger the word, the better the bonus. However, you must watch out for burning letters which destroy your words and your game in an instant. If you can’t find a word to incorporate the letter, the letter will destroy your entire board ending the game.

There are two modes to choose from – Action and Classic. As the name suggests, Action is frenetic and sees you linking letters in a race against the clock. In Classic mode, you’ve got more time to come up with long and impressive words to maximize your scoreline where your main enemies are burning letters.

From a gameplay perspective, Bookworm is excellent, although it is extremely hard. The most you can hope to form with such random formations of words are three or four letter words. I also like the fact that Lex tells you the meaning of the words with a dictionary definition as you score.

From a technical standpoint the game is annoying though. Firstly, there’s no way to play in single-screen mode so Bookwork totally takes over your Mac. Secondly, when a letter burned and destroyed my game, the whole game froze and crashed. There was no option for me but to restart the Mac which is completely unacceptable.

It’s a shame the technical aspects of Bookworm don’t live up to the gameplay which is otherwise and extremely fun and taxing word game.